La notion d’obligation naturelle passe assez inaperçue en doctrine. Cette discrétion est due à un courant doctrinal issu au XXe siècle du positivisme juridique, qui a estimé qu’il n’y a pas de système rationnel de l’obligation naturelle en droit français. Un tel système existe pourtant. L’heure est donc à la restauration de la notion d’obligation naturelle, et avec elle, de celle de droit naturel. La tradition juridique française est par essence jusnaturaliste, de type humaniste, et l’obligation de droit naturel apparait être le fruit de cette longue tradition. La technique juridique qui lui est afférente est un point de conjonction entre le droit positif et le droit naturel à travers la matière fondamentale qu’est le droit des obligations. En découvrant un véritable système du droit naturel, le système de l’obligation naturelle tel qu’il se présente en droit français apparait tout naturellement. Il permet alors de comprendre et donc de résoudre bien des difficultés pratiques qui émergent dans la jurisprudence très abondante en la matière. / The notion of natural obligation is often overlooked in France. This is the result of a doctrinal trend from the last century, which, nourished by legal positivism, has concluded that there is no rational system of natural obligations in French Law. Such a system does exist nonetheless.The time has come to restore the notion of natural obligations and with it the notion of natural law. The French legal tradition is by essence jusnaturalist, of humanist type, and the system of natural obligations appears to be the fruit of this long tradition. The rules pertaining to this notion are a confluence of positive law and natural law through the fundamental field which is the law of obligations. Through the discovery of a true system of natural law, the system of natural obligations as it manifests itself in French law appears quite naturally. It enables us then to understand and resolve many practical difficulties arising in court cases.

No description available.

Le présent mémoire est consacré à l'étude des chevauchements entre revendications territoriales autochtones. On s'y interroge sur l’origine et l’évolution de ces chevauchements ainsi que sur les mécanismes qui pourraient être employés pour trouver des solutions acceptables pour toutes les parties. Notre étude retrace d'abord l'évolution du critère d’exclusivité élaboré par les politiques et décisions judiciaires canadiennes relativement à l’octroi du titre autochtone, concluant que ce critère d’exclusivité est devenu un enjeu déterminant dans l’élaboration d’une solution relative aux chevauchements entre revendications territoriales. En observant la manière dont les différents paliers de gouvernement ont échoué dans leurs tentatives de solutionner les enjeux de chevauchement, nous constatons que les traditions juridiques autochtones doivent être intégrées à la résolution des conflits et à l’interprétation du critère d’exclusivité. Ceci exige de percevoir l’institution juridique de la résolution de conflits selon une certaine vision du droit. Nous utilisons ici celle de Lon Fuller, qui présente une approche permettant de réconcilier plusieurs traditions juridiques. Notre étude nous conduit à proposer le système du Indigenous Legal Lodge comme mécanisme de résolution de conflit permettant aux autochtones de faire appel à leurs traditions juridiques dans la résolution des chevauchements, permettant ainsi de réconcilier ces traditions diverses. / This thesis is dedicated to the study of overlapping aboriginal land claims. We question the origin and evolution of these overlaps and study the mechanisms which could be used in order to determine a solution acceptable to all parties. Our study first discusses the evolution of the exclusivity criterion developed in Canadian policy and case law relating to the granting of an aboriginal title, concluding that the criterion of exclusivity has become a defining issue in the development of a solution to overlaps between land claims. By observing the failures of the various levels of government in their attempts to develop solutions to overlapping claims, we find that Aboriginal legal traditions must be integrated into conflict resolution and be used when interpreting the exclusivity criterion. This requires us to perceive conflict resolution, as a legal institution, according to a certain understanding of the law. We use Lon Fuller’s vision, who presents an approach for reconciling various legal traditions. Our study brings us to propose the Indigenous Legal Lodge as a conflict resolution mechanism enabling Aboriginal groups to call upon their own legal traditions in resolving overlaps and to reconcile their differing traditions.

