Police enforce the law, but they must also obey it. Statutes circumscribe how law enforcement officers conduct their work. At the same time, Canadian courts have handed police many powers to stop, search, and otherwise investigate people in the pursuit of public safety and crime prevention. Ancillary Police Powers in Canada explains what these common-law police powers are; how they came to be; and, crucially, what the potential dangers are in their expanding scope. What is the difference between police duty and lawful authority? Should the Supreme Court rescind powers when the police tactics they enable become controversial? This nuanced book surveys the evolution, application, and future of judge-made police powers. The authors bring historical perspective, critical legal theory, and empirical analysis to an issue that is fundamental to constitutional protection from state interference with individual liberty.

The television spectacles of Oka and the Rodney King affair served to focus public disaffection with the police, a disaffection that has been growing for several years. In Canada, confidence in the police is at an all-time low. At the same time crime rates continue to rise. Canada now has the dubious distinction of having the second highest crime rate in the Western world. How did this state of affairs come about? What do we want from our police? How do we achieve policing that is consistent with the Charter of Rights and Freedoms? The essays in this volume set out to explore these questions. In their introduction, the editors point out that constitutional order is tied to the exercise of power by law enforcement agencies, and that if relations between the police and civil society continue to erode, the exercise of force will rise - a dangerous prospect for democratic societies.

This book looks at what constitutes an unreasonable search or seizure under section 8 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Second, it examines what the appropriate legal and evidentiary consequences are when an unreasonable search or seizure occurs.

The establishment of the International Criminal Court was a singular, even revolutionary, achievement. Uniquely within the realm of international criminal justice, the ICC Prosecutor can initiate investigations independently of any state’s wishes. Why would sovereign states agree to such sweeping powers? The Independence of the Prosecutor draws on interviews with key participants to answer that question. Case studies of Canada and the United Kingdom, which supported prosecutorial independence, and the United States and Japan, which opposed it, demonstrate that state positions depended on the values and principles of those who wielded the most power in national capitals at the time. Appendices provide a record of the arguments made by state delegations in the negotiations that produced the institutional design of the Court. This astute investigation demonstrates that now, over twenty years after its establishment, the ICC’s innovative arrangement of having an independent prosecutor continues to move law and international criminal jurisprudence forward and directly combats impunity for mass atrocities.

Any democratic legal system recognizes that the pursuit of the truth about a crime must have impassable limits, and that in contemporary legal systems the public authorities’ principle of freedom to obtain evidence in criminal proceedings is not absolute. Drawing these boundaries is a permanent process, which produces universal legal problems of fundamental practical importance. This book addresses the fundamental importance of the protection of the individual from potential actions of state bodies that violate legally marked boundaries. Contributors synthesize knowledge about the admissibility of evidence in criminal procedure, evidence that must not be used or should not be used under certain circumstances, and the conditions for the admissibility of unlawfully obtained evidence. This comparative analysis of national evidentiary procedures is an essential showcase of certain legislative patterns and similarities between individual legal systems.

In Minority Report, Precrime imprisons people for crimes they would have committed had they not been prevented. With Philip K. Dick as inspiration, the authors posit that developments in Canadian law indicate a trend toward imposing punishments at earlier stages of the prosecutorial process. As risk management logics shift to precautionary ones, the law has responded by developing criminal regulation techniques in light of the "war on terror": the need to ensure security, the proliferation of digital data, and the design of drones, social networking, and cloud storage to gather data. The book is a provocative read for scholars and students in criminal law, policing, and surveillance.

In 1973, three young lawyers established Heenan Blaikie. It would become one of Canada’s highest-profile law firms, counting former prime ministers, premiers, and Supreme Court justices in its ranks. It was like a family, according to many who worked there. But it was a dysfunctional family. In 2014, the firm’s dramatic collapse became front-page news. Based on extensive interviews with firm lawyers and legal industry insiders, Heenan Blaikie is the story of a respected law firm that ultimately buckled under weak governance and management. Heenan Blaikie seemed to punch above its weight: bilingual, humane, national with international aspirations. But beneath its unique culture as a kinder, gentler law firm lay workplace bullying, challenges for women and visible minority lawyers, and sexual harassment. Adam Dodek, an unbiased outsider, situates the firm’s evolution within the context of a changing legal profession and society, producing an account that is gripping from beginning to end.