Justice Jargon…

1. Documentary: Giving Death a Hand
Watch this documentary and see if you can create a list of pros and cons of assisted suicide. Like all controversial topics, there is no black and white in the issue – there are some valid points on both sides.

* To read more about it, the Fifth Estate website has a review of the documentary. (link)

(Marengo – The video will be found on the Drop-In Drive on your server.)

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Questions to Consider / Answer:

Section 241 of the Criminal Code  make it illegal to counsel or help another person to commit suicide. This means that another person, including a doctor, cannot assist a person who is suffering from a terminal disease to bring about a painless death (also called “euthenasia” or “mercy killing”). Some people argue that by making assisted suicide illegal, the government has interfered with a person’s rights to life, liberty, and security of person, which includes the right to make choices about one’s body.

Questions:

1. Do you think that a person who wants to die by assisted suicide should have the right to make that decision? Should assisted suicide be a criminal offence? Explain your answer.
2. A person who is found guilty of helping another person to die by assisted suicide could go to jail for up to 14 years. Discuss whether you agree with this punishment.
3. The Supreme Court has considered the issue of assisted suicide and has decided that assisted suicide should remain illegal. The court had some concerns about what may happen if assisted suicide was made legal. Explain what concerns you think could arise if assisted suicide was made legal in Canada.

You may consider these questions privately or you may contribute your responses to the Justice Jargon blog to share your comments with others in the course.

There was a new Law and Order the other night that makes it perfectly clear why we need Procedural Law in Canada. You can watch the first few minutes of this video to see it for yourself.

When someone is accused of a violent crime or even charged with it, in public opinion they are guilty already. We as individuals like to assume the worst or believe the police must have the right person and they must be guilty. In courts, though, that person is innocent until they have been convicted with a guilty verdict by a judge. Even as the evidence is given in court and it’s pretty damning evidence, they are still innocent.

In this video is an example of someone being arrested by police, but as he is arrested he suffers a large cut on his forehead and is bleeding as he’s being led away. Also, people have gathered in a mob and are aggresive towards him, thinking he’s committed a hate crime. Accused people need protection… because human beings are quick to judge.

See what you think.

Derek asked a question today about citations and how lawyers cite case law to argue their current cases. This was my response to him that I imagined might benefit more than just him….

From: derek
Sent: Wednesday, March 17, 2010 9:10 AM
To: Marcy Waldner
Subject:

For my own sake, i need to ask. Is 1.4.4. notes saying that lawyers for Prosecution and Defense search through case law to find precedent?

There is a really interesting documentary online by the program The 5th Estate that documents the actions of a man who was preying on people online who were emotionally unstable. As a result of his influence and counselling, several (as many as ten possibly) individuals took their own lives. It is questionable whether his actions were illegal and, as yet, he has not been charged with any crime, yet he contributed to the death of several people. The reason he has not been charged yet is because the laws are not written in such a specific way as to make the case against him strong enough. Laws bend and change to protect society and laws related to crimes online are one of these areas of laws changing more recently. This includes not only online harrassment or preying, but also copyright issues.

Students in the Law 30 class have watched this documentary and were asked to write two paragraph reviews of it. There is a lot to discuss with a case such as this, so it will be interesting to read the different responses each contributes.

This is fascinating to actually see the law being applied. Although it tests the moral instincts, the idea that a rapist and violent offender is released and not brought to trial, but it is the standard in Criminal law that the accused is considered innocent until guilty. By that token of thought, it is possible that an innocent man was freed of prosecution today.

The accused was charged with the rape of his ex-girlfriend in 2005, unlawful confinement, and threatening to kill her. The Supreme Court had previously ruled that 12 – 18 months was the reasonable amount of time before someone’s trial had to begin before it ran into the grey area of taking too long and thereby violating their Charter Right to a speedy trial. This man’s trial was put off for 30 months! (

The prosecution’s reason for delaying the case was because shortly before the trial was to begin, forensic evidence came back showing the DNA evidence did not match the accused. It is for reasons like this, whether he is truly guilty or not, that we have such a finely-tuned justice system – to protect everyone, even those accused.)

What is also interesting is that the accused petitioned the Ontario Court to stay his procedings (basically terminate them) on the grounds that the Charter right was violated. The Ontario Court agreed and allowed this. The Crown Prosecutor (acting on behalf of Canada) appealled this decision to the Ontario Court of Appeals where they overturned that ruling. The accused then applied to appeal the Appeals Court decision, asking the highest appeals court in our country, the Supreme Court of Canada. They did and ruled in favor to stay the procedings in a unanimous 7-0 decision. (Notice that they have to make public the vote and reasons for either side’s decision.)

Here is the Supreme Court’s actual court decision: R. v. Godin, 2009 SCC 26

Here is a link to the CBC news article with comments posted by readers. See if they seem to have a reasonable understanding of the law and whether they feel this was justified.

Like we have discussed, in Civil Law the goal is not necessarily to take disputes to trials, as they are lengthy and expensive. The goal, rather, is to be able to come to a mutual agreement outside of courts, when possible. One of the avenues to do this is through mediators, which is what is happening in the dispute between Air Canada and its union workers over Pension Fund shortfalls. This would likely fall under Contract Law in the whole civil law family.

