Honourable Senators, The National Association of Women and the Law is a not-for-profit feminist organization that promotes the equality rights of women, in all their diversity, through legal education, research and law reform advocacy. We are writing to voice our support for Bill C-6, An Act to amend the Criminal Code (conversion therapy), as it…
NAWL participated in the Law Needs Feminism Because National Forum held in Ottawa on March 3, 2018. The Forum’s theme for the year, Access to Justice, brought together law students, lawyers, community practitioners and activists. NAWL’s well-attended workshop; Rebuilding Feminist Law Reform Capacities in Canada, provided law students with organizational and movement history, and introduced a range…
Law professors across the country have managed to (and often despite considerable animosity and resistance from other faculty members) ensure that law schools engage with feminist content or substance within the classroom. Fostering feminist pedagogical forms or structures, however, remains a challenge for many of us.…
Did I tell you that I am a feminist? Card-carrying, with capital letters and without apology or equivocation? Did you just roll your eyes? It’s okay, this won’t take long.…
Law can function as either a tool or a weapon. Used well, it can be a tool to effect social justice. Used badly, it is a weapon that will increase social injustice. Either way, law, and those who study, understand, apply and interpret it, have a lot of power in our society. I want to encourage you to find ways to use the law as a tool for social justice. In particular, I want to encourage you to use it as a tool to increase women’s equality in this country.…
It is an unfortunate truth that law school can be a harrowing experience. Among the first examples that spring to my mind of the more difficult issues one must face are: first year’s onerous schedule and the brutal introduction to the Socratic method, which makes first year notoriously difficult to endure; the anxiety invoked by the approach of 100% exams in second year; the need to resist the persistent push toward big firm practice—a push that results from the profession’s influence on the law school… I have spent many sleep-bereft nights wondering: Why am I doing this to myself?…
Un aperçu féministe sur le cours de droit pénal de première année A Feminist Take on First Year Criminal Law” was drafted for NAWL by Elizabeth Sheehy, in the summer of 2010. Professor Sheehy teaches at the University of Ottawa faculty of law. Her work concentrates on legal responses to violence against women and she…
