Games of Jurisdiction: How Local Governance Realities Challenge the “Creatures of the Province” Doctrine

The question of local democracy has been revived politically and legally in Ontario in the wake of the provincial government’s sudden interference in the 2018 Toronto municipal election. This article contributes to the discussions on the legal status of local governments in a way that sheds light on the Ontario government’s relation with the City of Toronto, but that is not Toronto-specific or even specific to municipal corporations, which are only one of the many forms of actually existing local government bodies. This is done in three parts. The first is an argument in favour of bracketing black-letter constitutional law in order to develop a fine-grained understanding of the multiple games of jurisdiction that have been played and continue to be played throughout Canada, often with unpredictable results. Second, a look at the history of local government in Ontario, with particular attention to a neglected provincial commission on “municipal institutions,” leads to a concluding section offering some reflections on how black-letter Canadian law, especially in Ontario, has shaped what political scientists call “practices of citizenship,” not always in a democratic direction

Pragmatist and Non-pragmatist Knowledge Practices in American Law

For anyone interested in documenting and analyzing knowledge practices, legal arenas prove to be fruitful sites, for at least two reasons. 1) First, questions of evidence and of authority are often explicitly contested, with the contestations often forming part of a court’s public record and/or going on in the public setting of the courtroom. Thus, unlike science studies scholars, who must gain access to social interactions that are not mentioned in scientific papers and that do not take place in public view, legal studies scholars have vast amounts of material – affidavits, trial transcripts, etc– that can readily be analyzed, and we have automatic access to at least some of the struggles about what counts as evidence and who counts as an authority waged in legal settings. Secondly, legal arenas, particularly in common-law jurisdictions, are characterized by the simultaneous coexistence of radically heterogeneous and uncoordinated epistemologies. That civil lawsuits are adjudicated using a different standard of proof than criminal cases is known to most people, and certainly to every law student. But it is less well known that this is only one of a large number of epistemological heterogeneities that can be documented even staying in a single courtroom or confining oneself to one type of case. Those of us who are beginning to borrow and adapt some tools from Science and Technology Studies for use in analyzing legal processes may be able to return the favour by highlighting the jurisdictional and other devices that allow ‘law’ to retain its legitimacy despite the fact that conflicting modes of reasoning and very different standards of proof coexist happily, in a state that a scientific mind would describe as epistemological anarchy. This is not to say that other fields are necessarily unified or somehow coordinated; but it is my suspicion that legal arenas exhibit a particularly cavalier stance toward existing epistemological heterogeneity

Experience and Truthtelling

This is a Foucault-inspired, postmodern study of ethical subjectivity. Technologies of life, personal truths and relations between truth telling and intoxication are highlighted in drug autobiographies and in materials from a study of Alcoholics Anonymous. Here other notions of the self are at play than the concept of the unified, autonomous, authentic self. These materials also offer an understanding of addiction as a dysfunction or disorganisation of temporality in everyday life

Pragmatist and Non-pragmatist Knowledge Practices in American Law

For anyone interested in documenting and analyzing knowledge practices, legal arenas prove to be fruitful sites, for at least two reasons. 1) First, questions of evidence and of authority are often explicitly contested, with the contestations often forming part of a court’s public record and/or going on in the public setting of the courtroom. Thus, unlike science studies scholars, who must gain access to social interactions that are not mentioned in scientific papers and that do not take place in public view, legal studies scholars have vast amounts of material – affidavits, trial transcripts, etc– that can readily be analyzed, and we have automatic access to at least some of the struggles about what counts as evidence and who counts as an authority waged in legal settings. Secondly, legal arenas, particularly in common-law jurisdictions, are characterized by the simultaneous coexistence of radically heterogeneous and uncoordinated epistemologies. That civil lawsuits are adjudicated using a different standard of proof than criminal cases is known to most people, and certainly to every law student. But it is less well known that this is only one of a large number of epistemological heterogeneities that can be documented even staying in a single courtroom or confining oneself to one type of case. Those of us who are beginning to borrow and adapt some tools from Science and Technology Studies for use in analyzing legal processes may be able to return the favour by highlighting the jurisdictional and other devices that allow ‘law’ to retain its legitimacy despite the fact that conflicting modes of reasoning and very different standards of proof coexist happily, in a state that a scientific mind would describe as epistemological anarchy. This is not to say that other fields are necessarily unified or somehow coordinated; but it is my suspicion that legal arenas exhibit a particularly cavalier stance toward existing epistemological heterogeneity

