We're excited to be hosting an online talk by Chinese lawyer and political activist Teng Biao, who'll be presenting on some of the tensions within China's party-state system on April 16th at 12pm MST. To register, click the button on the right of this page or go here: https://ualberta-ca.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_CcFO5czRS2yofFkyrNqBIA.
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The Centre for Constitutional Studies is pleased to welcome Dr. Ryan Beaton from Vancouver's Power Law to discuss enfranchisement and current constitutional challenges relating to loss of status under the Indian Act. This event will be held at 12:00pm in room 231A of the Law Centre. Lunch will be provided.
Lecture Abstract:
From the pre-confederation "Gradual Civilization Act" through various iterations of the Indian Act up to 1985, Canadian law provided mechanisms for "Indians" to apply for "enfranchisement", renouncing their Indian status in exchange for such benefits as the right to vote and to keep their children out of residential schools. The Indian Act today continues to deny status to thousands of individuals based on a family history of enfranchisement. This talk will give an overview of the history of enfranchisement and describe the lawsuit filed in June 2021 (and now proceeding through the courts following an attempted legislative solution, Bill C-38, killed by prorogation) by members of three families challenging the legacy of enfranchisement under the Indian Act.
We're delighted to be co-sponsoring this year's Dallas Cullen Memorial Lecture, which will feature talks by Professors Vrinda Narain and Kerri Froc. The lecture will be held at 3:30pm in the City Room of Peter Lougheed Hall (5th floor) on March 17, 2025. To register, please use the "register here" button on this page.
Event Abstract
Quebec’s controversial Law 21, An Act Respecting the Laicity of the State, is on its way to the Supreme Court of Canada. The law bans public sector workers in positions of authority—like teachers, police officers, and judges—from wearing religious symbols, all in the name of promoting secularism in the province.
Beneath its appeal to securalism, Law 21 has disproportionately targeted Muslim women who wear hijabs or niqabs. These women are now barred from teaching and excluded from most public sector jobs. The law also mandates that faces must be uncovered to access many public services, effectively excluding women who wear niqabs from participating fully in public life.
Critics argue that this law is blatantly discriminatory, especially on the intersectional grounds of sex and religion. This is why the Quebec government invoked the notwithstanding clause to shield it from certain Charter challenges, but this case also engages Section 28 of the Charter: “Notwithstanding anything in this Charter, the rights and freedoms referred to in it are guaranteed equally to male and female persons.”
This pivotal legal battle will be the focus of an upcoming panel discussion featuring two of Canada’s leading feminist constitutional scholars. Together, they’ll unpack the complex legal, social, and gendered implications of this landmark case and what it means for the future of rights and freedoms in Canada.
Kerri Froc is an Associate Professor at UNB Law and is currently the Law Foundation of Saskatchewan H. Robert Arscott Chair at the University of Saskatchewan College of Law.
The Centre will be co-hosting a one-day workshop on encampments and the Charter on February 28th along with the David Asper Centre for Constitutional Rights (University of Toronto). A small number of participant spots are available for U of A law students; please email mailey@ualberta.ca if you're currently enrolled as a JD student at the University and you would like to attend.
Workshop Synopsis:
The unhoused population has grown significantly across Canada in recent years, particularly in major cities such as Vancouver, Toronto, Montreal, Edmonton, and Ottawa, and in areas in between. In urban centres, homeless encampments — consisting of tents, makeshift shelters, and informal settlements — have emerged across public and private spaces. These informal settlements are visible markers of the country’s housing crisis, and have attracted varied and often problematic responses from government. The result is a challenging range of legal, social, and political actions, with ongoing and complex interactions across all arenas.
This day long workshop engages with both the procedural and the substantive legal issues that shape provincial and municipal governments’ treatment of encampments and unhoused people, as well as the ways in which that treatment has been challenged. Parallels will be drawn with other pressing urban justice issues to set a rich comparative context for discussions. Panels will also deal with legal issues key to getting the perspectives of the unhoused before the courts, such as standing. The substantive issues of Charter rights and Indigenous rights will be examined too.
Workshop Participants:
Margot Young, Alexandra Flynn, Anna Lund, Martha Jackman, Estair van Wagner, Heidi Stark, Avnish Nanda, Chris Wiebe, Renee Vaugeois, Gerard Kennedy, Shaun Fluker
The Centre is excited to be co-sponsoring the event, Pride vs Prejudice, which will take place on Tuesday, March 11, 2025 as part of Pride Week at the University of Alberta and MacEwan University.
The evening will feature a screening of Pride vs Prejudice: The Delwin Vriend Story, written and directed by Darrin Hagen.
The documentary film explores the story of one human challenging a determined and hostile government — and winning. Delwin Vriend never wanted to be a human rights activist, but in challenging his firing for being gay, he set in motion a chain of events that impacted the lives of 2SLGBTQ+ people across the world. As Darrin Hagen states “When we first set out to tell the story of Delwin Vriend’s legal battle with the government of Alberta, we thought we were simply revisiting a pivotal milestone in the slow progress towards equality. We didn’t realize that we were making a documentary that would act as a portent for generations to come.”
