A round-up of the Canadian Bar Review

In the latest volume of the Canadian Bar Review:

Covid-19 and confronting the experience of imprisonment in sentencing

The prison largely remains a “black box” in the law of sentencing in Canada,” writes Chris Rudnicki, a partner  and  lead  appellate  counsel  at  Rusonik,  O’Connor,  Robbins,  Ross  &  Angelini,  LLP. Judges  are  concerned  chiefly  with  the  duration,  rather  than  the  quality,  of  a  custodial  sentence.  That  changed  with  the  emergence  of  the  global  COVID-19 pandemic. The author contends that the pandemic jurisprudence presents  an  opportunity  to  rethink  the  role  that  qualitative  conditions  of  imprisonment  play  in  the  sentencing  analysis.  He further argues that the emergent  doctrine  of  individualized  proportionality  authorizes  sentencing  judges to open the black box in punishment theory and consider the likely experience  of  a  proposed  custodial  sanction  in  crafting  a  fit  sentence. 

The penalty doctrine in Canada

John Enman-Beech of the University of Toronto clarifies the state of the law on the penalty doctrine, which denies enforcement to oppressive remedy clauses. Calling it “alive and well in Canada,” he defends two claims about it. First, the penalty doctrine fills a role that bargaining unconscionability—the combination of procedural and substantive unfairness—cannot. Because remedy clauses only trigger on the future contingency of breach, applying unconscionability to remedy clauses would require impracticable probabilistic calculations. Second, the doctrine should distinguish between “heaps” and “schemes”—that is, between clauses that seek to compensate for loss and clauses designed to uphold a punitive scheme without regard to loss. Heaps and schemes both need a special rule, but raise distinct policy issues, he argues.

The law on myths and stereotypes

“The Canadian law on myths and stereotypes in sexual assault has entered a turbulent period of growth and change,” writes Lisa Dufraimont of Osgoode Hall.  “What once may have been regarded as a straightforward matter of rooting out tenacious sexist stereotypes about sexual assault complainants is being recognized for the difficult and delicate exercise it is.” Through a review of recent appellate cases, the author identifies a number of “complications,” including “stereotypes about men or accused persons, legitimate defence arguments misidentified as stereotypes, close cases where reasonable people disagree about whether stereotypes have been invoked, and prejudicial forms of reasoning based other axes of discrimination.” She concludes that the “line between stereotypical reasoning and permissible inferences can be difficult to  draw.” The result is the risk that that judges reject legitimate defence evidence and  arguments as raising stereotypes. The author also assesses an attempt by the Court of Appeal for Ontario to bring order to this area of law in the 2021 case of R v JC.

A narrative of white innocence and racialized danger

Danardo Jones (Windsor Law) and Elizabeth Sheehy (University of Ottawa) explore the systemic biases that favour police officers on trial and facilitate the construction of white innocence and racialized danger. The authors try to unravel how the illegal strip search in Ottawa of a Black woman by a white male officer in one trial came to be later characterized in another, with the same set of facts (but with different charges), as lawful.

Le langage non sexiste : une autre perspective

Dans cette réplique à un texte paru dans un numéro précédent, Céline Labrosse, docteure en linguistique, propose une perspective du langage non sexiste « plus rassembleuse et moins dualisante des genres ». En ce faisant, elle dresse des faits marquants de l’évolution de la langue française, lesquels soutiennent le rapprochement des désignations féminines et masculines à mesure que les citoyennes occupent la sphère publique. « Le défi actuel, écrit-elle, réside sans nul doute dans la remise en question de la règle grammaticale de  prédominance  du  genre  masculin,  ainsi  que  de  l’agencement  des  genres dans les discours, sans verser dans la caricature et l’exagération ».

Repenser l’administration de la preuve par expertise en droit disciplinaire

Certaines difficultés relatives à la gestion de la preuve par expertise sont communes aux tribunaux judiciaires et aux instances disciplinaires, soutiennent Shana Chaffai-Parent (Université de Montréal) et Marie-Claude Sarrazin (Sarrazin Plourde). Les auteures présentent une perspective comparative de l’expertise entre les instances civiles et disciplinaires au Québec, permettant d’identifier les principales distinctions entre les rôles des experts dans chacune de ces instances. Ce faisant, elles tentent de mettre en lumière les fonctions de l’expertise dans le domaine disciplinaire, pour mieux comprendre le rôle des acteurs qui y évoluent.