Law and Society
Founding editor: W. Wesley Pue
The Law and Society Series explores law as a socially embedded phenomenon. It is premised on the understanding that the conventional division of law from society creates false dichotomies in thinking, scholarship, educational practice, and social life. Books in the series treat law and society as mutually constitutive and seek to bridge scholarship emerging from interdisciplinary engagement of law with disciplines such as politics, social theory, history, political economy, and gender studies.
The Independence of the Prosecutor
Controversy in the Creation of the International Criminal Court
This compelling investigation shows how an independent prosecutor, who can initiate investigations without states’ assent, became a key part of the International Criminal Court.
Heenan Blaikie
The Making and Unmaking of a Great Canadian Law Firm
What really happened at Heenan Blaikie? This is the ultimate account of what went on behind the scenes of the largest law firm dissolution in Canadian history.
Ancillary Police Powers in Canada
A Critical Reassessment
Ancillary Police Powers in Canada investigates the scope of police powers under Canadian common law, and the implications for our rights, freedoms, and individual liberty.
Constraining the Court
Judicial Power and Policy Implementation in the Charter Era
Constraining the Court considers what happens when a statute involving a significant public policy issue is declared unconstitutional – and government disagrees.
Canada’s Surprising Constitution
Unexpected Interpretations of the Constitution Act, 1982
Canada’s Surprising Constitution asks why the Constitution Act, 1982, keeps generating unexpected interpretations and outcomes.
Suing for Silence
Sexual Violence and Defamation Law
Suing for Silence exposes the phenomenon of lawsuits whose purpose is to silence those who disclose sexual violence, revealing the gendered underpinnings of Canadian defamation law and its chilling effect on public discourse including formal reports of sexual violence.
Refugees Are (Not) Welcome Here
The Paradox of Protection in Canada
Refugees Are (Not) Welcome Here details the paradox of the simultaneous expansion and restriction of access to refugee rights in Canada.
The Notorious Georges
Crime and Community in British Columbia's Northern Interior, 1905–25
The Notorious Georges is an engaging exploration of the alchemy of community identity and reputation in Prince George, BC, once branded Canada’s most-dangerous city.
Family Law in Action
Divorce and Inequality in Quebec and France
Family Law in Action examines the inequalities produced by divorce and separation in France and Quebec.
Constitutional Crossroads
Reflections on Charter Rights, Reconciliation, and Change
Four decades after the adoption of the Constitution Act, 1982, Constitutional Crossroads assesses its legacy, focusing on the themes of rights, reconciliation, and constitutional change.
Power Played
A Critical Criminology of Sport
Power Played represents a distinctly critical criminology of sport, blowing the whistle on the harm, violence, and exploitation embedded in contemporary sport and sporting cultures.
House Rules
Changing Families, Evolving Norms, and the Role of the Law
House Rules takes a hard look at the law and norms governing family life, compelling readers to rethink entrenched inequalities in familial relationships and proposing ways to approach legislative solutions.
Banning Transgender Conversion Practices
A Legal and Policy Analysis
Banning Transgender Conversion Practices is the first book to offer a comprehensive analysis of how conversion practices targeting transgender people are regulated around the world.
Religious Diversity in Canadian Public Schools
Rethinking the Role of Law
This comprehensive analysis of the legally complex relationship between religion and public schools will compel readers to reconsider the role of law in education.
Reconciling Truths
Reimagining Public Inquiries in Canada
Reconciling Truths is a forthright examination of commissions of inquiry that demonstrates the need for astute leadership and an engaging process if they are to lead to meaningful change.
The Laws and the Land
The Settler Colonial Invasion of Kahnawà:ke in Nineteenth-Century Canada
The Laws and the Land, an original and impassioned account of the history of the relationship between Canada and Kahnawà:ke, reveals the clash of settler and Indigenous legal traditions and the imposition of settler colonial law on Indigenous peoples and land.
Women, Film, and Law
Cinematic Representations of Female Incarceration
Women, Film, and Law questions the criminalization of women through an engaging exploration of the women-in-prison film genre.
A Better Justice?
Community Programs for Criminalized Women
Do community programs offer an effective alternative to imprisonment for women within the criminal justice system? A Better Justice? sets out the case.
The Justice Crisis
The Cost and Value of Accessing Law
Based on innovative recent empirical research, The Justice Crisis assesses what is and isn’t working in efforts to improve access to civil and family justice in Canada.
Inalienable Properties
The Political Economy of Indigenous Land Reform
Inalienable Properties explores the contrasting approaches taken by local leaders to property rights and development in four Indigenous communities.
Faith or Fraud
Fortune-Telling, Spirituality, and the Law
Faith or Fraud: Fortune-Telling, Individual Spirituality, and the Law answers an emerging controversy: Should the law’s understanding of religion include the “spiritual but not religious”?
Trustees at Work
Financial Pressures, Emotional Labour, and Canadian Bankruptcy Law
Trustees at Work explores what is means to be considered a deserving debtor in under contemporary Canadian personal bankruptcy law.
Crossing Law’s Border
Canada’s Refugee Resettlement Program
Crossing Law’s Border offers a comprehensive account of Canada’s refugee resettlement program, from the Indochinese crisis of the 1970s to the current era of controversy and flux in refugee and asylum policy.
By the Court
Anonymous Judgments at the Supreme Court of Canada
By the Court is the first major study of unanimous and anonymous legal decisions: the unique “By the Court” format used by the Supreme Court of Canada.
Ruling Out Art
Media Art Meets Law in Ontario’s Censor Wars
This fascinating account of Ontario’s 1980s’ censor wars shows that when art intersects with law, artists have the power to transform the law, and the law, in turn, can influence the concept of art.
Seeking the Court’s Advice
The Politics of the Canadian Reference Power
The first comprehensive analysis of the Canadian reference power, Seeking the Court’s Advice examines how policy makers use the courts strategically to achieve political ends.
Resisting Rights
Canada and the International Bill of Rights, 1947–76
Resisting Rights challenges the myths that Canada has always been at the forefront in the development of international human rights law and led the cause at the United Nations.
Condo Conquest
Urban Governance, Law, and Condoization in New York City and Toronto
This eye-opening study shows how the condo, developed to meet the needs of a community of owners in cities in the 1960s, has been conquered by commercial interests.
Truth and Conviction
Donald Marshall Jr. and the Mi’kmaw Quest for Justice
A passionate account of how one man’s fight against racism and injustice transformed the criminal justice system and galvanized the Mi’kmaw Nation’s struggle for self-determination, forever changing the landscape of Indigenous rights in Canada and around the world.
Enforcing Exclusion
Precarious Migrants and the Law in Canada
Enforcing Exclusion explores the multiple ways migration status functions to exclude temporary and precarious migrants from the law’s benefits and protections.