Faculty of Law
Faculty Books
Our faculty members engage in scholarly work on the cutting edge of legal issues relevant to our local, national, and international communities. Their research is used by lawyers, courts, legislative bodies and policy-makers across the country, and is published in leading journals and books by renowned presses. Here are some of the latest books published by our professors.
Faculty Books
Anderson, Kjell
Perpetrating Genocide: A Criminological Account. London: Routledge (2018).
“Focusing on the relationship between the micro level of perpetrator motivation and the macro level normative discourse, this book offers an in-depth explanation for the perpetration of genocide. It is the first comparative criminological treatment of genocide drawn from original field research, based substantially on the author’s interviews with perpetrators and victims of genocide and mass atrocities, combined with wide-ranging secondary and archival sources. Topics covered include: perpetration in organizations, genocidal propaganda, the characteristics of perpetrators, decision-making in genocide, genocidal mobilization, coping with killing, perpetrator memory and trauma, moral rationalization, and transitional justice.” - Publisher’s description (excerpt).
Researching Perpetrators of Genocide Edited by Kjell Anderson and Erin Jesse
"Researchers often face significant and unique ethical and methodological challenges when conducting qualitative field work among people who have been identified as perpetrators of genocide. This can include overcoming biases that often accompany research on perpetrators; conceptualizing, identifying, and recruiting research subjects; risk mitigation and negotiating access in difficult contexts; self-care in conducting interviews relating to extreme violence; and minimizing harm for interviewees who may themselves be traumatized." - Publisher's description (excerpt).
Baskatawang, Leo
Reclaiming Anishinaabe Law, UofM Press, 2023
"In Reclaiming Anishinaabe Law Leo Baskatawang traces the history of the neglected treaty relationship between the Crown and the Anishinaabe Nation in Treaty #3, and the Canadian government’s egregious failings to administer effective education policy for Indigenous youth—failures epitomized by, but not limited to, the horrors of the residential school system." Publisher's description (excerpt)
Gibson, Dale
“In Law, Life, and Government at Red River, Dale Gibson provides rich, revealing glimpses into the community, and its complex relations with the Hudson’s Bay: the colony’s owner, and primary employer. Volume 1 details the history of the settlement’s establishment, development, and ambivalent relationship with the legal and undemocratic, but gradually, grudgingly, slightly, more representative, governmental institutions forming in the area, and the legal system’s evolving engagement with the Aboriginal population.” - Publisher’s description (excerpt).
“In Law, Life, and Government at Red River, Dale Gibson provides rich, revealing glimpses into the community, and its complex relations with the Hudson’s Bay: the colony’s owner, and primary employer. Volume 2 provides a complete annotated, and never-before-published transcription of testimony from Red River’s courts, presenting hundreds of vignettes of frontier life, the cases that were brought before the courts, and the ways in which the courts resolved conflicts.” - Publisher’s description (excerpt).
Gunn, Brenda
Renewing Relationships: Indigenous Peoples and Canada. Co-edited with Karen Drake. Wiyasiwewin Mikiwahp Native Law Centre, University of Saskatchewan (2019).
“This edited collection features essays by Indigenous legal academics from across Canada. Some Indigenous nations might embrace principles of reconciliation, while others reject the concept and instead advocate for resistance or decolonization. This collection builds on existing literature that addresses issues such as the inclusion of Indigenous laws, self-determination, and the role of the constitution.” - Publisher’s description (excerpt).
Harvey, Cameron
“This publication provides a clear and straightforward introduction to the Canadian law of agency. A complete selection of topics, case and statute references relevant to Canadian agency law, plus a compendium of reasons for the most important cases, are available in this easy-to-use text. In the fifth edition, the treatment of several topics has been revised to reflect recent cases and recent legislation.” - Publisher’s description.
Jochelson, Richard
“In Philip K. Dick’s short story Minority Report, the institution of Precrime punishes people with imprisonment for crimes they would have committed had they not been prevented. With Dick’s allegorical inspiration, the authors of Criminal Law and Precrime: Legal Studies in Canadian Punishment and Surveillance in Anticipation of Criminal Guilt posit that recent developments in Canadian law indicate a trend toward imposing punitive measures at increasingly earlier stages of the prosecutorial process. The result is a potentially new field of criminal management that could be characterized as "precrime"—particularly the use of the law as a technology of surveillance and prevention since "terror" became a justification for intervention.”
“The book is a provocative read for scholars and students in criminal law, policing, and surveillance, as well as for those interested in how areas of law, such as immigration, health, and anti-terrorism, are mobilizing the logics of risk and surveillance in new ways that emphasize precaution. The authors invite legal scholars to place the analytical lens of precrime on criminal and regulatory practices in Canada as well as other Western nations across the globe.” - Publisher’s description (excerpt).
