RSS FeedA Legal Student – Then and Now
It’s a lot of tuition, and even more hard work. But the journey to be a lawyer in Canada just might be worth it.
In my column of this week’s Lawyers Weekly I ask the question, “What’s a lawyer worth these days?,” discussing the B.C. S.C. ruling in Danicek v. Alexander Holburn Beaudin & Lang.
Michelle Danicek, a recent UBC Law graduate, was injured days before the bar at a law firm event. She had a motor vehicle collision soon after that. The judge assessed her promising career as a corporate lawyer with a particular knack for working with clients and awarded nearly $6 million dollars.
Not everyone will be a legal superstar the way Michelle Danicek was expected to be.
But that wasn’t really the point of my article. I also cite Alan Watson and Khaled Abou El Fadel, in Fox Hunting, Pheasant Shooting, and Comparative Law, 48 Am. J. Comp. L. 1 (2000), who suggest that there may have been traditionally more to being a lawyer than just making money or winning cases.
Although jurists were men of the world, aware of social, political and economic realities, they also reveled in the very practice of interpreting the law. Legal interpretation was a sport. Yes, it was actually fun to analyze the law.
Could lawyers provide material support to terrorist organizations?
Interesting post at Persuasive Authorities on the implications of Holder v. The Humanitarian Law Project and Al-Haramain v. Bush,
These two cases raise some serious issues for lawyers and law professors who provide legal opinion, advice, representation or education to suspected groups even when it is completely unrelated to terrorist violence.
Also see related post by Prof. Fadel of UofT at Foreign Policy,
At issue is the constitutionality of the United States government’s interpretation of a 1996 law criminalizing, with a maximum penalty of 15 years in prison, the provision of “material support” to foreign terrorist organizations. This provision is the government’s most used law in prosecuting those suspected of terrorism, largely because of the law’s breadth, and because it does not require the government to prove that the defendant intended to further the violent aims of the terrorist group. Especially troubling from the perspective of the foreign policy community is that it also prohibits providing “training,” “personnel,” “expert advice or assistance,” or “service” to such a group, even when such services are completely unrelated to terrorist violence.
What’s Behind the Veil of Justice?
An abridged version of this piece was published today in the Toronto Star. Reproduced here for interest with permission of the author, all rights reserved.
Veils and justice
February 04, 2009
Faisal Kutty
Here they go again. Muslims just don’t give up trying to change our values and roll back hard fought rights of equality and justice. Though this time, we may have nipped it in the bud early – but should we?
Ontario Court Justice Norris Weisman‘s “admittedly difficult decision” to force a complainant to testify without her niqab, or face covering, in a sexual assault case has unleashed a torrent of discussion and debate. Again, the usual suspects with too little knowledge, appreciation or understanding of the complexities of the issue have jumped into the fray.
The ruling once again brings to the fore questions surrounding the limits of accommodation in a liberal multicultural society. But this time, in a novel twist, the clash pits a person’s religious right with the right of a defendant in a criminal trial to due process and procedural fairness; namely that of being able to face his or her accuser in open court. Obviously, both are important rights in a liberal democracy.
The niqab – which a small fraction of orthodox Muslim women use to cover their faces, and not to be confused with the hijab or head covering – is attacked by some as a symbol of oppression. By others as a badge of political Islam. By others as a public-relations nightmare for their “moderate” or more palatable versions of Islam. By others as something that should be compromised in the two-way dance of accommodation. And still by others as not compulsory or even totally unnecessary from a strict Islamic legal point of view.
