Codes of ethics and Codes of deontology are proliferating in various domains. This paper investigates this social phenomenon by analyzing these codes, how they are justified and how they are applied. This analysis shows that two conflicting approaches are at work in this particular form of social regulation. The first approach is grounded in the traditional, legal sanction of human conduct. The second approach, notwithstanding the legal framework present at its inception, assumes that ethical advances are possible through the recogniton and adoption of shared values. Awareness of this tension between the two approaches to the social regulation of occupational activity sheds light on one aspect of modern legal criticism: the dominance of law over all other forms of social regulation.

In 1670, a royal charter granted by the English monarchy gave the Hudson's Bay Company the exclusive right to rule over an area that encompasses most of what is now the western part of Canada. As part of its original charter, the Hudson's Bay Company was given the power to enact any laws and regulations not repugnant to the laws of England that were deemed necessary to govern its relations with its servants and to maintain social order throughout the vast territory known as Rupertsland. This paper examines the development of the “private” legal system of the Hudson's Bay Company to 1800. Particular attention is given to examining the specific methods of legal ordering and social control that were used within the Company to discipline Company employees. The data examined in the study provide an empirical foundation for broader theorizing about the nature of non-state forms of governance, legal pluralism, and social control. Specifically, the study provides evidence which shows the complex and varied ways in which legal ordering and social control occur outside the state

The Small Claims Court is designed to improve access to justice through a number of procedures, the net effect of which is to enhance the role of the judge as manager of the adjudicative process. The essay reports the results of interviews with 14 Small Claims Court judges in Montreal. Attitudes of judges about their responsibility to ensure a fair hearing, to assist litigants in presenting their cases and to adjust the substance of rules of law and evidence are surveyed. The study also canvasses judicial perceptions and responses to Small Claims Court plaintiffs who may be from ethno-cultural minorities. It concludes that despite their discretion to depart from a strictly adversarial adjudicative posture, judges rarely do so. It also concludes that judges do not see their role as requiring them to take special account of the expectations and understandings of ethno-cultural communities. Informality of proceedings, low filing fees, and the exclusion of lawyers are thought by judges to be a sufficient concession to enhanced access. Transforming the object and processes of civil disputes is not seen as a proper endeavour for the court

This paper argues for a psychosocial theory of courtroom argumentation. Its central thesis is the deconstruction of the deceptive shifts of courtroom dynamics between the veneer of logical propriety and the emotional prescription buried below. Selected observations on the androcentric bias of the sciences, on linguistic convention as gendered historical ambition, and on alternatives to the dominant logical mode of reasoning and argumentation constitute Part I. Part II critically analyzes selected cases for courtroom alternatives. In an effort to reclaim non-linguistic discourse, Part III synthesizes the emotional mode of argumentation and reasoning with feminist spheres of relevance and reasonableness. The conclusion: that such a synthesis may combine with the rational to present a model for our legal system

Traditional legal method continues to be one of the most unexplored aspects of the gendered nature of legal discourse. In this paper, I outline a number of problems legal method creates in relation to women's experiences, more specifically the ways in which legal method works, as part of legal discourse, to exclude abused women's stories. Expanding the conceptualization of legal method as a process which includes the more mundane and insidious aspects of the daily practice of law, this paper examines aspects of legal method which are often overlooked in feminist legal theory and research. The paper is intended as a beginning point for future discussion and empirical research and as such suggests the possible depth of the exclusionary practices of legal method and the harm suffered by women as a result. I conclude with a discussion of how women can subvert traditional legal method through the formulation of local solutions based on their own experiences.

Decisions about taxation and government spending have great political significance: they affect the distribution of income and wealth and the nature and degree of class, gender and other social inequalities. However, tax and budgetary issues are frequently constructed as technical matters that can be resolved rationally according to economic, mathematical or other ostensibly neutral principles. The author examines the debate around budget deficits and recent sex equality challenges to the income tax system, and argues that both illustrate how technical discourses tend to deny the normative content of fiscal law and policy and to disqualify political opposition to the prevailing fiscal order as irrational, ideological and inexpert. The paper concludes by examining the discursive strategies of feminists and others interested in fiscal change. The author considers how feminists might respond to, and even harness, the power of technical knowledges in struggling for tax and expenditure reforms while also challenging the oppressive features and depoliticizing tendencies of such discourses.

In this article, the author examines the problem of representing SM practice and practitioners. In particular the author is critical of the tendency to dismiss SM practitioners' self-representations as inadequate accounts because they are either symptomatic of their perversion or are simply indicators of practioners' internalization of patriarchal values and ideology, suggesting that an adequate analysis of SM can only be rendered by nonpractitioners. In conjunction with an analysis of a British House of Lords decision which upheld the convictions of SM practitioners for assault (R. v. Brown), and several feminist critiques of SM practice, the author attempts to demonstrate that nonpractitioners' representations of SM are themselves inadequate accounts insofar as they generally rely on the deployment of cultural stereotypes of “the sadomasochist,” or reflect cultural biases against ritual practices which involve the use of violence and pain. Proposing these as impediments to “seeing SM differently,” the author constructs a conflicting vision of the aims and form of SM practice and relations.

The Criminal Code contains two articles that deal specifically with hate propaganda. Articles 318 and 319 of the Code are not the result of an arbitrary measure taken by the Canadian legislator: they were enacted on the basis that it was necessary to offer protection to identifiable groups from propagators of hate. Although it is impossible to afford recourse against hate propaganda to all Canadian citizens, the present definition of identifiable groups must be expanded to include within its ambit those who are targeted because of their sexual orientation. This inclusion would signify to society at large that hate propaganda directed against gays and lesbians is unacceptable behavior and it would assure members of the homosexual community that they are full-fledged members of society. If we are to have laws to meet the concerns of special victimized groups, we must ensure that protection is given to all those who need it.