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Why Codify
Apologies for my silence of late. I’m afraid blogging will be light for another week or so. In the meantime, however, here’s something related to the topic of my last post, the codification of law. It won’t be news to those versed in the history of Québec law, but it’s something that I, in my ignorance,…
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Portalis versus Bentham (Part I)
A couple of years ago, I wrote about Jeremy Bentham’s pamphlet “Law as It Is, And as It Is Said to Be,” also (or better) known as “Truth versus Ashurst” (available here, at p. 145), most famous ― or infamous ― for its “dog law” diatribe against the common law. In the last part of the…
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Upcoming Talks
Just a quick note about two presentations I’ll be giving in the next couple of weeks. The first one will be this Friday, at Université de Montréal’s Faculty of Law, at 11:30AM. I’ll be one of the presenters (the other one being Hoi Kong, of McGill’s Faculty of Law) at a “Constitutional Moments” event called “Gouvernements minoritaires…
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A Civic Choice
This is the last substantive post in my duty-to-vote series. I have already addressed a number of instrumental arguments in favour of such a duty: claims that it allows better aggregation of information about the voters’ preferences, that it enhances the legitimacy of our political system, and that it improves the quality of election campaigns.…
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It Won’t Help
This is yet another post on the duty to vote. Here, I address arguments according to we have such a duty because if everyone votes, the quality of election campaigns and, possibly, of governance, will be better than under the current state of affairs, where some people vote, and others do not. This argument, like…
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Is It Legit?
I am continuing my series of posts about the duty to vote ― or nonexistence thereof. Earlier this week, I addressed what I called information-based arguments: claims to the effect that we must vote in order to contribute our views, either about what political option is best for us, or about which of them will…
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Twelve Banned Books Weeks
Once upon a time, I mused about whether Parliament could ban books as part of its regulation of election campaign spending. The specific question that interested me then was whether the exemption of “the distribution of a book, or the promotion of the sale of a book, for no less than its commercial value, if…
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The Swearing Show
Niqabs at citizenship oath swearing ceremonies are a big deal. Not really a big deal, mind you, because, as Radio-Canada reports, according to Citizenship and Immigration Canada, there have been exactly two women since 2011 who refused to go through with the oath because of the ban on the niqab which the government had illegally…
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Vote Did You Say?
I am finally beginning my promised series of posts arguing that we do not have a moral duty to vote. In this post, I address arguments in favour of such a duty based on the idea that elections are an information-gathering mechanism. When the information collected through elections is incomplete because some people did not…
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Down with Hypocrisy, Again
Over at Democratic Audit UK, Mollie Gerver has an interesting post arguing that the European Union should decriminalize people smuggling ― that is, helping consenting individuals to cross borders which they lack permission to cross, in exchange for payment. (Consent is very important here: it’s what distinguishes “smuggling” from “trafficking,” the moving of people by force…
Double Aspect 