Law and Society

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Founding editor: W. Wesley Pue

The Law and Society Series explores law as a socially embedded phenomenon. It is premised on the understanding that the conventional division of law from society creates false dichotomies in thinking, scholarship, educational practice, and social life. Books in the series treat law and society as mutually constitutive and seek to bridge scholarship emerging from interdisciplinary engagement of law with disciplines such as politics, social theory, history, political economy, and gender studies.

Showing 1-30 of 126 items.

Heenan Blaikie

The Making and Unmaking of a Great Canadian Law Firm

UBC Press

What really happened at Heenan Blakie? This is the ultimate account of what went on behind the scenes of the largest law firm dissolution in Canadian history.

  • Copyright year: 2024
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Canada’s Surprising Constitution

Unexpected Interpretations of the Constitution Act, 1982

UBC Press

Canada’s Surprising Constitution asks why the Constitution Act, 1982, keeps generating unexpected interpretations and outcomes.

  • Copyright year: 2024
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Constraining the Court

Judicial Power and Policy Implementation in the Charter Era

UBC Press

Constraining the Court considers what happens when a statute involving a significant public policy issue is declared unconstitutional – and government disagrees.

  • Copyright year: 2024
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Suing for Silence

Sexual Violence and Defamation Law

UBC Press

Suing for Silence exposes the phenomenon of lawsuits whose purpose is to silence those who disclose sexual violence, revealing the gendered underpinnings of Canadian defamation law and its chilling effect on public discourse including formal reports of sexual violence.

  • Copyright year: 2024
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Refugees Are (Not) Welcome Here

The Paradox of Protection in Canada

UBC Press

Refugees Are (Not) Welcome Here details the paradox of the simultaneous expansion and restriction of access to refugee rights in Canada.

  • Copyright year: 2023
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The Notorious Georges

Crime and Community in British Columbia's Northern Interior, 1905–25

UBC Press

The Notorious Georges is an engaging exploration of the alchemy of community identity and reputation in Prince George, BC, once branded Canada’s most-dangerous city.

  • Copyright year: 2023
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Family Law in Action

Divorce and Inequality in Quebec and France

UBC Press

Family Law in Action examines the inequalities produced by divorce and separation in France and Quebec.

  • Copyright year: 2023
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Constitutional Crossroads

Reflections on Charter Rights, Reconciliation, and Change

UBC Press

Four decades after the adoption of the Constitution Act, 1982, Constitutional Crossroads assesses its legacy, focusing on the themes of rights, reconciliation, and constitutional change.

  • Copyright year: 2022
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Power Played

A Critical Criminology of Sport

UBC Press

Power Played represents a distinctly critical criminology of sport, blowing the whistle on the harm, violence, and exploitation embedded in contemporary sport and sporting cultures.

  • Copyright year: 2022
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House Rules

Changing Families, Evolving Norms, and the Role of the Law

UBC Press

House Rules takes a hard look at the law and norms governing family life, compelling readers to rethink entrenched inequalities in familial relationships and proposing ways to approach legislative solutions.

  • Copyright year: 2022
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Banning Transgender Conversion Practices

A Legal and Policy Analysis

UBC Press

Banning Transgender Conversion Practices is the first book to offer a comprehensive analysis of how conversion practices targeting transgender people are regulated around the world.

  • Copyright year: 2022
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Religious Diversity in Canadian Public Schools

Rethinking the Role of Law

UBC Press

This comprehensive analysis of the legally complex relationship between religion and public schools will compel readers to reconsider the role of law in education.

  • Copyright year: 2022
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Reconciling Truths

Reimagining Public Inquiries in Canada

UBC Press

Reconciling Truths is a forthright examination of commissions of inquiry that demonstrates the need for astute leadership and an engaging process if they are to lead to meaningful change.

  • Copyright year: 2022
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The Laws and the Land

The Settler Colonial Invasion of Kahnawà:ke in Nineteenth-Century Canada

UBC Press

The Laws and the Land, an original and impassioned account of the history of the relationship between Canada and Kahnawà:ke, reveals the clash of settler and Indigenous legal traditions and the imposition of settler colonial law on Indigenous peoples and land.

