Law Times

PAGE 6 COMMENT Law Times Group Publisher ....... Karen Lorimer Editorial Director ....... Gail J. Cohen Editor .................. Glenn Kauth Staff Writer ............. Robert Todd Staff Writer ....... Michael McKiernan Copy Editor ......... Heather Gardiner CaseLaw Editor ...... Jennifer Wright Art Director .......... Alicia Adamson Account Co-ordinator .... Catherine Giles Electronic Production Specialist ............. Derek Welford Advertising Sales .... Kimberlee Pascoe Sales Co-ordinator ......... Sandy Shutt ©2011 Thomson Reuters Canada Ltd. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reprinted or stored in a retrieval system without written permission. The opinions expressed in articles are not necessarily those of the publisher. Information presented is compiled from sources believed to be accurate, however, the publisher assumes no responsibility for errors or omissions. Law Times disclaims any warranty as to the accuracy, completeness or currency of the contents of this publication and disclaims all liability in respect of the results of any action taken or not taken in reliance upon information in this publication. January 17, 2011 • Law Times Law Times Thomson Reuters Canada Ltd. 240 Edward Street, Aurora, ON • L4G 3S9 Tel: 905-841-6481 • Fax: 905-727-0017 www.lawtimesnews.com Publications Mail Agreement Number 40762529 • ISSN 0847-5083 Law Times is published 40 times a year by Thomson Reuters Canada Ltd., 240 Edward St., Aurora, Ont. L4G 3S9 • 905-841-6481. clb.lteditor@thomsonreuters.com CIRCULATIONS & SUBSCRIPTIONS $159.00 + HST per year in Canada (HST Reg. #R121351134) and US$259.00 for foreign address- es. Single copies are $4.00 Circulation inquiries, post- al returns and address changes should include a copy of the mailing label(s) and should be sent to Law Times 240 Edward St., Aurora, Ont. L4G 3S9. Return postage guaranteed. Contact Jacquie Clancy at: jacquie.clancy@ thomsonreuters.com or Tel: 905-713-4392 • Toll free: 1-888-743-3551 or Fax: 905-841-4357. ADVERTISING Advertising inquiries and materials should be directed to Sales, Law Times, 240 Edward St., Aurora, Ont. L4G 3S9 or call Karen Lorimer at 905-713-4339 karen.lorimer@thomsonreuters.com, Kimberlee Pascoe at 905-713-4342 kimberlee.pascoe@thomson- reuters.com, or Sandy Shutt at 905-713-4337 sandra. shutt@thomsonreuters.com Law Times is printed on newsprint containing 25-30 per cent post-consumer recycled materials. Please recycle this newspaper. Editorial Obiter G20 legal fallout: summits cost too much lake designed to showcase northern Ontario's beauty to visiting journalists in Toronto who couldn't make the trip to Huntsville, Ont. In the meantime, we had been T learning about massive security costs estimated at $1 billion. But that's not the end of it. As Michael McKiernan tells us on page 1 this week, the finan- cial and legal reverberations continue, which some lawyers — quite legiti- mately, of course — will be cashing in on. A host of legal proceedings means the public continues to pay for the summits, including the cost of crimi- nal actions against detainees whose charges in many cases have now been dropped; the various inquiries and he outrage over the G8 and G20 summits peaked last year with news of the so-called fake reviews stemming from the G20; and the multiple lawsuits through both in- dividual and class actions against gov- ernment bodies such as Toronto police and the federal attorney general. We don't yet know who will win those cases, but the amounts plaintiffs are seeking as well as the need to defend them mean the public is potentially fac- ing large legal bills. At the same time, governments have had to direct their own internal budgets and resources into addressing the G20 legal fallout. A key question, then, is whether it's worth it to have these summits in the first place given the massive upfront costs as well as the lingering legal fall- out. On the face of it, the answer is no. In the Toronto case, world leaders ac- complished little on the economic file in June, while building the fake lake and setting up a massive security infra- structure in the face of looming protests during the summit made the event ap- pear more like a contrived and unneces- sary show. In the meantime, it inconve- nienced people for no apparent reason. The flipside is that such international meetings have shown their usefulness in the past. As the recent recession deep- ened, for example, governments gath- ered to pledge a co-ordinated global response through economic stimulus. Many economists, of course, have cred- ited those investments with preventing an even worse disaster that likely would have taken the world into a true depres- sion. In Canada, while we certainly suffered, we emerged relatively quickly from a steep economic decline. Similar global meetings since then have failed to continue that success, most notably through a lack of agree- ment on concrete measures to address government deficits and deal with new barriers to international trade. But over- all, the response to the recession showed that such events can have value. Nev- ertheless, it's inappropriate to spend the kind of public money Canadians continue to shell out for the G20. As a result, governments need