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AI-based Assistive Technologies & People with Disabilities: Privacy at Risk
No full textThis thesis follows three research questions. First, it explores the potential privacy risks that people with disabilities (PWDs) face in the face of incorporation of artificial intelligence (AI) in assistive technologies (ATs). It then investigates reasons that exacerbate PWDs’ vulnerability to such potential privacy risks. Since legal literature in the context of AI-based ATs is limited, this thesis adopts a combination of multidisciplinary and traditional legal doctrinal research by studying legal literature and empirical research in other disciplines. Lastly, the thesis reviews the current Canadian data protection legal framework to examine if there is any provision specifically addressing PWDs or vulnerable data subjects and highlight legislative gaps impacting PWDs
Intellectual Property and Gender Inequality: Towards Sustainable Development - or Sustaining the Status Quo?
No full textThis chapter is concerned with the connections between the global intellectual property (IP) system and gender inequality. Goal 5 of the United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) aims to ‘achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls’. While the connections between IP and gender are not widely acknowledged, this chapter identifies the IP system’s complicity in sustaining and compounding gender inequality and considers the possibility that changes to the IP system could bring about a more equal society. Section 1 begins by acknowledging some scepticism around the transformative promise of the SDGs and the potential for IP law to meaningfully advance them. Section 2 explores the relationship between gender inequality and patent law, describing and critically reflecting on the significance of the patent gender-gap. Section 3 then turns to consider copyright law and the growing evidence of its gendered implications. In both respects, the discussion critiques the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) for its complacent certainty that an expansive international IP system will support innovation and creativity, which will in turn advance sustainable development and gender equality. The chapter concludes by bringing a relational feminist argument to bear in order to critique the neoliberal assumptions that pervade the SDGs and WIPO’s response to them
Constitutional Cases 2024 (Pt 1) | A Review of the Supreme Court’s 2023 Constitutional Jurisprudence
No full text00:15:16 - A Review of the Supreme Court’s 2023 Constitutional Jurisprudence
Speaker: Kate Glover Berger (Osgoode Hall Law School)
The 27th iteration of the Constitutional Cases conference was held on Friday, April 12, 2024. Osgoode Hall Law School’s Annual Constitutional Cases Conference, recognized as the leading constitutional law conference in Canada, brings together many highly respected constitutional scholars, lawyers, students, and experts for an insightful and practical analysis of the Supreme Court’s significant constitutional judgments of the past year
Taking ‘Third World’ Lives Seriously: Decolonising Global Health Governance to Promote Health Capabilities in the Global South
Get PDFBehind glib claims of universalism in global health, evidenced by the push for universal health coverage in the Sustainable Development Goals 2030 (SDGs), lies an uncomfortable truth about the unequal, uneven and broken system of the existing framework for global health governance. A situation made more evident by the behaviour of powerful states of the Global North at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic through the hoarding of vaccines, refusal to accommodate waivers to the Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) regime to allow cheaper versions of the Covid-19 vaccines to be manufactured for the Global South and the preference for securitisation over solidarity in the response to the pandemic. The rhetoric of “vaccine apartheid” was deployed by WHO Director General to describe this lack of solidarity by Global North States (particularly in the context of vaccines procurement). However, this paper argues contrarily that the colonial foundations of the current framework for global health governance, which does not take Third World lives as seriously as those of citizens of the West, has functioned exactly as designed. This has led to the “othering” of Third World peoples, generating pathologies of suffering and vulnerabilities in their encounter with global health governance frameworks. Informed by critical Third World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL) this paper makes the case for decolonising existing frameworks for global health governance to promote health capabilities in the Global South
Sustainable Development Goals and Persons with Disabilities in Education and Employment
