The Melancholy Truth : Corrective and Equitable Justice for Omar Khadr

Omar Khadr stands for the melancholy proposition that Canadian courts will recognize a rights violation without demanding an effective remedy. Over the years, Khadr secured many legal remedies, but not the one he sought most: a repatriation order. Why? This paper ventures explanations by viewing the final five Khadr judgments through the lenses of corrective and equitable justice. The final section of the paper recasts the case for the repatriation of Omar Khadr based on two principal arguments. First, a context of structural injustice suggests the application of equitable remedial principles rather than corrective justice, even in the transnational context in which Canada cannot impose structural remedies. Second, the Khadr case suggests that declaratory relief is not an appropriate remedy when delay may cause irreparable harm and where the government may be credibly suspected of bad faith

Speleothem growth intervals reflect New Zealand montane vegetation response to temperature change over the last glacial cycle

Flowstone speleothem growth beneath Mount Arthur, New Zealand shows a clear relationship to vegetation density and soil development on the surface above. Flowstone does not currently form beneath sub-alpine Nothofagus forest above ca. 1000–1100 m altitude but U-Th dating shows it has formed there during past intervals of warmer-than-present conditions including an early–mid Holocene optimum and the last interglacial from ca. 131–119 ka. Some flowstones growing beneath ca. 600 m surface altitude, currently mantled with dense broadleaf-podocarp forest, grew during full glacial conditions, indicating that local tree line was never below this altitude. This implies that Last Glacial Maximum annual temperature was no more than ca. 4 °C cooler than today. Flowstone growth appears to be a robust indicator of dense surface vegetation and well-developed soil cover in this setting, and indicates that past interglacial climates of MIS 7e, 5e, the early–mid Holocene and possibly MIS 5a were more conducive to growth of trees than was the late Holocene, reflecting regional temperature changes similar in timing to Antarctic temperature changes. Here, flowstone speleothem growth is a sensitive indicator of vegetation density at high altitude, but may respond to other factors at lower altitudes

Southern Hemisphere subtropical drying as a transient response to warming

Climate projections1–3 and observations over recent decades4,5 indicate that precipitation in subtropical latitudes declines in response to anthropogenic warming, with significant implications for food production and population sustainability. However, this conclusion is derived from emissions scenarios with rapidly increasing radiative forcing to the year 21001,2, which may represent very different conditions from both past and future ‘equilibrium’ warmer climates. Here, we examine multi-century future climate simulations and show that in the Southern Hemisphere subtropical drying ceases soon after global temperature stabilizes. Our results suggest that twenty-first century Southern Hemisphere subtropical drying is not a feature of warm climates per se, but is primarily a response to rapidly rising forcing and global temperatures, as tropical sea-surface temperatures rise more than southern subtropical sea-surface temperatures under transient warming. Subtropical drying may therefore be a temporary response to rapid warming: as greenhouse gas concentrations and global temperatures stabilize, Southern Hemisphere subtropical regions may experience positive precipitation trends

The Melancholy Truth : Corrective and Equitable Justice for Omar Khadr

Omar Khadr stands for the melancholy proposition that Canadian courts will recognize a rights violation without demanding an effective remedy. Over the years, Khadr secured many legal remedies, but not the one he sought most: a repatriation order. Why? This paper ventures explanations by viewing the final five Khadr judgments through the lenses of corrective and equitable justice. The final section of the paper recasts the case for the repatriation of Omar Khadr based on two principal arguments. First, a context of structural injustice suggests the application of equitable remedial principles rather than corrective justice, even in the transnational context in which Canada cannot impose structural remedies. Second, the Khadr case suggests that declaratory relief is not an appropriate remedy when delay may cause irreparable harm and where the government may be credibly suspected of bad faith

“Clearly a Subjective Determination”: Interpretations of “Undue Suffering” at the Canada Agricultural Review Tribunal (2000–2019)

