Religion and Culture in Canadian Family Law, John Tibor Syrtash

Book review of Religion and Culture in Canadian Family Law by John Tibor Syrtash and published by Butterworths (Toronto), 1992. (189 pp.

A Manifest Revolution: Access and Specialization in Legal Education and Practice

The new consciousness of legal ignorance stems from the perception that law has become more complex. It is not simply a case of there being more rules or regulations, rather, the meaning and function of law have become more complicated. Intuitions of justice, the content of natural law, have been qualitatively displaced by positivist law-making. Legal dilemmas are less easily framed in terms of moral imperatives as law becomes more site-specific, more embedded in material circumstance and social histories. The law has become more complex because the society it regulates has become more complex. More decisions need to be made because more choices exist, and in this sense, law attempts to structure a society that is increasingly defined – though this logic exceeds the very notion of definition – by its variance with itself, defined not by what it is but by the possibilities of what it can be or, alternatively, by what it is not. Only in rhetoric can the organization we call society be reduced to one set of values or to a single overarching principle of social cohesion – if indeed cohesion is easily distinguished from tension. The forces effecting the articulation and construction of the law resist any simple or holistic characterization of legal knowledge. The decomposition of the unity of legal knowledge has meant that its content no longer submits to any one end; it is no longer evident to say for whom or for what it is, or should be, composed. This predicament does not, however, release us from the need to decide and re-decide these questions. It is in view of these issues that a new perspective on legal education and legal practice is offered. While critics of legal institutions have identified both the problem of wider access to legal knowledge and the increasing specialization of legal knowledge, rare is it that these cuts are made by the same sword. Typically, proponents of access to the law oppose the concentration of special knowledge in the hands of an elite whose access to \u27legal institutions is primarily based on socio-economic privilege. The crisis of legal knowledge has painted a picture that hints at even greater elitism: the knowledge lawyers require to function effectively in society is due to become even more removed from the civilian denominator of common sense. The authors contend in this comment that the aims of wider access and of specialization can be viewed in complementary terms

A Manifest Revolution: Access and Specialization in Legal Education and Practice

The new consciousness of legal ignorance stems from the perception that law has become more complex. It is not simply a case of there being more rules or regulations, rather, the meaning and function of law have become more complicated. Intuitions of justice, the content of natural law, have been qualitatively displaced by positivist law-making. Legal dilemmas are less easily framed in terms of moral imperatives as law becomes more site-specific, more embedded in material circumstance and social histories. The law has become more complex because the society it regulates has become more complex. More decisions need to be made because more choices exist, and in this sense, law attempts to structure a society that is increasingly defined – though this logic exceeds the very notion of definition – by its variance with itself, defined not by what it is but by the possibilities of what it can be or, alternatively, by what it is not. Only in rhetoric can the organization we call society be reduced to one set of values or to a single overarching principle of social cohesion – if indeed cohesion is easily distinguished from tension. The forces effecting the articulation and construction of the law resist any simple or holistic characterization of legal knowledge. The decomposition of the unity of legal knowledge has meant that its content no longer submits to any one end; it is no longer evident to say for whom or for what it is, or should be, composed. This predicament does not, however, release us from the need to decide and re-decide these questions. It is in view of these issues that a new perspective on legal education and legal practice is offered. While critics of legal institutions have identified both the problem of wider access to legal knowledge and the increasing specialization of legal knowledge, rare is it that these cuts are made by the same sword. Typically, proponents of access to the law oppose the concentration of special knowledge in the hands of an elite whose access to \u27legal institutions is primarily based on socio-economic privilege. The crisis of legal knowledge has painted a picture that hints at even greater elitism: the knowledge lawyers require to function effectively in society is due to become even more removed from the civilian denominator of common sense. The authors contend in this comment that the aims of wider access and of specialization can be viewed in complementary terms

Managing anaerobic digestate from food waste in the urban environment: Evaluating the feasibility from an interdisciplinary perspective

Anaerobic digestion of food waste within urban areas can generate decentralised renewable energy, support community enterprise activities and thereby contribute to closing the waste-energy-food loop. However, widespread uptake of small-scale, urban anaerobic digestion networks is limited by economic costs and the safe disposal of surplus digestate. This paper uses an interdisciplinary approach to assess the feasibility of anaerobic digestate management through the installation of hydroponics or algae cultivation systems, based on a case study of a micro anaerobic digestion system in London, England. Results show that installing a dewatering sifter together with a hydroponics system is a technically and economically feasible option for digestate enhancement in the urban environment. Its installation is, however, not currently justified for the system under consideration due to cost, regulatory, spatial, and contextual constraints identified using actor-network analysis. Nevertheless, if regulatory and wider contextual issues are accommodated, and more than 30 litres of digestate are produced daily, a dewatering and vertical hydroponic system could result in a profit of approximately £100,000 over 10 years. While the microalgal system was also able to upgrade digestate, at present productivity is too low and the capital cost of photobioreactor technology is prohibitively expensive. This underlines the need for technical improvements and low-cost enhancement options to achieve justifiable paybacks until regulatory reforms and the wider economic situation are more favourable to anaerobic digestion treatment within cities

