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Abstract:
Despite considerable judicial consideration in recent years, the relationship between international law and domestic law in Canada remains uncertain. While Canadian courts frequently invoke the presumption of conformity to claim that domestic law must be read in light of international law, their interpretations of domestic law often fail to respect the full extent of Canada’s international legal obligations. Moreover, Canadian courts rely on an overly restrictive understanding of what it means to implement a treaty in Canada’s domestic law, and as a result they tend to give short shrift to the role international treaties can and should play in Canada’s legal order.

The authors argue in favour of a number of measures that seek to portray international and domestic law as a unity, held together by an overarching commitment to the rule of law. They argue for a more generous understanding of treaty implementation according to which a ratified treaty would be considered “implemented” if, at the time of ratification, there exists sufficient legislative and regulatory authority capable of enabling Canadian officials to comply with Canada’s treaty obligations. They also suggest a variety of means through which federal and provincial legislators could play a more constructive role in the treaty-making process. One option is the development of a Canada Treaties Act that would provide guidance with respect to the specific requirements of treaty negotiation, authorization, and implementation. A less ambitious alternative is the recognition of international law as equal in status to common law. Finally, the authors contend that even in the absence of such steps, Canadian judges and administrative decision makers ought to combine a generous understanding of implementation with a thoroughgoing commitment to the presumption of conformity.

International law, reception, implementation, rule of law, treaty, customary law

Abstract:
Canada is generally regarded as a dualist country in that international treaties are understood to have no direct effect unless they are implemented into domestic law through legislation. The authors argue that the courts have adopted an overly restrictive view of implementation, and that on a more generous reading, many treaties ought to be viewed as implemented at the time they are ratified. Further, the authors argue that even if treaties, on any interpretation, are not implemented, the obligations the state incurs by ratifying such treaties ought to be understood by judges and administrative decision-makers alike as having the same status as common law obligations that judges frequently impose on administrative agencies on judicial review, such as the duty of procedural fairness.

international law, rule of law, dualism, human rights, implementation, judicial review, reception

Abstract:
One of the major challenges legal education faces nowadays is that jurisdictional boundaries are losing significance in an internationalized, globalized and post-regulatory environment. This calls into question the very notion of “law” itself, at least as traditionally understood as a system of posited norms within a given jurisdiction, and the classic model of legal education based on such an understanding of law. While North American legal education has a longstanding tradition of self-reflection, the situation in Europe is different: there is little incentive for legal scholars to devote a considerable amount of time to a serious scholarly treatment of the issue of legal education. Whereas the challenge of internationalization, particularly in its emanation of “Europeanization,” has literally become omnipresent in legal discourse, legal education is still dominated by a traditionalist view of its primary goal: an almost exclusive focus on training lawyers (or judges) for the practice within the boundaries of a national jurisdiction. As a contribution to the debate on the challenges posed to the teaching of law we would like to offer the following brief analysis of the efforts made at the Faculty of Law of McGill University, situated in Québec, Canada to develop a new approach to the teaching of law. Ten years ago, in 1998, the Faculty undertook the effort to offer an integrated comparative three year curriculum, known as the McGill Programme, that teaches even first year introductory courses, such as Contracts and Torts, from a comparative perspective. The ultimate aspiration of this programme, however, is to transcend the fixation on the study of law as the study of “legal systems” - hence the label “trans-systemic” legal education.

Legal education, Legal education at McGill University, Trans-systemic