Title: A Worker-Centered Trade Policy and the False Assumptions of Worker Empowerment

Date: Monday, March 3, 2025

Description: The U.S. administration has adopted a “worker-centered” trade policy, claiming to empower workers in trade partner countries. U.S. politicians and bureaucrats cite the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement’s Rapid Response Mechanism as evidence of the policy’s empowering effects on workers in trade sectors. This talk will outline findings from our empirical project, which interviewed workers in Mexico’s auto sector, and discuss its implications for the worker-centered approach to trade.

Speakers:

Desirée LeClercq, Assistant Professor of Law, University of Georgia School of Law

Nicolas Lamp, Associate Professor; Associate Academic Director, International Law Programs

Title: Between Hak and UR Pride Centre: What the Normalization of the Notwithstanding Clause Might Mean for Democracy

Date: Monday, February 3, 2025

Description: Two cases from different provinces, Quebec and Saskatchewan, have reached opposite conclusions on the court’s jurisdiction to entertain judicial review once the notwithstanding clause has been invoked. In Hak v. Québec, the court’s jurisdiction is found to be ousted following invocation of the clause. In UR Pride Centre, the court determines that it may still pronounce on the rights infringement, though it cannot strike down the protected law.

With the use of the notwithstanding clause now effectively normalized and the question of the court’s jurisdiction uncertain, does democracy align more with one side or the other?

Speakers:

Peter L. Biro, Founder, Section 1; Senior Fellow, Massey College; Adjunct Professor, University of Toronto Law School (GPLLM Program)

Discussant - Grégoire Webber, Professor of Law and Philosophy, Queen's Law

Discussant - Jacob Weinrib, Associate Professor, Queen's Law

Discussant - Debra M Haak, Assistant Professor, Queen's Law

Title: Wither free trade? US-Canada Relations in a Post-Tariff Context

Description: Get an in-depth look at the impacts of tariffs on the Canadian economy and our ties to our closest neighbour: how they affect us, how Canada might respond, and the changing face of US-Canada relations.

Queen’s Law and economics professor Cherie Metcalf will be joined by a panel of guests including trade lawyers, and arbitration experts.

Speakers:

- Nicolas Lamp - Associate Academic Director, International Law Programs; co-author, Six Faces of Globalization: Who Wins, Who Loses, and Why It Matters

- Dena Givari, Law’17 - International attorney, International Trade Practice, White & Case

- Jessica B. Horwitz, Law'12 - Partner, International Trade & Investment, Bennett Jones

- Josh Karton - Associate Dean (Graduate Studies and Program Development); Managing Editor, Canadian Journal of Commercial Arbitration

- Anthony Goerzen - Professor, Smith School of Business

- Julia Webster, Law'13 - Partner, Baker & McKenzie LLP

Title: Part time for All: A Care Manifesto

Date: Monday, January 27, 2025

Description: Jennifer Nedelsky (Professor of Law, Osgoode Hall) introduces the main argument of the book: Everyone should routinely engage in unpaid care, averaging 22 hours a week, to learn essential skills from the experience. To make this possible, paid work should be limited to 30 hours a week. Nedelsky discusses the many benefits of this change and briefly explain why it is feasible.

On Thursday January 16, 2025, we recorded the McCarthy Tétrault LLP Lecture in Ethics & Professionalism with Deanne Sowter. Deanne's talk was on Intimate Partner Violence and the Fabrication Myth: Implications for Lawyers’ Ethics in Family Law.

Description: Deanne Sowter will explore family lawyers’ professional obligations concerning the fabrication myth—the notion that claims of intimate partner violence are fabricated to gain an advantage in family court. Referencing the recent British Columbia Court of Appeal decision in KMN v. SZM, Sowter argues that lawyers can no longer rely on the fabrication myth as a defensive strategy. However, she contends that professional obligations still permit space for stereotypical reasoning, which should be addressed through legal and regulatory reforms to enhance access to justice for survivors.

On Monday January 20, 2025, we recorded the Law'80 Visiting Lecture with Sanaa Ahmed. Sanaa's talk was on Canada’s money laundering problem: Is TD the exception or the rule?

Description: Waves of self-recrimination have plagued Canada since U.S. regulators slapped TD Bank with the largest fine in U.S. banking history. TD’s C-suite is under fire for conspiring to launder, as are Canadian regulators for their failure to detect this laundering. But are these calls for self-flagellation justified? Is TD the exception or the rule?

In this encore presentation, we discuss student tenant’s rights and house party laws with the Executive Director, Queen's Law Clinics and Director, Queen's Legal Aid, Blair Crew.

Contextual Informed Consent

Experiences of treatment failure can temporarily render patients willing to accept ever-increasing risks and costs. Not only does the doctrine of informed consent not acknowledge the potential impact of experience-sensitive preferences on patients’ decisions, but it relies on patients to bring suit to vindicate their rights to disclosure. This paper proposes an alternate intervention through a patient decision aid, the Patient Preference Tracker, that elicits patients’ original preferences over risk/cost and requires provider discussion to update this record. Clinics will bear the burden of showing compliance with this better disclosure technique through certification rather than relying on patient enforcement through costly litigation.

Small and Medium Sized Enterprises – the Engines of the Economy but the overlooked Dispute Resolution Stakeholders.

The talk/lecture will explore the contracting and dispute resolution behaviour of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and assess whether the current available legal frameworks are fit for purpose to encourage SMEs to take part in global trade. Their participation in global trade is a key driver to states’ GDP. SMEs are an important tool to poverty reduction. Hence it is of interest to states to ensure that SMEs are able to trade cross-border without facing an uncalculatable dispute resolution risk.

The Prospects and Progress of ‘Green’ Transitional Justice

Environmental destruction can be a source and a consequence of conflict, atrocity, and repression. Violence and the environment have a complex relationship which extends far beyond the end of hostilities. Yet responses to such harms are often invisible or under-theorized in the field of transitional justice. This is starting to change, both in theory and emerging practice. Learn more about key developments contextualized in a broader global shift towards multi-species justice from a leading expert in environmental crime and transitional justice.