British And Canadian Public Law In Comparative Perspective

This book explores current human rights controversies arising in UK law, in the light of the way such matters have been dealt with in Canada. Canada's Charter of Rights predates the United Kingdom's Human Rights Act by some 20 years, and in the 40 years of the Charter's existence, Canada's Supreme Court has produced an increasingly sophisticated body of public law jurisprudence. In its judgments, it has addressed broad questions of constitutional principle relating to such matters as the meaning of proportionality, the 'horizontal' impact of human rights norms, and the proper role of judicial 'dereference' to legislative decision-making. The court has also considered, more narrowly, specific issues of political controversy such as assisted dying, voting rights for prisoners, the wearing of religious symbols, parental control of their children's upbringing, the law regulating libel actions brought by politicians, pornography and labour rights. All of these issues are discussed in the book. The contributions to this volume provide detailed analyses of such broad and narrow matters in a comparative perspective, and suggest that the United Kingdom's public law jurisprudence and scholarship might benefit substantially from a closer engagement with their Canadian counterparts.

This major collection contains selected papers from the second Public Law Conference, an international conference hosted by the University of Cambridge in September 2016. The collection includes contributions by leading academics and judges from across the common law world, including senior judges from Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the UK. The contributions engage with the theme of unity (and disunity) from a number of perspectives, offering a rich panoply of insights into public law which significantly carry forward public law thinking across common law jurisdictions, setting the agenda for future research and legal development. Part 1 of the volume contains chapters which offer doctrinal and theoretical perspectives. Some chapters seek to articulate a unifying framework for understanding public law, while others seek to demonstrate the plurality of public law through the method of legal taxonomy. A number of chapters analyse whether different fields such as human rights and administrative law are merging, with others considering specific unifying themes or concepts in public law. The chapters in Part 2 offer comparative perspectives, charting and analysing convergence and divergence across common law systems. Specific topics include standing, proportionality, human rights, remedies, use of foreign precedents, legal transplants, and disunity and unity among subnational jurisdictions. The collection will be of great interest to those working in public law.

Marking the Sesquicentennial of Confederation in Canada, this book examines the growing global influence of Canada's Constitution and Supreme Court on courts confronting issues involving human rights.

"British and Canadian Perspectives on International Law" examines the impact of public international law on the United Kingdom's and Canada's domestic legal systems. It also analyses the contributions of British and Canadian practice to the development of international norms. Topics addressed include international criminal law, international humanitarian law, human rights and human security, asylum, trade, jurisdiction, 'reception law' and media portrayals of international law. Whereas international law scholarship usually takes a global, regional or national approach, this book's chapters are written by leading scholars and practitioners from both countries and provide unique comparative views. While there remains much in common between the two states' understandings of international law, recent developments have shown significant points of departure.

This book examines executive power in the United Kingdom from a British and from a distinctively Scottish perspective. There are chapters on the four common law jurisdictions of Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the United States and on the four civil law jurisdictions of France, Germany, Italy and Spain, and on the EU.

A new framework for understanding contemporary administrative law, through a comparative analysis of case law from Australia, Canada, England, Ireland, and New Zealand. The author argues that the field is structured by four values: individual self-realisation, good administration, electoral legitimacy and decisional autonomy.

In the face of the need to make choices between programs that governments consider essential to administer themselves and programs that may be discontinued or transferred to other organizations, a new vision of government functioning has emerged, notably with greater emphasis on performance and results. This book analyzes the impact of an increasingly influential paradigm called new public management on the public services of Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom. Major challenges common to these countries include powerful bureaucracies, restrictive organizational designs, and rigid rules and procedures blocking change. The book reviews various reform initiatives launched in response to those challenges in the areas of career public service, statecraft, administrative fragmentation and centralization, consolidation and devolution of authority, moving beyond bureaucracy, enhancing performance, and securing accountability. The book concludes with an agenda for public management.

Debating how Canada compares, both regionally and in relation to other countries, is a national pastime. This book examines how political scientists apply diverse comparative strategies to better understand Canadian political life. Using a variety of methods, the contributors use comparison to examine topics as diverse as Indigenous rights, Canadian voting behaviour, activist movements, climate policy, and immigrant retention. While the theoretical perspectives and kinds of questions asked vary greatly, as a whole they demonstrate how the “art of comparing” is an important strategy for understanding Canadian identity politics, political mobilization, political institutions, and public policy. Ultimately, this book establishes how adopting a more systematic comparative outlook is essential – not only to revitalize the study of Canadian politics but also to achieve a more nuanced understanding of Canada as a whole.