Restorative justice is often touted as the humane and politically progressive alternative to the rigid philosophy of retributive punishment that underpins many of the world's judicial systems. Emotionally seductive, its rhetoric appeals to a desire for a "right-relation" among individuals and communities, an offers us a vision of justice that allows for the mutual healing of victim and offender, and with it, a sense of communal repair.

In Compulsory Compassion, Annalise Acorn, a one-time advocate for restorative justice, deconstructs the rhetoric of the restorative movement....

Canadian citizenship has long been characterized in opposition to that of our southern neighbour as a ?mosaic? instead of a ?melting pot.? Acceptance of minority ethnic, racial, religious, cultural, and linguistic groups has largely been seen as key to our sense of what it means to be Canadian. Such multiplicity, however, has given rise to ongoing debates over equality, diversity, identity, and unity.

This groundbreaking work interrogates and expands the accepted modes of thinking through Canadian citizenship. Drawing on feminist and postcolonial theorists, Gerald Kernerman...

Africa's notorious civil wars and seemingly endless conflicts constitute one of the most intractable threats to global peace and security in the post-Cold War era. This book provides both a superb analysis of the historical dysfunction of the postcolonial African state generally and, more specifically, a probing critique of the crisis that resulted in the tragic collapse of Liberia.

Using a historical deconstruction and reconstruction of the theories and practice of international law and politics, Ikechi Mgbeoji ultimately shows that blame for this endless cycle of violence must be...

While governments assert that Canada is a world leader in sustainability, Unnatural Law provides extensive evidence to refute this claim. A comprehensive assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of Canadian environmental law, the book provides a balanced, critical examination of Canada's record, focusing on laws and policies intended to protect water, air, land, and biodiversity.

Three decades of environmental laws have produced progress in a number of important areas, such as ozone depletion, protected areas, and some kinds of air and water pollution. However, Canada's...

In the late 18th century, the English jurist William Blackstone famously described property as "that sole and despotic dominion." What Blackstone meant was that property was an "absolute right, inherent in every Englishman . . . which consists in the free use, enjoyment, and disposal of all acquisitions without any control or diminution, save only by the laws of the land." In light of the intervening 250 years of colonization, Blackstone's "despotic dominion" has assumed new and more ambiguous meanings. It is the ambiguity of the meanings of property and the tensions that were and still...

Refugees are on the move around the globe. Prosperous nations are rapidly adjusting their laws to crack down on the so-called ?undeserving.? Australia and Canada have each sought international reputations as humanitarian do-gooders, especially in the area of refugee admissions.

Humanitarianism, Identity, and Nation traces the connections between the nation-building tradition of immigration and the challenge of admitting people who do not reflect the national interest of the twenty-first century. Catherine Dauvergne argues that in the absence of the justice standard for...

The Courts and the Colonies offers a detailed account of a protracted dispute arising within a Hutterite colony in Manitoba, when the Schmiedeleut leaders attempted to force the departure of a group that had been excommunicated but would not leave. This resulted in about a dozen lawsuits in both Canada and the United States between various Hutterite factions and colonies, and placed the issues of shunning, excommunication, legitimacy of leadership, and communal property rights before the secular courts. What is the story behind this extraordinary development in Hutterite history?...

Detention and deportation are the two most extreme sanctions of an "immigration penality" that enforces borders, polices non-citizens, identifies those who are dangerous, diseased, deceitful, or destitute, and refuses them entry or casts them out. As such, they are constitutive practices that work to "make-up" and regulate national borders, citizens, and populations. In addition, they play a key role in the reconfiguration of citizenship and sovereignties in the global context. Despite popular and political exclamations, it is not a brand new world. The denigration of refugee claimants,...

Good Government? Good Citizens? explores the evolving concept of the citizen in Canada at the beginning of this century. Three forces are at work in reconstituting the citizen in this society: courts, politics, and markets. Many see these forces as intersecting and colliding in ways that are fundamentally reshaping the relationship of individuals to the state and to each other.

How has Canadian society actually been transformed? Is the state truly in retreat? Do individuals, in fact, have a fundamentally altered sense of their relationship to government and to each other? Have...

This book traces twentieth-century Canadian criminal justice responses to women who kill their newly born babies. Initially, juries were reluctant to convict these women of murder since it carried the death penalty. The current ?infanticide? law was adopted in 1948 to impose uniformity on legal practice and to ensure a homicide conviction. Even then, prosecutors faced considerable difficulties, but now, amidst media pressure, and with public attitudes possibly hardening, there are calls for the repeal of the infanticide law and the adoption of a draconian framework to deal with these...