The Federal Court of Canada (the part of the Canadian court system that has jurisdiction over complaints and issues against any government agency) ruled a month or so ago that the Federal government, by not allowing a man currently living in Sudan to return to Canada, was violating his Charter rights to mobility under Section 6. Harper’s reasons for disallowing the man’s return is that he is on a “terrorist watch list” with the United Nations and Harper’s clinging to a rule that known terrorists are not allowed on international flights. The United Nations responded, though, after the ruling to say specifically that Harper is misreading and misrepresenting the purpose of that rule.

The Harper government announced in to the media that they were going to appeal the Federal Court’s ruling, just the same as they announced after the same Federal Court ruled that Harper’s government was also violating the Canadian Charter rights of Khadr, the young man who has been held in Guantamo Bay’s military base for years. Harper seems to think that he can just hold off on complying with the rulings by going through these appeals. It is his right to do so, but after a pattern starts to develop, do you think he’s sort of just stalling and ignoring the court rulings?

The Federal Court, now, has ordered Harper’s government to comply with their ruling within 30 days.

What type of consequence do you think the Federal Court of Canada can impose against the Federal Government for failing to comply with their orders? There has to be a time limit, I would think, before they would be in contempt of court. It’s interesting!!

Here is a link to the Federal Court Ruling on the case.

This experiment explores common situations to test to see what variables are more likely to elicit a protective response from strangers. A normal-looking woman leaves her belongings unattended at the beach and a man (part of the experiment) comes by and steals her Ipod and speakers. No one really helps, though they notice, but if the normal-looking woman makes small talk with people nearby, they are much more likely to respond to the thief.
Switch the normal-looking woman for someone much more attractive and things change. She doesn’t have to even make small talk – people step in to react when the thief steals her things but the difference is they all noticed her more… because we notice beautiful people, we’re more aware of them when they’re near us. Take that same beautiful woman, though, and tell her to come on to another woman’s husband a bit… she’s suddenly not someone to just observe, she becomes a threat and is treated quite differently.

We’ve been talking about Attribution theory, how we categorize people and assume qualities they have based on how they fit into our schemas, or prior categories of knowledge. Beautiful people are considered differently – we assume if they are beautiful then they are also all the other positive qualities: moral, intelligent, honest, caring, good, etc.

We have just finished our own social experiment testing male photos and female photos and asked our volunteers (both male and female) to rate them in order from the ones they beleived would be most friendly to least. We were somewhat surprised that both men and women rated the male photographs in a similar manner (results were very much the same) but the order men rated the women was quite different (surprisingly so for a few photos) than the way women ordered them. Men and woman obviously categorize people visually by different criteria. The most attractive looking women were rated as very friendly by men but rated in the middle by women. Very attractive women seem to be read as a threat by other women, as is the example in one scenario of this video. Maybe is there an example here of an Attribution theory error – the Self-Fulfilling Prophecy… where the woman treated the beautiful woman (in the experiment) based on her initial impression of her and  then looked for behaviour from the woman to confirm that initial impression.

What do you think now that we’ve found some evidence that men and women categorize others differently?

When a pharmacist refuses to fill a young girl’s prescription for contraceptives, the others in the waiting room react. The conflict for them is whether he has the right to refuse her based on his morals?

From a social psychology point of view, this video is a good exploration of Attitudes, how they are formed and what function they serve the people in this experiment.

Our attitudes are part of our Emotional Aspect of Being, are patterns of beliefs and values and shape our future actions. There are three types of Attitudes (A, B, C: Affectively based (emotional), Behaviourally based (observing behaviours of others) and Cognitively based (reacting with our rational thoughts over our emotions).

We’ve learned, also, that Attitudes are very much linked to Motivation – they help us gain approval or acceptance of others, help us make sense of our surroundings, protect ourselves from uncomfortable truths around us, and help us demonstrate our own unique ideas and values.

In this video, it is interesting that some feel more comfortable expressing showing their attitude, either directly to the young girl(s) or to the pharmacist himself. Others only share an attitude after the confrontation has passed.

For this particular situation, with the young girls (actresses) being only 16, there is also a conflict for people in their values – they may believe a woman has the right to take care of herself and the pharmacist has no right to refuse her that, but they may also disagree with the idea of a young girl having premarital sex … so there is a conflict between their values. Our Congitive Dissonance man would say the pharmacist is doing the wrong thing but for the right reason.

When a woman shows up for a blind date from an online dating site but looks nothing like her photo.

We’ve discussed one of the errors in the Attribution Theory – the idea of Primacy Effect. Once we have already established an impression of someone, even when confronted with opposing information we are slow to change our impression. These people, having exchanged emails and photos, would have established an impression of what each other were like. Even when confronted with a completely different person, some of them are uncertain and just continue on, or they are confused at the very least.

Is this a benefit with online dating – that impressions formed by attractiveness only counts for so much but the interaction through emails etc draws the majority of interest from their personality instead? Maybe this is a way to get away from those impressions formed initially by looks, since we in generally are so apt to do that.