Canadian Journal of Family Law

Why Canada's Prohibition of Polygamy Is Constitutionally Valid and Sound Social Policy

This paper sets the current debate about Canada's criminal law prohibiting polygamy in an historical, social and legal context, and argues that this law is constitutionally valid and sound social policy. Unlike the recognition of same-sex marriage, which promoted equality and saved government resources, the recognition of polygamy would promote inequality and impose costs on Canadian society. The social reality of polygamy is often exploitative of women and harmful to children, and its practi...

Tragic Choices and the Division of Sorrow: Speaking About Race, Culture and Community Traumatisation in the Lives of Children

[...] I identify judicial treatment of racial and Aboriginal heritage that illustrates a problematic and insufficient way of addressing the actual needs of Aboriginal children and communities. The third issue is race, or racialization, and the coping strategies a child who is visibly non-white in a racist society may need to develop for his or her own emotional well-being.9 In the Supreme Court of Canada decision of Van de Perre v. Edwards, a decision discussing the impact of race in custody...

A Common Law of the Family? Reflections On Rick V. Brandsema

Important lines of inquiry include the judgment's likely effect on judicial review of separation agreements and the extent to which it signals a retrenchment from the Supreme Court's comfort with private ordering in the family setting.2 Bracketing those inquiries, this paper argues that Rick merits careful study on account of the Court's approach to the relationships between statutory family law and the general private law, on one hand, and federal and provincial law, on the other. The secon...

Debates in Family Law Around the Globe at the Dawn of the 21st Century

[...] the part dealing with registration schemes for same-sex couples includes seven articles discussing the status of the non-marital unions. In the introductory chapter, entitled "What comparative family law should entail", the author provides a four-step method to use the study of comparative law to find solutions for or trends in domestic law problems.1 Examples from different countries are provided to illustrate the proposed method. Since the trend of globalization of family law is not...

Le Droit Myope

En 2004, Gérard Cornu définissait encore le mariage en France comme : «union légitime d'un homme et d'une femme en vue de vivre en commun et de fonder une famille, un foyer désigne l'institution même du mariage»5 et Y union libre comme «[...] union de fait entre un homme et une femme qui vivent ensemble sans être mariés (ni ensemble, ni avec des tiers), mais qui pourraient s'unir par mariage»6. Cette progression dans le modèle classique a eu des répercussions positives dans les hypothèses no...

Aboriginal Adoptions in Saskatchewan and British Columbia: An Evolution to Save or Lose Our Children?

With more than 27,000 Aboriginal children currently in provincial care, solving the issues surrounding Aboriginal adoptions has never been more important. These issues include: the inequality of funding between the First Nations Child Welfare agencies and provincial agencies (which has instigated a Canadian Human Rights Complaint by the Assembly of First Nations and the First Nations Child and Family Caring Society of Canada), the denial of Aboriginal Identity from Aboriginal adoptees, and th...