Targeting climate adaptation to safeguard and advance the Sustainable Development Goals

The international community has committed to achieve 169 Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) targets by 2030 and to enhance climate adaptation under the Paris Agreement. Despite the potential for synergies, aligning SDG and climate adaptation efforts is inhibited by an inadequate understanding of the complex relationship between SDG targets and adaptation to impacts of climate change. Here we propose a framework to conceptualise how ecosystems and socio-economic sectors mediate this relationship, which provides a more nuanced understanding of the impacts of climate change on all 169 SDG targets. Global application of the framework reveals that adaptation of wetlands, rivers, cropland, construction, water, electricity, and housing in the most vulnerable countries is required to safeguard achievement of 68% of SDG targets from near-term climate risk by 2030. We discuss how our framework can help align National Adaptation Plans with SDG targets, thus ensuring that adaptation advances, rather than detracts from, sustainable development

Religion and Culture in Canadian Family Law, John Tibor Syrtash

Book review of Religion and Culture in Canadian Family Law by John Tibor Syrtash and published by Butterworths (Toronto), 1992. (189 pp.

Granting Refuge from Islam: The Canadian Refugee Determination Process and the Casualties of Islamic Policies

A number of key divergences between Islamic and Canadian legal regimes are generating a growing stream of refugees into Canada. There is every sign that this trend will grow as political forces on both sides map out their ideological position in law with greater precision. Recent years have seen the introduction into the normative legal system of many Islamic states\u27 Islamization laws. In Canada, the refugee determination process has seen a correlating, but opposite, movement to recognize persecution in its more systemic guises. This paper will focus on those refugee claims from Islamic states which have been accepted on a ground that is related to either Islamic law or Islamic culture. The resulting set of cases illustrates a number of key distinctions between some Islamic regimes and Canadian law which are only litigated in the context of refugee claims. A picture thus emerges of the conflict between the refugee determination procedure in Canada, which embodies Western human rights discourse, and Islamic law, as expounded by Islamic resurgence movements in a number of states. Taking a broad view, it is clear that the differences between Islamic and Western legal cultures are not amenable to ready conciliation. It is also clear that the debates engendered by the issues highlighted in the refugee cases that follow continue to be live ones on both ends of the refugee track. The following study displays some of the shortcomings of a typically western mode of analyzing Islam according to its flaws, a habit which distorts the larger picture of Islam. This study should thus not be taken as a general illustration how Islamic governments function, but instead as an illustration of the most significant consequences of the policies of a number of Islamic governments in terms of Canadian refugee law. The discussion below groups cases where Islamic immigrants to Canada have been successful in obtaining refugee status around seven key issues: gender discrimination, differences between groups within Islam, Islamic justice, religious freedom, homosexuality, polygamy, and female genital mutilation

Granting Refuge from Islam: The Canadian Refugee Determination Process and the Casualties of Islamic Policies

A number of key divergences between Islamic and Canadian legal regimes are generating a growing stream of refugees into Canada. There is every sign that this trend will grow as political forces on both sides map out their ideological position in law with greater precision. Recent years have seen the introduction into the normative legal system of many Islamic states\u27 Islamization laws. In Canada, the refugee determination process has seen a correlating, but opposite, movement to recognize persecution in its more systemic guises. This paper will focus on those refugee claims from Islamic states which have been accepted on a ground that is related to either Islamic law or Islamic culture. The resulting set of cases illustrates a number of key distinctions between some Islamic regimes and Canadian law which are only litigated in the context of refugee claims. A picture thus emerges of the conflict between the refugee determination procedure in Canada, which embodies Western human rights discourse, and Islamic law, as expounded by Islamic resurgence movements in a number of states. Taking a broad view, it is clear that the differences between Islamic and Western legal cultures are not amenable to ready conciliation. It is also clear that the debates engendered by the issues highlighted in the refugee cases that follow continue to be live ones on both ends of the refugee track. The following study displays some of the shortcomings of a typically western mode of analyzing Islam according to its flaws, a habit which distorts the larger picture of Islam. This study should thus not be taken as a general illustration how Islamic governments function, but instead as an illustration of the most significant consequences of the policies of a number of Islamic governments in terms of Canadian refugee law. The discussion below groups cases where Islamic immigrants to Canada have been successful in obtaining refugee status around seven key issues: gender discrimination, differences between groups within Islam, Islamic justice, religious freedom, homosexuality, polygamy, and female genital mutilation