  • Copyright year: 2021
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Women, Film, and Law

Cinematic Representations of Female Incarceration

UBC Press

Women, Film, and Law questions the criminalization of women through an engaging exploration of the women-in-prison film genre.

  • Copyright year: 2021
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A Better Justice?

Community Programs for Criminalized Women

UBC Press

Do community programs offer an effective alternative to imprisonment for women within the criminal justice system? A Better Justice? sets out the case.

  • Copyright year: 2020
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The Justice Crisis

The Cost and Value of Accessing Law

UBC Press

Based on innovative recent empirical research, The Justice Crisis assesses what is and isn’t working in efforts to improve access to civil and family justice in Canada.

  • Copyright year: 2020
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Inalienable Properties

The Political Economy of Indigenous Land Reform

UBC Press

Inalienable Properties explores the contrasting approaches taken by local leaders to property rights and development in four Indigenous communities.

  • Copyright year: 2020
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Faith or Fraud

Fortune-Telling, Spirituality, and the Law

UBC Press

Faith or Fraud: Fortune-Telling, Individual Spirituality, and the Law answers an emerging controversy: Should the law’s understanding of religion include the “spiritual but not religious”?

  • Copyright year: 2020
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Trustees at Work

Financial Pressures, Emotional Labour, and Canadian Bankruptcy Law

UBC Press

Trustees at Work explores what is means to be considered a deserving debtor in under contemporary Canadian personal bankruptcy law.

  • Copyright year: 2019
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Crossing Law’s Border

Canada’s Refugee Resettlement Program

UBC Press

Crossing Law’s Border offers a comprehensive account of Canada’s refugee resettlement program, from the Indochinese crisis of the 1970s to the current era of controversy and flux in refugee and asylum policy.

  • Copyright year: 2019
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By the Court

Anonymous Judgments at the Supreme Court of Canada

UBC Press

By the Court is the first major study of unanimous and anonymous legal decisions: the unique “By the Court” format used by the Supreme Court of Canada.

  • Copyright year: 2019
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Ruling Out Art

Media Art Meets Law in Ontario’s Censor Wars

UBC Press

This fascinating account of Ontario’s 1980s’ censor wars shows that when art intersects with law, artists have the power to transform the law, and the law, in turn, can influence the concept of art.

  • Copyright year: 2019
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Seeking the Court’s Advice

The Politics of the Canadian Reference Power

UBC Press

The first comprehensive analysis of the Canadian reference power, Seeking the Court’s Advice examines how policy makers use the courts strategically to achieve political ends.

  • Copyright year: 2019
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Resisting Rights

Canada and the International Bill of Rights, 1947–76

UBC Press

Resisting Rights challenges the myths that Canada has always been at the forefront in the development of international human rights law and led the cause at the United Nations.

  • Copyright year: 2019
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Condo Conquest

Urban Governance, Law, and Condoization in New York City and Toronto

UBC Press

This eye-opening study shows how the condo, developed to meet the needs of a community of owners in cities in the 1960s, has been conquered by commercial interests.

  • Copyright year: 2019
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Truth and Conviction

Donald Marshall Jr. and the Mi’kmaw Quest for Justice

UBC Press

A passionate account of how one man’s fight against racism and injustice transformed the criminal justice system and galvanized the Mi’kmaw Nation’s struggle for self-determination, forever changing the landscape of Indigenous rights in Canada and around the world.

  • Copyright year: 2018
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Enforcing Exclusion

Precarious Migrants and the Law in Canada

UBC Press

Enforcing Exclusion explores the multiple ways migration status functions to exclude temporary and precarious migrants from the law’s benefits and protections.

  • Copyright year: 2018
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Class Actions in Canada

The Promise and Reality of Access to Justice

UBC Press

The first major empirical and critical study of class actions in Canada, this book provides a detailed account of how they operate and whether they are achieving their goals.

  • Copyright year: 2018
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Health Care and the Charter

Legal Mobilization and Policy Change in Canada

UBC Press

An engaging study of the clash between two iconic Canadian policy instruments – universal, single-payer health care and the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms – and the effects on politics and policy.

  • Copyright year: 2018
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