English Abstract: The author addresses the 2014 Reference re Senate Reform and introduces a speci... more English Abstract: The author addresses the 2014 Reference re Senate Reform and introduces a special volume of the McGill Law Journal devoted to the Reference. It focuses primarily on the issues left in the penumbra of the Reference itself. It is in these conspicuous voids where the authors introduced here enlighten readers on the full political context of the Reference and bring to the forefront what the Court did not, or could not, say about complex political and constitutional issues in Canada.French Abstract: Les avis exprimes par la Cour supreme du Canada sur les questions posees dans un renvoi par le gouverneur en conseil constituent toujours des moments forts dans la vie juridique au Canada. Les textes reunis dans ce numero special de la Revue de droit de McGill apportent un eclairage essentiel sur certains enjeux fondamentaux touchant la reforme du Senat canadien, et sur la contribution de la Cour supreme a ce debat recurrent.
RésuméCe texte cherche à établir une pratique du droit comparé qui tienne compte des enseignement... more RésuméCe texte cherche à établir une pratique du droit comparé qui tienne compte des enseignements tirés du pluralisme juridique. Si la vie quotidienne et les rencontres fortuites sont régies par une constellation d'ordres normatifs, elles peuvent être comparées à d'autres ordres normatifs plus explicites et plus stables. On peut alors mettre en lumière la continuité, la discontinuité, et les caractéristiques divergentes et partagées de ces ordres existants à des niveaux différents dans une communauté donnée. La traduction culturelle permet de faire usage du langage et des concepts propre à chaque ordre pour mieux comprendre l'autre. Les micro-systèmes juridiques deviennent des objets d'étude dont le droit comparé peut se saisir. Le texte est divisé en trois parties. La première tire des travaux de Michael Reisman une lecture de la vie quotidienne à partir des concepts du droit officiel. La deuxième partie procède à l'inverse, et montre comment le droit officiel peut être saisi à partir des modes de pensée propres à la vie quotidienne, comme le suggère Roderick Macdonald. La troisième partie réunit ces deux approches pour les fins d'une comparaison entre le micro-droit et le droit du contrat tel que décrit par Jean-Guy Belley, laquelle révèle une parenté de structure dans les tensions et les polarités qui se manifestent à chacun de ces niveaux d'interaction sociale.
The author compares civil procedure in the United States with that of other countries, with an em... more The author compares civil procedure in the United States with that of other countries, with an emphasis on Canada. The author concludes that while full convergence of civil procedure and litigation practices in Canada and the United States has yet to occur, the globalization and heightened commodification of legal services have made American exceptionalism much less exceptional.
In the early 1990s, the legal community was wondering how the new Civil Code would affect the int... more In the early 1990s, the legal community was wondering how the new Civil Code would affect the interaction of Quebec’s civil law system with the world around it. Fifteen years ago, when the Civil Code came into force, two diverging trends were foreseeable. First, codification’s systemic effect might have encouraged a process of “nationalization and local systematization”, or even “an accelerated shrinking of sources”. In that event, the new Civil Code would become both the alpha and the omega of private law reasoning. It would reinforce the idea of the closed nature of Quebec civil law and would prevent outside law from intruding (unduly). But the opposite trend was just as conceivable: the framing of a contemporary code, built from eclectic sources, would be expressed by a newly confident and mature legal system in Quebec, and would open the door to interpretive practices that were more curious and less static. At first view, the practice of looking to outside sources for the legal ...
In the civil law, contracts of successive performance may be interrupted in a number of ways. Amo... more In the civil law, contracts of successive performance may be interrupted in a number of ways. Among those, the interruption that is initiated unilaterally by one of the parties is subject to distinct regimes which flow from the circumstances of the interruption. Moving beyond the fluctuating terminology of the civil law in this field, the author examines three different types of unilateral repudiation of the contract: a party's decision to put an end to the contract may constitute an inexecution of its obligations ; it may be a remedy for the other party's failure ; or it may be the exercise of a prerogative. This typology is explored here in relation to three nominate contracts : the contract of employment, the contract of enterprise, and the contract of mandate.
This article provides an examination of the future of law school in Canada through the framework ... more This article provides an examination of the future of law school in Canada through the framework of colonization and decolonization. The authors identify five interconnected forms of contemporary colonization in law school, namely intellectual, professional, market, consumerist, and herd colonization, all of which are impacted by the catalyst of technology. The process of decolonizing law school identified by the authors is fundamentally a process of moving the role of human agency to the foreground in designing, building, and renovating institutional orders that foster human flourishing.
While monetary awards are normally compensatory in civil law, they cannot obliterate extrapatrimo... more While monetary awards are normally compensatory in civil law, they cannot obliterate extrapatrimonial losses. Why should we even attempt to repair these losses? In the context of bodily injuries, the indemnity for extrapatrimonial losses is a representation of the damage. This notion of representation has two interrelated aspects. First it insists on the qualitative equivalence between the loss and the compensation, which requires that extrapatrimonial losses be envisaged subjectively. The second aspect of the notion of representation focuses on the symbolic nature of the process of determination of the indemnity. Against that backdrop, the author examines the justification for these awards, the nature of extrapatrimonial loss, and some methods of calculation of the indemnity. Along the way, he concludes that the Supreme Court's functional approach has its counterpart in the civil law tradition, and that scientific methods of calculation of the extrapatrimonial award are counter...
