Judicial Bias: The Ongoing Challenge

This article calls for a renewed commitment to judicial education on the roles that gender, race, class and other biases can have on judicial decisions and impartiality. This article also calls for the appointment of a more representative and diverse judiciary. An explosion of activity occurred for about a decade between the late 1980s until the late 1990s to promote and implement social context education for judges to help judges understand the realities of people most unlike themselves, and to appoint judges to be more representative of the population of Canada. But this trend has diminished to the point that judicial gender and other forms of bias are now rarely talked about or included in judicial education curricula. Judicial appointments once again are tilted sharply in favor of white male partners in large law firms. This article argues that this disparity raises valid concerns about judicial impartiality, and new concerns about equality and discrimination are beginning to emerge. The first part of this article discusses the history of judicial education in Canada and the leadership role the Canadian judiciary took in creating and developing groundbreaking judicial education programs on social context issues both in Canada and internationally. The second section discusses case law since 2000, critiquing it for the paucity of social context analysis and preference for white male judicial appointments. The conclusion calls for a renewed effort to create socially relevant judicial education in current times and for a more representative judiciary

The Canadian Constitutional Approach to Freedom of Expression in Hate Propaganda and Pornography

Canadian courts are in the process of challenging existing thought about the constitutional protection of freedom of expression. Establishing equality requires reciprocity of respect and parity of regard for physical dignity and personal integrity. Canadian Supreme Court decisions on pornography are discussed

The Constitutional Law of Equality in Canada

On April 17, 1982, Canada repatriated its constitution from the Parliament at Westminster, sweeping away one of the final vestiges of its colonial past. At the same time, a Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms was constitutionally entrenched, giving the people express constitutional rights for the first time. The equality provisions, in particular, represented a new era in Canadian constitutional law. The intense debate leading up to the entrenchment of the Charter raised profound questions about the basic nature of the country, its values, and its ability and willingness to acknowledge equality for women and other disadvantaged groups. Since the entrenchment of the Charter in 1982, equality seekers have continued to play a significant role. They have used litigation and other strategies in order to clarify and develop approaches to constitutional theory and interpretation so that the Charter\u27s promise of equality will be realized. From the outset, they recognized that entrenched comprehensive equality rights would not bring about legal equality on their own; in order for people to become true equal bearers of rights under the Charter, the content of established rights and concepts would have to be challenged, and the legal norms of existing societal and institutional structures premised on inequality would have to be changed. It is the Author\u27s view that the Supreme Court of Canada, to quite a remarkable degree, has recognized the egalitarian challenge the Charter presents. In the past few years, the Court has launched a promising new era for equality jurisprudence quite unique in the world. The equality theory developed by the Court goes far beyond that which underlies the constitutional law of other western societies, including Europe and the United States. The Court has fashioned principles that give disadvantaged groups a better chance than ever before to alleviate the inequities they experience in laws, policies, and the practices of governments and government officials. This is because, instead of using abstract, formal rules to analyze equality and discrimination, the Canadian Supreme Court applies a purposive, contextual approach to constitutionally entrenched equality guarantees, which in turn defines the scope and purpose of these guarantees in terms of individuals and groups persistently disadvantaged by the legal system. To fully understand the Canadian approach to Charter equality guarantees, the history of equality and discrimination law must be examined. To a large extent, the Supreme Court\u27s interpretation of constitutional equality guarantees in the Charter has been informed and influenced by the lessons and themes which have emerged from the common law, human rights legislation, and earlier attempts at constitutional reform. In this Article, I discuss the development of legal equality in Canada, including pre-Charter recognition of the concepts of equality, inequality, and discrimination, as well as post-Charter interpretations of constitutional equality guarantees. I also discuss the effects of the Supreme Court\u27s constitutional-equality jurisprudence beyond constitutional law—effects which may ultimately hold the greatest promise for the achievement of social equality in Canada

A Comparison of Conversational Patterns Between Mothers and their Down Syndrome and Normal Infants

The purpose of this study was to compare conversational patterns between mothers and Down syndrome children with those between mothers and normally developing children. Patterns of maternal interaction with 2- and 3-year-old Down syndrome children and a developmentally matched sample of nonretarded children were analyzed with the turn-taking paradigm developed by Kaye & Charney (1980, 1981). The results of this comparison indicated that mothers of Down syndrome children were more dominant and their children less active communication partners than their normal counterparts. Post hoc analyses suggested that mothers of Down syndrome children may be more directive as a result of their efforts to induce their children to increase their activity level. Implications of these findings for children's language development were discussed.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/67289/2/10.1177_105381518601000208.pd

