LAW, JUDICIARY, and CIVIL RIGHTS

             //LA LOI ET LES DROITS DE LA PERSONNE

 

See also related headings, including IMMIGRATION.

 

         Items in this section, unlike those of all other sections, have been given

primary grouping by year of publication and then have been arranged

alphabetically within each year.  This has been done for two reasons: 

first, this is one of the largest sections of the list and, more importantly,

in law chronological development is important in relation to issues

of precedent.

 

         The reader might consider first examining the title Sexual Orientation and

Legal Rights, listed under Hurley in the Year 2000 Publications section, below.

The French title is Orientation sexuelle et garanties juridiques.

This work, under the imprint of the Library of Parliament, Parliamentary Research

Branch, has been an annually updated overview of legal issues since 1992 and

provides a quite extensive list of citations to major case law (57 items in the

2000 edition).  It is quite readable by the legally less experienced and is available

in its 2000 edition on the Internet at the address given in the Hurley entry.

         The “Relevant statute(s)” and other annotations which frequently appear with

entries have come primarily from the online Index to Canadian Legal Literature.

                 The user should note that, although there are some citations to major court and

      human rights tribunal judgements in this bibliography, a comprehensive investigation

      was not conducted across all Canadian federal and more local jurisdictions.  Please

      ensure also that the case being studied has not been or is not being taken to a higher

      court.

                 The user could also note that Kathleen Lahey’s Are We ‘Persons’ Yet? (University

of Toronto Press, 1999), listed elsewhere in this bibliography, provides an astounding

      number of references to Canadian case law. See also Sexual Orientation Cases

in the YEAR 1997 subsection of the LAW section, below.

                           NOTE regarding same-sex marriage:  By late June 2005, the courts

       of eight provinces (all except Alberta and PEI) and Yukon territory had ruled in favour.

On June 28, 2005, Bill C-38, An Act respecting certain aspects of legal capacity for

marriage for civil  purposes, passed the House of Commons. As of early July, the Bill

remains to clear the Senate and receive Royal Assent in order to become Canadian law.

In this list, citations to only the first three provincial court rulings on same-sex marriage

are given (see 2004 and 2003, below), because of time constraints in list preparation.


Introductory note added for 2008 update:


As will be seen below, the issue of same-sex marriage has received additional entries

for the period following the latest YEAR 2004 entries of the earlier edition.

See YEAR 2005 for reference to the Civil Marriage Act specifically.


The user is reminded of the legal review and bibliography of Mary C. Hurley, titled

Sexual Orientation and Legal Rights (Ottawa: Library of Parliament). This was first

noted by the compiler in the introduction to the LAW section of Gay Canada

(reproduced above) and was listed there in the Year 2001 and Year 2000 sections.

(See those sections for further comments). Hurley has provided subsequent revisions

(see, as one example, AMICUS records 30703400 and 32205092 for 2003

references. The latter of these two AMICUS records, for the electronic version, notes

“continuously revised.”). On August 25, 2008, compiler viewed the document, last

revised to 31 May 2007, at the following:

http://www.parl.gc.ca/information/library/PRBpubs/921-e.htm