Jochelson and Ireland, who teach Criminal Law and Evidence at the University of Manitoba’s Faculty of law, take a close look at the 1984 Supreme Court of Canada case Hunter v Southam, in which the SCC declared warrantless searches to be unreasonable under section 8 of the Charter. Police would henceforth require authorization based on “reasonable and probable grounds.” The decision promised to protect individuals from encroaching state power, but Jochelson and Ireland argue that while post-Hunter search and seizure law has strayed from the SCC decision and that the core principles of Dickson’s vision for section 8 rights have been diminished in an era of heightened security and expanding police powers, increasing citation of Hunter in the halls of justice offers hope that some protection of civil liberties will endure in the twenty-first century.
“This collection is founded upon the editors’ joint experiences in teaching in law and society programs in Canada. The authors have witnessed cobbled together curriculums which rely upon a potpourri of sources from law, criminology, criminal justice and law and society disciplines. There exists a growing interest from university students and legal scholars alike for a reader in the context of law reform and legal change in respect of sexual politics and movements in Canada, especially in the context of more modern iterations of crime and sexual politics. Furthermore, while this collection is intended to be educational in the main, it will foster broader discussions in the context of legal regulation of sex and sexuality in Canadian jurisprudence.” - Publisher’s description
MacPherson, Darcy
“This publication provides a clear and straightforward introduction to the Canadian law of agency. A complete selection of topics, case and statute references relevant to Canadian agency law, plus a compendium of reasons for the most important cases, are available in this easy-to-use text. In the fifth edition, the treatment of several topics has been revised to reflect recent cases and recent legislation.” - Publisher’s description.
Schulz, Jennifer L.
A Transnational Study of Law and Justice on TV. Co-edited with Peter Robson. Hart Publishing (2016).
“This collection examines law and justice on television in different countries around the world. It provides a benchmark for further study of the nature and extent of television coverage of justice in fictional, reality and documentary forms. It does this by drawing on empirical work from a range of scholars in different jurisdictions. Each chapter looks at the raw data of how much "justice" material viewers were able to access in the multi-channel world of 2014 looking at three phases: apprehension (police), adjudication (lawyers), and disposition (prison/punishment)…. This book is a must-read for anyone interested in law, popular culture, TV, or justice and provides an important addition to the literature due to its grounding in empirical data.” – Publisher’s description (excerpt).
Ethnicity, Gender, and Diversity: Law and Justice on TV. Co-edited with Peter Robson USA: Lexington (2018).
“Television and streamed series that viewers watch on their TVs, computers, phones, and tablets are a crucial part of popular culture They have an influence on viewers and on law. People acquire values, behaviors, and stereotypes, both positive and negative, from television shows, which are relevant to people’s acquisition of beliefs and to the development of law. In this book, readers will find the first transnational, empirical look at ethnicity, gender, and diversity on legally-themed TV shows. Scholars determine the three most watched legally-themed shows in Brazil, Britain, Canada, Germany, Greece, Poland, Switzerland and the United States and then examine gender, age, ability, ethnicity, race, class, sexual orientation and nationality in those shows and countries. As such, this book provides an important link between law, TV, and what is going on in real life.” -Publisher’s description.
Mediation & Popular Culture London: Routledge (2020).
“This book examines mediation topics such as impartiality, self-determination and fair outcomes through popular culture lenses. Popular television shows and award-winning films are used as illustrative examples to illuminate under-represented mediation topics such as feelings and expert intuition, conflicts of interest and repeat business, and deception and caucusing. The author also employs research from Australia, Belgium, Canada, China, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, India, Israel, Japan, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Singapore, South Africa, Spain, the United Kingdom and the United States of America to demonstrate that real and reel mediation may have more in common than we think. How mediation is imagined in popular culture, compared to how professors teach it and how mediators practise it, provides important affective, ethical, legal, personal and pedagogical insights relevant for mediators, lawyers, professors and students, and may even help develop mediator identity.” -Publisher’s description.
Short, Donn
Don’t Be So Gay! Queers, Bullying, and Making Schools Safe (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2013).
“Once viewed as an inevitable if unpleasant part of growing up, bullying is now recognized as a real threat to students’ physical and psychological well-being – particularly in light of recent teen suicides linked with homophobia in schools. Despite a shift in public attitudes and legislative responses to the problem, bullying remains a constant reality for many queer youth in Canadian schools.
