The Charter and Anglophone Legal Theory, part I

Abstract

The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms has generated not only new terrain over which discursive positions are mobilized, but it has catalysed theoretical reflection about law, society, state, and the self. Examining the implications of the Charter for Anglophone legal theory, the author conducts both a qualitative and quantitative survey of jurisprudential work on the Charter and concludes that the Charter\u27s impact on legal theory has been significant. The Charter has prompted expansion of the range of interdisciplinary influences, contextualized theoretical reflection, and made jurisprudence more engaged with and relevant to Canadian social life. The Charter also has facilitated a fragmentation or jurisprudential pluralism , reflective of underlying shifts in Canadian political discourse. The Charter\u27s most significant impact, however, will have been its impetus to transform theoretical engagement with the law in directions far removed from the stale confines of analytical positivism