My discussion of duress falls into three parts. In part I of the paper, I argue chiefly that Xings done under duress remain clear cases of action, and that they are special cases of acting for a reason. In part II, I propose a five-point analysis of acting under duress. In part III, I examine how duress operates as a defence. I maintain that duress is sometimes an excuse and sometimes a justification for conduct, although I further argue that nevertheless it would not be unreasonable to classify duress as an excuse.

A fossil pecan, Carya illinoensis (Wang.) K. Koch, from floodplain sediments of the Mississippi River near Muscatine, Iowa, was accelerator-dated at 7280 ± 120 yr B.P. This discovery indicates that pecan was at or near its present northern limit by that time. Carya pollen profiles from the Mississippi River Trench indicate that hickory pollen percentages were much higher in the valley than at upland locations during the early Holocene. Pecan, the hickory with the most restricted riparian habitat, is the likely candidate for producing these peaks in Carya pollen percentages. Therefore, pecan may have reached its northern limit as early as 10,300 yr B.P. Its abundance in Early Archaic archaeological sites and the co-occurrence of early Holocene Carya pollen peaks with the arrival of the Dalton artifact complex in the Upper Mississippi Valley suggest that humans may have played a role in the early dispersal of pecan.

Law's Empire is a bold and ambitious attempt to provide a philosophical framework which will serve to install the judicial perspective as the preferred perspective from which to think about theories of law. The heart of its argument is that judicial determination of what constitutes law is an exercise in constructive interpretation. Judges have the responsibility to seek that story of the law that both fits reasonably with its past political history and constitutes the best justification that can be given of the legal practices of the society as a whole. They are engaged in finding an account consistent with the history of the practice that displays the point, purpose(s) and values that the law serves to express and uphold, and so brings out most fully the law's claim to authority as a legitimate expression of governmental power in that society. Dworkin believes that the interpretation of law that best satisfies these conditions is law as integrity, which conceives of law as expressing a coherent set of principles embodying those substantive ideas of justice, fairness and procedural fairness that are respected in the community. Integrity tells judges to identify legal rights and duties as though they were all created by a single author, the community personified, as an embodiment of a coherent conception of justice and fairness to which the community subscribes. In this way, integrity requires judges to interpret the rules of law as having a principled justification in a network of values and moral principles that the society adopts.

Andre Gombay gives a penetrating, accurate account of the functioning of duress as a defence in current Canadian law, and puts forward an intelligent and very appealing suggestion as to how the law on duress might be reformed. As part of the underpinnings for his reform proposals, he attempts to unravel the elements of justification and excuse that intertwine in duress and provides his analysis of how duress is distinguishable from other excuses or defences. I agree with him that the present working conception of duress in law falls far short of its appropriate moral potential as a defence, and I wish in these comments to support his proposals for reform. However, I think his arguments regarding the nature of duress, and its bearing on our responsibility for what we do under duress, are less persuasive, and it is here that I will begin.

Restorative justice should have greater weight as a criterion in criminal justice sentencing practice. It permits a realistic recognition of the kinds of harm and damage caused by offences, and encourages individualized non-custodial sentencing options as ways of addressing these harms. Non-custodial sentences have proven more effective than incarceration in securing social reconciliation and preventing recidivism, and they avoid the serious social and personal costs of imprisonment. This paper argues in support of restorative justice as a guiding idea in sentencing. As part of this defence, it considers whether the use of the idea of restorative justice will conflate criminal law with civil law or displace the authority of the criminal courts, and whether the sentences it recommends are best thought of as punishments or alternatives to punishment.

After the decision by the Supreme Court of Canada in Lavallee, Canadian women who are victims of serious domestic abuse have been able to invoke an ‘enlarged’ conception of self-defence to exonerate some acts of killing abusers. While concern remains about Lavallee, this judgement broke important ground in insisting on a more sensitive account of the actual experience of abused women, and in giving recognition to the reasonable fears that such women have for their lives. However, other than self-defence, there is no criminal law defence or plea that has been effective as a (partial) excuse or justification for killings by abused women. In this paper, I will consider the potential for a plea of provocation to serve such a role. Provocation has acquired some standing in other jurisdictions as a defence for abused women who kill but it has not as yet been effectively used in Canada. I will look at the appropriateness of provocation as a plea in some abuser homicides. The paper will discuss some ways in which the plea of provocation could be enlarged in scope and in normative power; the paper will also examine some shortcomings of the current understanding of provocation to serve a defence for women who kill. Since homicides by women make up a small fraction of all homicides, even a reformed defence of provocation would be rarely used. But the more important question is whether a plea which has been available to men for several centuries should not also be (much more) available to women who kill, and whether closer attention to the situations and perspectives of women in abusive relationships yields good grounds for thinking some kill as excusable or reasonable responses to serious provocation. The underlying concern is an equality concern; that women have equal access to suitable defences for their putative breaches of the criminal law, and that standards of reasonableness operative in criminal case deliberation be as responsive to women’s experience and women’s values as they are to men’s.

Canada's Royal Commission on New Reproductive Technologies rejects all forms of surrogacy arrangement under the rubric of objecting to commercial surrogacy. Noncommercial surrogacy arrangements, however, can be defended against the commission's objections. They can be viewed as cases of giving a benefit or service to another in a way that expresses benevolence, and establishes a relationship between surrogates and prospective ‘social’ parents that allows mutual understanding and reciprocal personal interaction between them.