Instructing Judges: Ethical Experience and Educational Technique

Most professional responsibility textbooks do not discuss judicial conduct, and not surprisingly, many judges find themselves unprepared for the ethical dilemmas they face when they make the transition from partisan advocate to neutral arbiter. Gray and Zemans discuss the nine-topic curriculum for judicial educators to use to teach judicial ethics to judges at programs for new judges, continuing judicial education courses and judicial conferences

Instructing Judges: Ethical Experience and Educational Technique

Most professional responsibility textbooks do not discuss judicial conduct, and not surprisingly, many judges find themselves unprepared for the ethical dilemmas they face when they make the transition from partisan advocate to neutral arbiter. Gray and Zemans discuss the nine-topic curriculum for judicial educators to use to teach judicial ethics to judges at programs for new judges, continuing judicial education courses and judicial conferences

Policies and programs of support for senior artists

This research was undertaken at the request of the Canadian Artists? Heritage Resource Centre Steering Committee. The committee?s purpose is to address the financial needs of senior artists who have made an important contribution to the arts and cultural life of Canada but who have not received appropriate compensation. The report focusses on models that might be relevant to the Canadian experience, taking into account the current policy environment regarding the status of the artist and the general support available in Canada for aging members of the population. That said, the report should also be of interest in other countries where there is an interest in the development of programs or policies to address the financial needs of aging artists

Making the Justice System Balance: Beyond the Zuber Report

The civil and criminal justice systems rely on a highly individualized dispute resolution process in which each litigant must both prosecute and present his or her own case with limited intervention by the court system and no direct involvement by the judiciary. Neil Brooks has noted that the adversarial system reflects the political and economic ideology of classic English liberalism in three ways: by its emphasis upon self-interest and individual initiative; by its apparent distrust of the state; and, by the significance it attaches to the participation of the parties. Much of the current discussion of access to justice is concerned with the inequities that flow from the adversarial system along with a growing recognition that participation of parties poses particular and difficult problems. Parties with limited resources and with small or diffuse claims face the greatest difficulties, especially when they are litigating against large organizations, be they trade unions, corporations, or an arm of government

Recent Trends in the Organization of Legal Services

This paper outlines the significant developments in the provision of legal services to low-income persons that have taken place since the First Congress on Civil Procedures, held in Ghent, Belgium, in August of 1977. Although only six years have passed, there have been numerous developments in various parts of the world with respect to legal services, as the legal profession the judiciary and governments have grappled with civil and criminal procedures in their attempts to make them more accessible to the poor, the unemployed and other groups which have traditionally been excluded from the legal system. This paper carries forward the analysis of Professor Vittorio Denti which was published with the Ghent national reports on this topic in Perspectives on Legal Aid - A Comparative Survey, (1979), and relies heavily on the data generated by the 26 responses to a questionnaire designed by the writer which addressed the issues of changes and developments since 1977

The Dream Is Still Alive: Twenty-Five Years of Parkdale Community Legal Services and the Osgoode Hall Law School Intensive Program in Poverty Law

Over twenty-five years have passed since Parkdale Community Legal Services opened its doors in Toronto, changing the face of poverty law and clinical legal education in Ontario. This article details the formative years of the Parkdale clinic and its ongoing partnership with Osgoode Hall Law School. Despite initial opposition from the legal profession the clinic has survived, evolving into an innovative educational tool and delivery model of legal services. The clinic has become an essential component of the mixed Ontario legal aid system and a pattern for other clinics and clinical education programs in Canada. This article documents the considerations in locating the clinic in Parkdale; the opposition of the legal profession to the opening of the clinic; the removal of the prohibition on advertising by the Law Society of Upper Canada; and the early development of the poverty law clinical program at Parkdale

Cultural Diversity in Custody Disputes

The Commentaries give us a perspective of the expectations of medieval English society and its laws with respect to child rearing and the transmission of community values. Canada has inherited the common laws\u27 values as articulated by Blackstone and has attempted to integrate them into its very different society. Heterogeneous and pluralistic, Canada\u27s society contains numerous cultural groups, each of which maintain distinct and independent traditions as well as the various national and religious institutions required to support these traditions

The Community Legal Clinic Quality Assurance Program: An Innovative Experience in Quality Assurance in Legal Aid

The issue of quality in the provision of legal services to low income individuals has become an area of increasing concern and investigation in a number of different jurisdictions around the world. In Ontario, this issue has been addressed, at least in part, through the implementation of a formal quality assurance program providing for regular quality monitoring and control in the province\u27s community legal clinic system. Anecdotal evidence indicates that the program, which has completed in-depth site visits at over one-third of the province\u27s 70 community clinics, has had a beneficial effect on individual clinics and the clinic system as a whole in Ontario. There exists strong support for the quality assurance program among clinics and experience shows that clinics are implementing the program\u27s recommendations as well as taking proactive steps to improve quality prior to formal reviews. Despite this success, the program has been faced with many difficult issues since its inception. These issues include the appropriateness of client file reviews, the relationship of the quality assurance program to funding decisions, and the extent to which lawyers\u27 work should be supervised within a clinic. Legal Aid Ontario, which has recently taken over responsibility of Ontario\u27s legal aid plan from the Law Society of Upper Canada, has been given a specific mandate to implement a quality assurance program for the legal aid system as a whole and will be forced to address these same issues as it implements such a program