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DTSTAMP:20251109T005352Z
DTSTART:20251121T173000Z
DTEND:20251121T183000Z
SUMMARY:Research Hour: Made by the Indian Act – Lavell and the Hidden Story of Equality Law and Judicial Review
DESCRIPTION:Genevieve Renard Painter\, associate professor at the Simone de Beauvoir Institute\, Concordia University\, will be workshopping her paper\, Made by the Indian Act – Lavell and the Hidden Story of Equality Law and Judicial Review.\nComments will be provided by Annie Bunting\, Law & Society professor\, Department of Social Science\, and York Research Chair in International Gender Justice & Peacebuilding\, York University.\nAbout the Lecture\nThis article explores the enmeshment of the Indian Act in Canada’s legal order. The article shows that sex discrimination in the Indian Act was productive for the Canadian state. It helped jurists define and understand equality and non-discrimination and nourished debate about parliamentary supremacy and judicial review\, thus preparing the ground for an entrenched charter. It demonstrated that public opinion pressure could be a force in the court room\, not just in parliament and at the ballot box. In part because the dispute about the Indian Act mobilized the Canadian women’s movement\, the government was able to transform a challenge against a discriminatory federal law into a dispute between different Indigenous constituencies. This justified government inaction on the underlying discrimination and deflected blame from the government onto Indigenous leaders. Thus did sex discrimination in a Canadian law allow the government to undermine the movement for Indigenous sovereignty.\nIndigenous peoples gained little from the debate\, litigation\, and activism about sex discrimination in the Indian Act in the early 1970s. Instead\, their demands for redress created a space for settler society to thrash out legal and political questions about equality and the proper relation between courts\, the legislature\, and the public. The indisputable merits of Lavell’s claim for equality and non-discrimination have been celebrated by government and canonized in legal treatises\, but Canadian law has never fully acknowledged that the road to Canada’s constitution has been paved by Indigenous people demanding\, and being denied\, justice.\nThis session is for faculty and graduate students only.\n\nContact Information: law.research@dal.ca
LOCATION:Weldon Law Building\, Faculty Lounge\, Room W312
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