Get PDFStates under international law have obligations towards all, including persons with disabilities who are recognized as right holders. Moreover, states, especially in the areas of education and employment, are duty-bound to ensure quality education and productive employment for the realization of their human rights. Indeed, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) impose additional obligations on states in achieving full productive employment and quality education for all, including those with disabilities. Therefore, this paper assesses the SDGs related to education and employment for persons with disabilities by considering whether the SDGs fully integrate the human rights standards as well as the disability human rights model. Applying the Adaptability, Acceptability, Availability, and Accessibility (4As) and the disability human rights frameworks, this paper contends that while the SDGs add weight to human rights and require states in education and employment to move towards achieving full employment and inclusive quality education for persons with disabilities, it fails to fully integrate the human rights model of disability and human rights standards
Reconciliation at the Border of Public and Private Law: Rethinking Contract Principles in the Context of Impact and Benefit Agreements
Get PDFOver the past decade, corporate developers have increasingly sought to conclude Impact and Benefit Agreements (“IBAs”) with Indigenous groups when undertaking resource projects on traditional lands. Despite this development, significant concerns have been raised about the nature and scope of Indigenous consent, as well as the substantive deficiencies within IBAs. However, less has been written about how legal principles derived from contract law would apply to IBAs in the event of a dispute before an arbitrator or a judge. This article therefore considers the ways in which specific contractual principles can be reconceptualized for IBA disputes. First, it examines the relationship between IBAs, self-determination, and contract law itself. Second, it explores how such agreements depart from traditional commercial contracting: IBAs exist in the shadow of constitutional dynamics and legal pluralism, while balancing a range of sociocultural purposes that cannot be reduced to commercial norms. Third, the article analyzes how principles relating to contractual interpretation and good faith can be applied to give effect to the careful equilibrium at the heart of an IBA. Ultimately, the article concludes that IBAs are, in effect, sui generis contracts that differ in fundamental ways from ordinary forms of contracting. Consequently, adjudicators must adopt a tailored approach to contract law principles that incorporates Indigenous perspectives and that remains sensitive to the dynamics of IBAs
Environmental Law for a Just Transition
Get PDFThe environmental justice movement, which turns our attention to fairness in the distribution of environmental benefits and burdens and in the processes, biases and structures that determine those distributions, is challenging the foundations of environmental law. • ‘Extractivism’ – a mode of accumulation that necessitates both a high pace and a large scale of taking of natural resources such as fossil fuels – is deeply embedded in environmental law, producing uneven costs/benefits and intense, concentrated impacts on people and ecosystems. Even as we move towards a greener economy, environmental laws and regulations governing such areas as facility siting, pollution permitting, and environmental/impact assessment continue to apply extractivist logics. • As Indigenous peoples assert inherent jurisdiction over lands and waters, debates continue over the legal and practical standards of ‘consent’ required in relation to projects on or crossing Indigenous lands and waters. Moreover, regimes for achieving Indigenous ‘prosperity’ through natural resource development are moving from impact-benefit agreements, to equity stakes deals and joint ventures, and towards inherent jurisdiction. • Environmental law for a just transition must prioritize equity and Indigenous jurisdiction, and work to re-make the underlying legal and structural relations of production and consumption by moving away from ‘extractivism.
GenAI Tools for Legal Research
Get PDFThere are AI Research discovery tools that have a range of features support literature mapping, systematic literature reviews, or analyzing scholarly documents in detailed ways. Typically these research tools with search and retrieval features are connecting to academic databases, and depending on the tool, can extract key information, generate literature reviews, maps and summaries, or provide features common with citation tools
The Fiscal Contract and Delivering the Canada Disability Benefit through the Income Tax System
Get PDFThis article argues that the Canada Disability Benefit should be delivered through the income tax system and designed based on the Canada Child Benefit. The income tax system has evolved for over one hundred years to reflect the give-and-take, or fiscal contract, reached by Canadians to raise revenues to fund social spending programs and deliver benefits to low-income Canadians in accordance with some fundamental principles and values. Being part of the income tax system can enhance the fiscal sustainability of and public support for the new program. Because the Canada Disability Benefit is available only to working-age individuals and is income-tested, its technical design is inherently intertwined with the income tax system. Placing it in the tax system helps technical design and subsequent modifications. Finally, the Canada Revenue Agency is better suited to administering the program in a fair and efficient manner