Antifungal activity of redox-active benzaldehydes that target cellular antioxidation

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Disruption of cellular antioxidation systems should be an effective method for control of fungal pathogens. Such disruption can be achieved with redox-active compounds. Natural phenolic compounds can serve as potent redox cyclers that inhibit microbial growth through destabilization of cellular redox homeostasis and/or antioxidation systems. The aim of this study was to identify benzaldehydes that disrupt the fungal antioxidation system. These compounds could then function as chemosensitizing agents in concert with conventional drugs or fungicides to improve antifungal efficacy.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Benzaldehydes were tested as natural antifungal agents against strains of <it>Aspergillus fumigatus</it>, <it>A. flavus</it>, <it>A. terreus </it>and <it>Penicillium expansum</it>, fungi that are causative agents of human invasive aspergillosis and/or are mycotoxigenic. The yeast <it>Saccharomyces cerevisiae </it>was also used as a model system for identifying gene targets of benzaldehydes. The efficacy of screened compounds as effective chemosensitizers or as antifungal agents in formulations was tested with methods outlined by the Clinical Laboratory Standards Institute (CLSI).</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Several benzaldehydes are identified having potent antifungal activity. Structure-activity analysis reveals that antifungal activity increases by the presence of an <it>ortho</it>-hydroxyl group in the aromatic ring. Use of deletion mutants in the oxidative stress-response pathway of <it>S. cerevisiae </it>(<it>sod1</it>Δ, <it>sod2</it>Δ, <it>glr1</it>Δ) and two mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) mutants of <it>A. fumigatus </it>(<it>sakA</it>Δ, <it>mpkC</it>Δ), indicates antifungal activity of the benzaldehydes is through disruption of cellular antioxidation. Certain benzaldehydes, in combination with phenylpyrroles, overcome tolerance of <it>A. fumigatus </it>MAPK mutants to this agent and/or increase sensitivity of fungal pathogens to mitochondrial respiration inhibitory agents. Synergistic chemosensitization greatly lowers minimum inhibitory (MIC) or fungicidal (MFC) concentrations. Effective inhibition of fungal growth can also be achieved using combinations of these benzaldehydes.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>Natural benzaldehydes targeting cellular antioxidation components of fungi, such as superoxide dismutases, glutathione reductase, <it>etc</it>., effectively inhibit fungal growth. They possess antifungal or chemosensitizing capacity to enhance efficacy of conventional antifungal agents. Chemosensitization can reduce costs, abate resistance, and alleviate negative side effects associated with current antifungal treatments.</p

Lithofacies Control in Detrital Zircon Provenance Studies: Insights from the Cretaceous Methow Basin, Southern Canadian Cordillera

High-frequency sampling for detrital zircon analysis can provide a detailed record of fine-scale basin evolution by revealing the temporal and spatial variability of detrital zircon ages within clastic sedimentary successions. This investigation employed detailed sampling of two sedimentary successions in the Methow/Methow-Tyaughton basin of the southern Canadian Cordillera to characterize the heterogeneity of detrital zircon signatures within single lithofacies and assess the applicability of detrital zircon analysis in distinguishing fine-scale provenance changes not apparent in lithologic analysis of the strata. The Methow/Methow-Tyaughton basin contains two distinct stratigraphic sequences of middle Albian to Santonian clastic sedimentary rocks: submarine-fan deposits of the Harts Pass Formation/Jackass Mountain Group and fluvial deposits of the Winthrop Formation. Although both stratigraphic sequences displayed consistent ranges in detrital zircon ages on a broad scale, detailed sampling within each succession revealed heterogeneity in the detrital zircon age distributions that was systematic and predictable in the turbidite succession but unpredictable in the fluvial succession. These results suggest that a high-density sampling approach permits interpretation of fine-scale changes within a lithologically uniform turbiditic sedimentary succession, but heterogeneity within fluvial systems may be too large and unpredictable to permit accurate fine-scale characterization of the evolution of source regions. The robust composite detrital zircon age signature developed for these two successions permits comparison of the Methow/Methow-Tyaughton basin age signature with known plutonic source-rock ages from major plutonic belts throughout the Cretaceous North American margin. The Methow/Methow-Tyaughton basin detrital zircon age signature matches best with source regions in the southern Canadian Cordillera, requiring that the basin developed in close proximity to the southern Canadian Cordillera and providing evidence against large-scale dextral translation of the Methow terrane