How much suffering does our legal system tolerate? This paper focuses on Canada’s federal Health of Animals Regulations, which purport to provide a measure of protection to farmed animals, notably during their transit to slaughterhouses. More specifically, this paper interrogates how the concept of “undue suffering” is interpreted by the Canada Agricultural Review Tribunal (CART) and Federal Court of Appeal (FCA) between 2000 and 2019. During this period, a total of 157 CART decisions applied the “undue suffering” standard with respect to provisions of the federal Health of Animals Regulations, guided in part by three significant FCA decisions. These cases allow us to conduct a longitudinal study of the standard of “undue suffering,” to see how it is interpreted and evolves over time. A core implication is that some degree of suffering was deemed reasonable, though the contours of this permissible suffering remained ambiguous. I argue that twenty years of CART cases demonstrate the shortcomings of regulations which are premised on a standard as vague as “undue suffering.”Jusqu’à quel point notre système juridique tolère-t-il la souffrance ? Cet article se concentre sur le Règlement sur la santé des animaux du gouvernement fédéral du Canada, qui vise à assurer une certaine protection aux animaux d’élevage, notamment pendant leur transport vers les abattoirs. Plus précisément, cet article examine comment la Commission de révision agricole du Canada (CRAC) et la Cour d’appel fédérale (CAF) ont interprété le concept de « souffrance indue » entre 2000 et 2019. Au cours de cette période, un total de 157 décisions rendues par la CRAC ont appliqué les critères de « souffrance indue » à l’égard des dispositions du Règlement sur la santé des animaux du gouvernement fédéral, guidées en partie par trois décisions importantes de la CAF. Ces causes nous permettent de mener une étude longitudinale des critères de la « souffrance indue », afin de voir comment elle est interprétée et évolue au fil du temps. Une implication essentielle souligne qu’un certain degré de souffrance a été jugé raisonnable, bien que les limites de cette souffrance admissible demeurent ambiguës. Je soutiens que vingt ans de causes rendues par la CRAC démontrent les lacunes de la réglementation fondés sur des critères aussi vagues que la « souffrance indue »

Aboriginal Peoples and Legal Challenges to Canadian Climate Change Policy

This article explores two litigation strategies for challenging Canadian climate change policy, both of which involve constitutional rights and Aboriginal peoples. First, the authors argue that Canada’s climate change policies can be challenged as infringements of the section 7 Charter right to security of the person of Canada’s most northerly Aboriginal peoples. Second, they argue that the impact of insufficient carbon emissions regulation on Aboriginal peoples may violate section 35 of the Constitution Act, 1982, which affirms the rights of Canadian Aboriginal peoples. Although the proposed litigation strategies face a number of challenges, the issues are justiciable. Furthermore, if one of these claims proceeded to trial, the government would be called upon to defend and justify its ongoing failure to reduce Canada’s greenhouse gas emissions

Valley of the Birdtail : An Indian Reserve, a White Town, and the Road to Reconciliation collection

Andrew Stobo Sniderman is a writer, lawyer and Rhodes Scholar. His profile of Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission on Residential Schools won the award for best print feature from the Canadian Association of Journalists. Mr. Sniderman has argued before the Supreme Court of Canada, served as the human rights policy advisor to the Canadian Minister of Foreign Affairs, and worked for a judge of South Africa’s Constitutional Court. Prof. Sanderson is Beaver Clan, from the Opaskwayak Cree Nation. He is deeply engaged in Aboriginal issues from a policy perspective. He was a Senior Advisor to the Government of Ontario. His research areas include Aboriginal and Indigenous legal theory, as well as private law and public and private legal theory. Mr. Sniderman and Prof. Sanderson wrote the award winning book Valley of the Birdtail: An Indian Reserve, a White Town, and the Road to Reconciliation (2022), winner of two awards in 2023: The Stubbendieck Great Plains Distinguished Book Prize from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln Center for Great Plains Studies, and the J.W. Dafoe Book Prize; it was also a finalist for the 2023 Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing.Arts, Faculty ofNon UBCCritical Indigenous Studies, Institute forUnreviewedFacultyOthe

The clinical utility of apoB versus LDL-C/non-HDL-C

Background: The ESC/EAS Guidelines and the EAS/EFLM consensus reports state that apoB is a more accurate marker of cardiovascular risk than LDL-C or non-HDL-C and that apoB can be measured accurately and precisely than LDL-C or non-HDL-C. Nevertheless, EAS/EFLM called for a randomized clinical trial and a cost-effective analysis before widespread implementation of apoB. Objective: To analyse these issues from the perspective of clinical utility as clinical utility would be considered by an informed patient and physician. Methods and results: We highlight the biological inaccuracies as well as the laboratory inaccuracies of LDL-C/non-HDL-C versus apoB. We demonstrate why the biological variance in the cholesterol loading per apoB particle makes it impossible to design a randomized clinical trial to compare apoB to LDL-C/non-HDL-C. We further demonstrate that even in the context of the United States, adding apoB to a lipid panel would have only a trivial effect on costs. Conclusion: We submit that no informed patient or physician would choose a less accurate test over a more accurate test if the more accurate test added only trivially to the total cost of care. For these reasons, the clinical utility of apoB far exceeds the clinical utility of LDL-C/non-HDL-C