Ending colonialism requires the revitalization of not only indigenous systems of law, but also the indigenous legalities of which they form part. This means that Canada’s unique form of liberal constitutionalism cannot serve as the constitutional framework within which indigenous law is revitalized. Rather, we shall have to advert to the fact that indigenous law was and is generated by unique indigenous legal processes and institutions, which find their authorization in unique indigenous constitutional orders, which are in turn legitimated by indigenous peoples’ unique and varied creation stories. Through the gifts of diverse Anishinaabe writers and orators, and through work with my circle of elders, with aadizookaanan, in community, and on the land, I present one view of Anishinaabe legality. I give special emphasis to its earth-centric ‘rooted’ form of constitutionalism, which is characterized by mutual aid and its correlate structure, kinship. In the second half, I examine the problem of colonial violence in contemporary indigenous-settler relationships. I identify two principles necessary for indigenous-settler reconciliation and I consider how commonly proposed models of indigenous-settler relationship fare against them. I conclude that one vision of treaty, treaty mutualism—which is a form of rooted constitutionalism—is non-violent to indigenous peoples, settler peoples and to the earth. Finally, I consider counter-arguments on themes of fundamentalism, power, and misreading. / Graduate

This dissertation seeks to illuminate key aspects of Coast Salish legal sensibility. It draws on collaborative fieldwork carried out between 2007 and 2010 with Stó:lō communities from the Fraser Valley in southern British Columbia, and on the rich ethnohistorical record produced on, with, and by members of the Stó:lō polity and of the wider Coast Salish social world to which they belong. The preoccupation underlying this inquiry is to better understand how to approach an Indigenous legal tradition on its own terms, in a way respectful of its distinctiveness – especially in an ongoing colonial context, and from my position as an outsider to this tradition. As such, a main question drives the inquiry: What makes a legal tradition what it is? Two series of legal insights emerge from this work. The first are theoretical and methodological. The character of a legal tradition, I suggest, owes more to implicit norms than to explicit ones. In order to gain the kind of understanding that allows for respectful interactions with the principles and processes that inform decision-making within a given legal order, one must learn to decipher the norms that are not so much talked about as tacitly modelled by its members. Paying attention to pragmatic forms of communication – the mode of conveying meaning interactively and contextually, typically by showing rather than telling – reveals the hidden normative canvas upon which explicit norms are grafted. This deeper layer of normativity inflects peoples’ subjectivity and sense of their own agency – the distinctive fabric of their socialization. This lens on law – emerging from a reflection on the stories that Stó:lō friends shared with me, on the discussions had with them, and on the relational experience of Stó:lō / Coast Salish pedagogy, and further informed by scholarship on Indigenous and Western law, political philosophy and sociolinguistics – yields a second series of insights. Those are ethnographical, about Coast Salish legal sensibility itself. They attach to three central institutions of the Stó:lō legal order: the Transformer storycycle, longhouse governance practice and the figure of the witness, and ancestral names – corresponding to three sets of key relationships within the tradition: to the land, to the spirit, and to kin. Among those insights, a central one concerns the importance of interconnectedness as an organizing principle within Stó:lō / Coast Salish legal orders. Coast Salish people are not simply aware of the factual interdependence of people and things in the world, pay special attention to this, and happen to offer a description of the world as interconnected. There is a normative commitment at work here. Interconnectedness informs dominant interpretations of how the world should work. It is a source of explicit responsibilities and obligations – but more amorphously and pervasively yet, it structures legitimate discourse and appropriate behavior within contemporary Coast Salish societies. / Graduate / 2018-10-20

With discussion of Indigenous laws on the rise in Canada, this thesis explores the question of law’s power: jurisdiction. In this project, I ask whether Indigenous jurisdiction is active in conflicts between Indigenous and state actors over the environment, in the context of the Heiltsuk Nation on the central coast of British Columbia. This project looks to critical legal theory for an understanding of jurisdiction. It identifies three aspects of jurisdiction that are discussed in critical legal theory and related fields: that it is technical, it is authoritative, and it is spatial. Adopting these qualities as provisional indicators of jurisdiction, it applies thefzm to three case studies of Heiltsuk (or “Haíɫzaqv”) conflicts with the state, which engage colonial law in different ways. The three case studies concern (1) herring harvest and management, which was litigated in R v Gladstone; (2) land use and forestry, which is the subject of the Great Bear Rainforest agreements; and (3) trophy hunting for bears, which is the subject of a grassroots campaign based on Indigenous law. Adopting a qualitative approach adapted from institutional ethnography, this project applies a critical jurisdictional lens to each case study, using documentary review and interviews to explore the technical, authoritative, and spatial aspects of each conflict. Ultimately, I find that expressions of Heiltsuk jurisdiction – as understood from a colonial, critical perspective – are already at play in each conflict, although this is not immediately visible from the point of view of colonial law. In the conclusion, I explore the different manifestations and strategies of Heiltsuk jurisdictional expressions, and the ways that colonial jurisdiction interacts with them. / Graduate / 2021-12-19