A panel discussion will follow the screening, featuring individuals from the film (TBA), to discuss this history victory and its continued relevance in today's world. Join us for an evening of reflection and inspiration as we honour the past and look towards a more equitable future.
All proceeds from this event will be donated to the Trans ID Clinic, a vital program run by Student Legal Services (SLS). The clinic provides assistance to Edmonton-area residents over 18 who wish to change their names and gender markers, regardless of income level.
We're delighted to host Professor Naiomi Metallic as our 35th annual McDonald lecturer, which is co-sponsored by the Centre for Constitutional Studies and the Indigenous Law Students Association.
The lecture will be preceded by a reception at the David Percy Student Lounge (6pm-7pm), in the University of Alberta's Law Centre. The lecture will then commence at 7pm and will take place in McLennan Ross Hall (2nd floor of the Law Centre).
Lecture Title:
Addressing the Elephant in the Room: Crown Sovereignty and How UNDRIP Provides a Conceptual Off-ramp
Lecture Abstract:
This talk is based on one of my PhD dissertation chapters. My overall project seeks to comprehensively unpack how the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples provides a framework for the exercise of self-government by Indigenous Peoples within Canada, looking to the instrument’s history, purpose and provisions. Indigenous self-government has been a right that the Supreme Court of Canada has been reticent to recognize and give substance to under s 35 of the Constitution Act, 1982. I argue that the UN Declaration is an optimal tool to assist courts in overcoming their fears of recognizing self-government and giving it meaningful content. This chapter seeks to explain how the Declaration provides fresh ways to think about ideas frequently aggregated under the concept of "Crown sovereignty" in Aboriginal law.
Canada’s Constitution — specifically, the notwithstanding clause of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms — empowers legislators to impose unreasonable limits on the rights of minorities. As politicians appear increasingly inclined to do so, and as the expected political cost fails to materialize, what is the role of lawyers and the courts in protecting the politically vulnerable?
Adam Goldenberg is lead counsel for 2SLGBTQI+ organizations and individuals challenging anti-trans laws in Saskatchewan, New Brunswick, and here in Alberta. Join him for a discussion of how litigators are seeking to uphold our fundamental constitutional commitments despite populist political pushback.
We're absolutely delighted to be hosting a webinar with Philip Pettit as part of our constitutional theory speaker series. The webinar will take place at 5pm (Alberta time) on Tuesday, February 4th, and can be viewed by registering on Zoom (see registration button on the right side of this page).
Lecture Abstract:
The call on corporations to be socially responsible — this, as distinct from being regulated into responsibility by law — demands a form of virtue from them. But are they capable of such virtue? The presentation will look briefly at the nature of virtue and the nature of the corporation and argue that in current circumstances it is not possible to expect the regular corporation to display virtue. If we want them to live up to standards of social responsibility, we can only rely on government and law.
The Centre will be hosting an online talk by Professor Thomas Bustamante (Federal University of Minas Gerais, Brazil) on December 4th, focusing on the nature of authoritarian attacks on the rule of law, and on the type of legal theory that is capable of resisting these attacks (which Professor Bustamante refers to as "inferentialism"). To register for the talk, please click the registration button on this page.
Note that this will be the first in a series of talks that we'll be hosting over the coming year on contemporary issues in legal and constitutional theory. The next talk will be announced shortly, and will take place during the winter semester, 2025.
Lecture Abstract
Given the influence of legal positivism and logical empiricism, a large number of legal philosophers believe that the content of the law is determined only to the extent that it is communicated in an authoritative pronouncement. To understand the law, one must retrieve a mental state of the author of a legal pronouncement. Mark Greenberg has called this view the “Standard Picture of Jurisprudence” (SP). Brandom’s inferentialism is at odds with SP. It rejects SP's atomism and SP's psychological strategy for figuring out the meaning of legal concepts. Once inferentialism is transposed to the realm of jurisprudence, it is clearer to see the relation between commitments and entitlements in the social practice of legal reasoning. Although legal philosophers frequently neglect this relationship, authoritarian leaders who challenge the legal limits posed by the rule of law do not. Aware of the relationship between commitments and entitlements, as well as the functional role that this relationship plays in legal discourse, authoritarians aim to render legal concepts empty by undermining the inferential relationships between implicit and explicit norms in the legal realm. They attack the rationality of law instead of the legal enactments laid down in positive law. We need an inferentialist theory, rather than SP, if we are to resist them.
We're excited to announce that we'll be hosting a public lecture by Professor Debra Thompson (McGill University) on November 27th at Stanley A Milner Library (EPL, Downtown branch). To register, please click the button on the right.
Lecture Abstract
Through an intimate exploration of the roots of Black identities in North America and the routes taken by we who have crisscrossed the world’s longest undefended border in search of freedom and belonging, this lecture journeys back and forth across the Canada/US border, examining key, competing facets of Canadian and American manifestations of racism. Across time and space, this research asks: where is home for those of African descent, and is belonging within the confines of the nation-state either possible or desirable?
