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*Editors’ Note: This post is part of the ‘Unwritten Constitutional Norms and Principles Blog Series’* Unwritten constitutional principles supply much of the foundation – or ‘hidden wiring’ – of the UK constitution. As Lord Reed has recently recognised, the constitution relies on numerous ‘understandings, generally tacit, about how power should be exercised’. Constitutional form and constitutional culture,…

*Editors’ note: This post is part of the ‘Unwritten Constitutional Norms and Principles Blog Series’* Constitutional structures generally leave space for institutional innovations that can enhance the democratic process. One such innovation, embraced by a variety of countries around the world, is the deliberative minipublic. Experimentation with incorporating deliberative minipublics into the modern democratic process began…

Unwritten constitutionalism is often associated with Westminster systems, but it is arguably a feature of all constitutional democracies, including jurisdictions with highly codified constitutions. The ‘unwritten’ facets of the constitution encompass a range of constitutional norms and principles that do not derive their validity from texts authorized through a formal institutional process. The unwritten rules of the constitution can…

Visual credit: Jessica Deeks Isabelle Laliberté – LLM Candidate (Cambridge), JD (Ottawa) and LLB (Université du Québec à Montréal). Isabelle worked as a judicial law clerk at the Supreme Court of Canada (2021-2022) and at the Court of Appeal of Québec (2018-2020). She is a member of the Québec (2018) and Ontario (2021) bars. On…

Par Emmanuelle Bernheim, professeure à la Section de droit civil de la Faculté de droit de l’Université d’Ottawa et titulaire de la Chaire de recherche du Canada en santé mentale et accès à la justice L’audience commence avec la psychiatre qui lit son rapport. Monsieur a 27 ans, vit avec sa famille et est sur…

Par Sophie De Spiegeleir, doctorante en sociologie-anthropologie à l’Université Saint-Louis Bruxelles (Belgique) À l’hôpital psychiatrique Les Tournesols [1], l’équipe de l’unité médico-légale se réunit une fois par semaine afin d’évaluer la petite trentaine de personnes qui y sont internées en libération à l’essai. Adhèrent-elles au traitement ? Participent-elles aux activités ? Préparent-elles leur projet de sortie ? Voilà à…

Marie-Eve Sylvestre, Dean and Full Professor at the Faculty of Law (Civil Law Section) of the University of OttawaNicholas Blomley,  Professor in the Geography department at Simon Fraser University Céline Bellot, Director of the Social Work School and Full Professor at the Université de Montréal, and Director of the Observatory on Profiling (Observatoire des profilages) What a…

Assistant Professor at the Centre for Criminology and Sociolegal Studies at the University of Toronto Marie-Eve Sylvestre, Nicholas Blomley, and Céline Bellot’s Red Zones: Criminal Law and the Territorial Governance of Marginalized People is an important work which significantly expands our understanding of how and the extent to which legal actors—operating in seemingly low-stakes, technical…

Assistant Professor at the Schulich School of Law and Associate Director of the Health Law Institute of the University of Dalhousie Red Zones is an original investigation, through quantitative and qualitative data, into the frequency, causes, and consequences of spatiotemporal conditions of release at bail, probation, and conditional sentences. Using an interdisciplinary lens, Marie-Eve Sylvestre…

Professor at the Centre for Criminology and Sociolegal Studies at the University of Toronto and Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada Review of Red Zones: Criminal Law and the Territorial Governance of Marginalized People That, as luck would have it, it was during the current global pandemic—with its countless, ever-changing and often illogical rules…

Judge of the Court of Appeal of Quebec Marie-Eve Sylvestre, Nicholas Blomley & Céline Bellot, Red Zones : Criminal Law and the Territorial Governance of Marginalized People (2020), (ISBN 9781316635414). The policy of the law is to privilege liberty unless detention is demonstrably necessary. The practice of the law is not always true to this policy….

Click here for more information about Red Zones: Criminal Law and the Territorial Governance of Marginalized People.