English Abstract: The author addresses the 2014 Reference re Senate Reform and introduces a speci... more English Abstract: The author addresses the 2014 Reference re Senate Reform and introduces a special volume of the McGill Law Journal devoted to the Reference. It focuses primarily on the issues left in the penumbra of the Reference itself. It is in these conspicuous voids where the authors introduced here enlighten readers on the full political context of the Reference and bring to the forefront what the Court did not, or could not, say about complex political and constitutional issues in Canada.French Abstract: Les avis exprimes par la Cour supreme du Canada sur les questions posees dans un renvoi par le gouverneur en conseil constituent toujours des moments forts dans la vie juridique au Canada. Les textes reunis dans ce numero special de la Revue de droit de McGill apportent un eclairage essentiel sur certains enjeux fondamentaux touchant la reforme du Senat canadien, et sur la contribution de la Cour supreme a ce debat recurrent.
RésuméCe texte cherche à établir une pratique du droit comparé qui tienne compte des enseignement... more RésuméCe texte cherche à établir une pratique du droit comparé qui tienne compte des enseignements tirés du pluralisme juridique. Si la vie quotidienne et les rencontres fortuites sont régies par une constellation d'ordres normatifs, elles peuvent être comparées à d'autres ordres normatifs plus explicites et plus stables. On peut alors mettre en lumière la continuité, la discontinuité, et les caractéristiques divergentes et partagées de ces ordres existants à des niveaux différents dans une communauté donnée. La traduction culturelle permet de faire usage du langage et des concepts propre à chaque ordre pour mieux comprendre l'autre. Les micro-systèmes juridiques deviennent des objets d'étude dont le droit comparé peut se saisir. Le texte est divisé en trois parties. La première tire des travaux de Michael Reisman une lecture de la vie quotidienne à partir des concepts du droit officiel. La deuxième partie procède à l'inverse, et montre comment le droit officiel peut être saisi à partir des modes de pensée propres à la vie quotidienne, comme le suggère Roderick Macdonald. La troisième partie réunit ces deux approches pour les fins d'une comparaison entre le micro-droit et le droit du contrat tel que décrit par Jean-Guy Belley, laquelle révèle une parenté de structure dans les tensions et les polarités qui se manifestent à chacun de ces niveaux d'interaction sociale.
The author compares civil procedure in the United States with that of other countries, with an em... more The author compares civil procedure in the United States with that of other countries, with an emphasis on Canada. The author concludes that while full convergence of civil procedure and litigation practices in Canada and the United States has yet to occur, the globalization and heightened commodification of legal services have made American exceptionalism much less exceptional.
In the early 1990s, the legal community was wondering how the new Civil Code would affect the int... more In the early 1990s, the legal community was wondering how the new Civil Code would affect the interaction of Quebec’s civil law system with the world around it. Fifteen years ago, when the Civil Code came into force, two diverging trends were foreseeable. First, codification’s systemic effect might have encouraged a process of “nationalization and local systematization”, or even “an accelerated shrinking of sources”. In that event, the new Civil Code would become both the alpha and the omega of private law reasoning. It would reinforce the idea of the closed nature of Quebec civil law and would prevent outside law from intruding (unduly). But the opposite trend was just as conceivable: the framing of a contemporary code, built from eclectic sources, would be expressed by a newly confident and mature legal system in Quebec, and would open the door to interpretive practices that were more curious and less static. At first view, the practice of looking to outside sources for the legal ...
In the civil law, contracts of successive performance may be interrupted in a number of ways. Amo... more In the civil law, contracts of successive performance may be interrupted in a number of ways. Among those, the interruption that is initiated unilaterally by one of the parties is subject to distinct regimes which flow from the circumstances of the interruption. Moving beyond the fluctuating terminology of the civil law in this field, the author examines three different types of unilateral repudiation of the contract: a party's decision to put an end to the contract may constitute an inexecution of its obligations ; it may be a remedy for the other party's failure ; or it may be the exercise of a prerogative. This typology is explored here in relation to three nominate contracts : the contract of employment, the contract of enterprise, and the contract of mandate.
This article provides an examination of the future of law school in Canada through the framework ... more This article provides an examination of the future of law school in Canada through the framework of colonization and decolonization. The authors identify five interconnected forms of contemporary colonization in law school, namely intellectual, professional, market, consumerist, and herd colonization, all of which are impacted by the catalyst of technology. The process of decolonizing law school identified by the authors is fundamentally a process of moving the role of human agency to the foreground in designing, building, and renovating institutional orders that foster human flourishing.
While monetary awards are normally compensatory in civil law, they cannot obliterate extrapatrimo... more While monetary awards are normally compensatory in civil law, they cannot obliterate extrapatrimonial losses. Why should we even attempt to repair these losses? In the context of bodily injuries, the indemnity for extrapatrimonial losses is a representation of the damage. This notion of representation has two interrelated aspects. First it insists on the qualitative equivalence between the loss and the compensation, which requires that extrapatrimonial losses be envisaged subjectively. The second aspect of the notion of representation focuses on the symbolic nature of the process of determination of the indemnity. Against that backdrop, the author examines the justification for these awards, the nature of extrapatrimonial loss, and some methods of calculation of the indemnity. Along the way, he concludes that the Supreme Court's functional approach has its counterpart in the civil law tradition, and that scientific methods of calculation of the extrapatrimonial award are counter...
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