Richard Devlin

Re-calibrating, re-visioning and re-thinking self-regulation in Canada

Several jurisdictions, most notably Australia and the United Kingdom, have recently abandoned a regime of self-regulation of the legal profession. In this paper the authors review recent developments in Canada to argue that there has been a significant increase in the regulatory vigour of law societies and suggest that, at least in part, this is driven by the fear of losing self-regulation. In the latter part of the paper the authors then attempt to assess whether defensive self-regulation is working and propose an evaluative scheme and series of metrics by which to assess effectiveness and efficiency of a regulatory regime. They conclude by suggesting an innovative institutional mechanism that would have the legitimacy and capability to perform such an assessment.

The Past, Present … and Future(?) of Judicial Ethics Education in Canada

the last several decades have witnessed increasing analyses, and criticisms, of legal ethics. the vast majority of this literature has emerged out of the united States, but in the last decade there has also been a burgeoning amount of literature in many other jurisdictions, especially Australia, the united Kingdom and canada. One key dimension of these discussions is legal ethics education. Much has been written on legal ethics education for law students. Some has been written on legal ethics education for lawyers, but relatively little

Regulating judges: challenges, controversies and choices

Judges are critical actors in justice systems around the world. Despite important differences between the various legal families (civil law, common law, socialist law and religious law), the judiciary is frequently viewed as an institution of considerable significance across such legal families. Judges preside over criminal trials where the liberty and, in some jurisdictions, the lives of individuals are at stake. They interpret laws and adjudicate disputes between individuals and the state. Judges review the legality of administrative action. In some jurisdictions, they have the power to strike down laws as inconsistent with the country’s Constitution. In civil cases, they may make determinations across a panorama of disputes, from divorce and child custody to personal injury and class actions to multibilliondollar commercial disputes. As an institution, the judiciary is often considered ‘the third branch’ of government alongside the legislative and executive branches. In short, judges exercise enormous power in society both as individuals and as an institution.1 We can therefore speak of judges collectively as ‘empowered judiciaries’. Broadly speaking there have been three types of responses to the emergence of empowered judiciaries. First, there are the boosters. They emphasize several key points: empowered judiciaries tend to promote development because they provide enhanced stability and predictability in the economic sphere;2 empowered judiciaries promote human and civil rights thereby enhancing human autonomy and the possibilities of improved democracy;3 and empowered judiciaries support the development of cultures of legality.4 Next, there are the sceptics. They argue that the connection between development and empowered judiciaries is much more contingent and complex than the boosters suggest.5 In addition, sceptics are concerned that empowered judiciaries are a threat to autonomy, human flourishing