Some Remarks on the Rise and Fall of Discourse Analysis

The debate that might have developed in Canadian historiography, about how new tools from social semiotics and cultural studies could be deployed both by socialist historians and by those asking newer, less class-based questions, never did happen. Instead, what appeared in print was invective. The impression was created that to be theoretical was to be anti-labour history and anti-Marxist, and young progressive historians tended to conclude that, if they wanted to ask the “old” questions about class power, women’s oppression, and imperialism or racism, there was no need to read any theory. The potential for a number of overlapping debates on key methodological issues was thus wasted. The new social history gave us a number of new tools to do research, but the sophistication in research methods was generally employed to explore some rather simple (if important) research questions. The basic question driving socialist feminist inquiries as well as Marxist ones was: whose interests are served? The author explains her conclusion that it may be more productive to put inquiries into interests temporarily on hold, and experiment with questions that focus on effects.Le débat qui pourrait s’être développé dans l’historiographie canadienne, quant à la façon dont les nouveaux outils de la sémiotique sociale et des études culturelles pourraient servir aux historiens socialistes et à ceux qui posent des questions plus nouvelles, moins fondées sur les classes, n’a jamais eu lieu. Plutôt, ce qui a été écrit était injurieux. On a créé l’impression que le fait d’être théorique revenait à s’opposer à l’histoire de la vie ouvrière et au marxisme, et les jeunes historiens progressistes ont eu tendance à conclure que s’ils voulaient poser les « vieilles » questions sur le pouvoir des classes, l’oppression des femmes et l’impérialisme ou le racisme, rien ne servait de lire la théorie. L’on a donc gâché la chance de tenir un certain nombre de débats chevauchants sur des questions méthodologiques clés. La nouvelle histoire sociale nous a donné un certain nombre d’outils nouveaux pour faire de la recherche, mais la sophistication des méthodes de recherche a généralement servi à explorer des questions de recherche plutôt simples (bien qu’importantes). La question de base guidant les études féministes socialistes tout comme les études marxistes était : quels intérêts sert-on? L’auteure explique sa conclusion qu’il est peut-être plus productif de mettre les études sur les intérêts en veilleuse et de faire l’essai de questions axées sur les effets

Freedom of the City: Canadian Cities and the Quest for Governmental Status

Until recently, Canadian cities were limited to the legal powers explicitly prescribed by provinces (the U.S.-based Dillon\u27s Rule). Despite much talk about a new deal for cities, recent changes to municipal legislation do little to empower municipalities to define and govern local problems, although courts appear somewhat willing to expand the scope of cities\u27 authority. Through two case studies involving the City of Toronto, we demonstrate that even after the overhaul of provincial municipal acts, cities still lack the necessary legal tools and the legal flexibility to respond to pressing urban needs

Where The Sidewalk Ends: The Governance Of Waterfront Toronto\u27s Sidewalk Labs Deal

In May 2020 Sidewalk Labs, the Google-affiliated ‘urban innovation’ company, announced that it was abandoning its ambition to build a ‘smart city’ on Toronto’s waterfront and thus ending its three-year relationship with Waterfront Toronto. This is thus a good time to look back and examine the whole process, with a view to drawing lessons both for the future of Canadian smart city projects and the future of public sector agencies with appointed boards. This article leaves to one side the gadgets and sensors that drew much attention to the proposed project, and instead focuses on the governance aspects, especially the role of the public ‘partner’ in the contemplated public-private partnership. We find that the multi-government agency, Waterfront Toronto, had transparency and accountability deficiencies, and failed to consistently defend the public interest from the beginning (the Request for Proposals issued in May of 2017). Because the public partner in the proposed ‘deal’ was not, as is usually the case in smart city projects, a municipal corporation, our research allows us to address an important question in administrative law, namely: what powers should administrative bodies outside of government have in crafting smart city policies