to find a way to have these meetings less expensively, perhaps at secure international facilities that don't require such extensive tempo- rary security preparations. The G20, moreover, is just another example of the failure to do anything about the ballooning costs of running government. In Canada, at least, it's clear that the public won't tolerate it happening again. — Glenn Kauth W hile our most recent women's court came about in 2004, it's not the first such body in Canada. The lawyers and legal scholars who comprise the new Wom- en's Court of Canada regret what they consider the limita- tions of the Supreme Court of Canada's judgments on equality issues and s. 15 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. So at womenscourt.ca, they've begun issuing their own judgments. The women's court, they de- clare, operates as a virtual court rendering alternative decisions on the leading cases "as a means of articulating fresh conceptions of substantive equality." Theirs is not, however, the first women's court Canada has seen. Recently, I've been reading Amanda Glasbeek's Feminized Justice: The Toronto Women's Court, 1913-34. The book is a history of the women's court that existed in Toronto during that time period. This was no virtual court. It had very real authority matched by similar women's courts in Ed- monton, Vancouver, and other major cities in Canada and the Canada's long history of women's courts That's United States. Female judges led the courts, which wielded significant power over many women and some men and even had the authority to ban male spectators. As with the new virtual women's court, an explicitly feminist critique inspired those of the early 20th century. Advo- cates of women's courts deplored the male-dominated justice sys- tem in which young women who had been corrupted and debauched by men appeared before leering male spectators to be swiftly and unsympathetically tried and sentenced on terms that sent them toward, rather than away from, further criminal and immoral behaviour. Women's court advocates wanted a court, preferably with a woman magistrate, that focused on reform and deterrence rather than punishment and criminal- ization for women corrupted by men. They promised it would provide girls in trouble with mor- al authority, social casework, and friendly counsel, none of which were available from the cold legal precedents and unsympathetic History By Christopher Moore male authority of the regular sys- tem. Glasbeek shows this was a powerful and persuasive critique. Toronto got a women's court on those lines in 1913. By 1922, a woman, Margaret Norris Patter- son, led it, as was the case with similar courts elsewhere. The women's court's legitima- cy came from its promise of social justice rather than judgment. The plan was to support and reform women and save them from male vice and iniquity. Patterson, like most women's court judges, was proud not to be a lawyer. Glasbeek shows, however, that the women's court experi- ment didn't go well. Women's court feminism, she points out, was explicitly maternal. The girls who came before the court were innocent lambs victimized by men. It would save them www.lawtimesnews.com from vice, criminalization, and oppression by deferen- tially accepting the motherly moral authority of the white, middle-class women whose ideology underpinned it. The court's press clippings tended to emphasize the story of the young girl just in from the country whom it saved from drink, prostitution, and other evils of the big city. But Glasbeek's copious statis- tics show they were hardly typical. Many of the court's defendants, in fact, came from a permanent underclass for whom drink, petty theft, and illicit or disap- proved sexuality were a way of life. Many came before the court time and again unreformed and undeterred. They refused labels as lambs or girls or to allow a court they found at least as hostile and threatening as traditional male justice to mother them. Moral authority, of course, wasn't the women's court's only power, and Patterson rendered harsh judgment on women who refused to be innocent victims of men or grateful re- cipients of maternal correction. In some cases, she added a year to their reformatory sentences if they seemed less than appre- ciative of her efforts. The inability to fulfil its social- reform promises undermined the women's court's legitimacy before a skeptical legal establish- ment. Before the Second World War, the women's court's mo- ment had passed. The Toronto one came to an end in 1934. The new virtual Women's Court of Canada of the 21st century proudly and with good reason cites a long heritage of women asserting equality prin- ciples before hostile courts on issues like the Persons Case. It makes no mention, however, of the actual women's courts of the early 20th century. Glasbeek's book suggests rea- sons why. In the end, the origi- nal women's court isn't a persua- sive precedent for a new kind of equality jurisprudence. LT Christopher Moore's newest book is The British Columbia Court of Appeal: The First Hundred Years. His web site is www.christopher moore.ca.

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• Duelling Lawyers
• Feminized Justice
• Focus On Real Estate Law