In “Don’t Be So Gay!” Queers, Bullying, and Making Schools Safe, Donn Short considers the effectiveness of anti-harassment policies and safe-school legislation to address the problem of homophobic bullying. After spending several months in ten Toronto-area high schools interviewing queer youth and their allies, Short concludes that current legislation and its approach to school safety and homophobia is generally more responsive than proactive and transformative. “Don’t Be So Gay!” suggests that while effective legislation is vital to establishing a safe space for queer students, other influences – including religion, family beliefs, and peer pressure – may be more powerful. Drawing on students’ own experiences and thoughts on how safety is pursued in their schools and how their understandings and definitions of safety might be translated into law and policy reform, this book offers a fresh perspective on a hotly debated issue.
While aimed at policy makers and scholars in the fields of gender and sexuality studies, education, and human rights, this book will find a wider audience among teachers, parents, and GLBTQ advocates.” – Publisher’s description.
“This report presents the results of the online survey phase of the “Every Teacher Project” on Canadian K-12 educators’ perceptions and experiences of “LGBTQ-inclusive” education, including curriculum, policies, and practices that include positive and accurate information about lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, Two Spirit, and queer people as well as issues related to gender and sexual diversity (also known as GSD-inclusive education). This type of education is inclusive of students who would otherwise be marginalized by school climates that are typically hostile to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, Two Spirit, or queer students, or students questioning their sexual orientation or gender identity (LGBTQ); to students who have LGBTQ parents, friends or other loved ones; and to cisgender heterosexual (CH) students who can also be directly or indirectly affected by homophobia, biphobia, and transphobia. The project surveyed thousands of educators in the school year ending June 2013. We will report on the focus group phase of the Every Teacher Project in 2016.” –Publisher’s description.
Am I Safe Here? LGBTQ Teens and Bullying in Schools UBC Press, On Point Press (October, 2017)
“Am I safe here?” LGBTQ students ask this question every day within the school system. This book shines a light on the marginalization and bullying faced by LGBTQ youth, offering a new conceptualization of school safety.
Donn Short treats students as the experts on what happens in their schools, giving them a chance to speak for themselves. They identify what it would take to make a school truly safe – insightfully explaining that safety doesn’t come merely from security cameras, ID tags, and dress codes, but from a culture that values equity and social justice. Revealing the reality of going to school in an environment that implicitly (and sometimes explicitly) endorses homophobia, heterosexism, and heteronormativity, the students share their ideas about how to change school culture. They envision a future in which LGBTQ youth are an expected, respected, and celebrated part of school life.
Am I Safe Here? explores what needs to be done to create equitable and inclusive schools – but it is not strictly about formal professional development plans. Rather, it draws from the informal, spontaneous, timely, and relevant words of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered students to show that nothing less than a total culture change is needed.
This book is written for teachers, administrators, pre-service teachers, guidance counsellors, social workers, trustees, parents, and other LGBTQ allies who want to promote student safety and school improvement by creating a safe and inclusive school for LGBTQ students.
Making the Case 2SLGBTQ+ Rights and Religion in Schools UBC Press, Purich Books (November 2021)
Making the Case: 2SLGBTQ+ Rights and Religion in Schools, released in November, 2021 by UBC Press in Canada and The University of Chicago Press in the US, rounds out a trilogy that includes Don’t Be So Gay! Queers, Bullying, and Making Schools Safe (2013) and Am I Safe Here? LGBTQ Teens and Bullying in Schools (2017).
"Despite growing acceptance of 2SLGBTQ+ rights, Canadian schools regularly become battlegrounds in clashes between students wishing to express their sexuality or gender and those who perceive this as a threat to their values.
Making the Case clearly shows how Canadian law responds to what are known as “competing human rights claims,” when conflict arises between people asserting sexual minority rights and those asserting religious rights, for example, when a principal forbids same-sex prom dates or when parents oppose gay-straight alliance clubs. With a focus on the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, the authors call on related court cases to explain the position of Canadian law. They demonstrate that Canadians have rights to religion and rights to gender expression or sexual orientation; and that supporting sexual minority rights does not undermine other people’s rights to religious freedom.
This accessible book is an important tool for anyone working to create an inclusive school environment or respond to rights-based conflicts within the school system. It establishes conclusively that school cultures must be transformed so that 2SLGBTQ+ students can feel as safe and welcome as their heterosexual and cisgender counterparts.
This important book will help teachers, parents, and school administrators to function as 2SLGBTQ+ allies. Education students, legal scholars, politicians, civil servants, and people of faith who are interested in the issue of 2SLGBTQ+ rights will also find it invaluable." - Publisher's description
Turnbull, Lorna
“This volume investigates the intersections of welfare, gender and mothering work in the current political climate. It explores austerity and the policies of neo-liberal governments that work to deprive some mothers of their welfare. This volume also considers how motherhood is socially constructed in various social locations and places around the world. Last, it examines different ways of thinking about mothering and what changes to laws and policies are required to assist all who are mothering and provide better support to their families.” - Publisher description.