Contrary to what prevails in the context of the Canadian and Quebec charters of rights, constitutional judges in India and South Africa have clearly recognized the justiciability and enforceability of social and economic rights. To explain this normative phenomenon, the author advance a hypothesis according to which the socio-economic conditions and the level of development of a country and the ideological context in which constitutional standards were adopted and are interpreted constitute factors that inevitably influence the courts and the conception judges have of human beings. The author therefore bring to light the formal conception of the person that Canadian judges promote by over-valuing individual autonomy in the interpretation of sections 7 and 15 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and note that in countries marked by extreme poverty, the case law on socio-economic rights is more vibrant, since the Indian and South African supreme courts recognize human beings in all their dimensions.

Questions about the ways in which colonial subjects were acquired and maintained, and how it was that multiple and often contradictory sovereignties came to overlap in history, may not be purely academic. We raise them today because they spring from issues that remain unresolved, concerning rights to land, resources, and self-determination. Following recent scholarship on the English East India Company, the author redefines the Hudson's Bay Company, during the period before widespread settler colonialism, as a state (or “company-state”), and in this way argues that the HBC-state possessed its own kind of sovereignty. The article make three main arguments: that it was up to the HBC, not the Crown, to found Rupert's Land, defend its establishments, make alliances with locals, and challenge intruders; that HBC rule extended to cover not only the company's employees but, eventually, an indigenous “home guard” population; and that the HBC welfare regime transformed the relationship between ruler and ruled.

How to define and protect the dignity of women in armed conflict? This study attempts to understand the issues and dilemmas of the right to dignity and of questions of diversity in international humanitarian law through the example of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. The author proposes an alternative approach to the right to dignity, which in international humanitarian law is primarily associated with women's sexuality. This alternative approach would engage more directly with the debates around social diversity that are occluded in times of war.

When British Columbia was founded in 1858, the colonial regime classified Indians as savage, on the anthropological scale of civilization, and then imposed on them civilizing tactics designed to create semi-civilized British subjects. By the 1860s the colonial regime feared that the growing presence of Chinese immigrants, whom they initially classified as semi-civilized on the anthropological scale of civilization, would subvert this objective. They therefore disempowered Chinese through the imposition of de-civilizing tactics designed to create barbarian aliens. By 1887 these combined civilizing and de-civilizing tactics had resulted in the reclassification of Indians as semi-civilized and of Chinese as barbarian.

In 1996, the Madagascan state enacted Law 96-025 (the GELOSE Law), which transferred the management of certain renewable natural resources to local populations by means of negotiated contracts. This legal strategy was innovative in many ways, namely by prescribing the use of Dina, a local traditional convention, in management-transfer contracts. By using Dina, the state claimed to reconcile the “legal” with the “legitimate” and to favour a sustainable management of these resources. This article focuses on the conditions of legitimacy of environmental norms in a pluralistic legal context marked by globalization. The use of Dina has not in fact contributed to an increased legitimacy of environmental norms, thanks to significant differences between its use and local regulatory procedures, insufficient governmental coordination in the implementation of Law 96-025, and a lack of resonance of sustainable development.

This article examines the discourses of crime and safety mobilized by Gary Doer's provincial NDP government in Manitoba between 1999 and 2009. Through a Foucaultian discourse analysis of statements made by Manitoba NDP members in the Legislative Assembly—in particular, the language and preconceptions drawn on by government members when speaking about matters of crime and safety—the authors assess the role of Third Way and neo-liberal rationalities of crime governance in a provincial crime-control assemblage that seeks to foster “security” beyond the limits of federally defined criminal law. Based on this analysis, the authors discuss how the Manitoba NDP is engaged in a process of “deputizing” public service and communities for purposes of crime control.

The purpose of this article is to evaluate from a legal and critical perspective the recognition of regional languages by the introduction, in July 2008, of article 75-1 in the French Constitution of 1958. The author evaluates the impact of the reference to regional languages; the contributions of this state recognition; its symbolic, psychological, and legal effects; and also its limits. Without calling into question the benefits of the state recognition process, the author concludes that a simultaneous self-recognition by the speakers themselves and by the non-speaker members of local communities is also necessary.

In 1998, the three major government funding councils put in place the Tri-Council Policy Statement (TCPS) to regulate all research involving humans in Canada conducted at institutions funded by the councils. This article examines the process of developing the TCPS, a historic and very important document in Canada's research ethics landscape, and the application of the democratic values of legitimacy, transparency, representation, accountability, and community engagement in that process. The authors argue that efforts were made to ensure basic democratic values in the process but that these attempts should have been taken farther. This examination is a timely exercise in light of the new draft now being prepared to replace the current version of the TCPS. The authors also consider this ongoing process of establishing a new edition and reflect on lessons to be learned.

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is a popular phenomenon that originates at the margins of the legal system. How do CSR practices interact with the law? With the propagation of CSR instruments, the law struggles to prescribe these procedures while favouring an effective application of codes of conduct. Nevertheless, the motivations behind CSR practices stem primarily from a desire to reduce legal risk rather than from a wish to convey a good corporate image. The legal status of the codes is variable, and the jurisdictions participate in the implementation of these regulatory norms of corporate relations. While these acts are intended to protect the fundamental social rights of workers, they sometimes become new legal tools used to make workers subordinate to the corporate ethic. Is it desirable, then, to propose a legal framework for this purely spontaneous and voluntary social phenomenon?