On April 17, 1982, the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms was proclaimed into force. By including a set of constitutionally entrenched core legal rights (i.e. ss. 8, 9, and 10(b), and a remedial mechanism designed to enforce those rights (i.e. s. 24(2)), the Charter had the potential to alter certain repressive elements of the criminal justice system that had endured in Canada for over a century. Despite this potential, both the core legal rights and s. 24(2) were drafted using vague terminology. As a result, the Charter ‘s ability to succeed where previous attempts at instituting effective due process protections for Canadians had failed would depend largely on the judiciary’s ability to satisfactorily craft such protections out of imprecise statutory language. This thesis will argue that the Supreme Court of Canada has created a test for the exclusion of unconstitutionally obtained evidence under s. 24(2) that fails to adequately protect the core legal rights of the socially, racially and economically marginalized individuals to whom the Canadian criminal justice system is disproportionately applied. In advancing this argument, the relevant jurisprudence and academic literature will be analyzed according to a methodology inspired by the Critical Legal Studies movement. The issue of exclusion will be examined in its social context, primarily by analyzing the current system of Canadian criminal justice and acknowledging its over-application to the socially disenfranchised. It will be argued that the Supreme Court’s test for exclusion has developed as it has because of the judiciary’s subconscious tendency to interpret unclear constitutional provisions in keeping with the dominant conservative ideology, a method that favours maintaining the social status quo. The purpose of this thesis is to set out a framework for a reform of the Charter ‘s exclusionary mechanism. This new approach will attempt to situate social context at the forefront of the s. 24(2) decision-making process. It will be argued that the concept of “disrepute” within s. 24(2) must be redefined so that it captures investigatory practices made possible by unjust social, racial and economic divisions that render certain groups powerless, and thus more vulnerable to police surveillance.

No description available.

In September 1957, Little Rock, Arkansas was the scene of a dramatic confrontation between federal and state government that brought to a head the southern movement of massive resistance against the United States Supreme Court's 1954 Brown v. Board of Education school desegregation ruling. Although numerous studies have analysed the Little Rock crisis from a variety of perspectives, one striking omission in the existing historiography is the role played by the local black community who were at the very centre of events. Building upon recent local and state studies conducted by scholars of the civil rights movement, this thesis locates the events in Little Rock of September 1957 within an unfolding struggle for black rights at a local, state, regional and national level between 1940 and 1970. In so doing, the thesis seeks to revise the time-frame for black activism imposed by a first wave of civil rights scholarship, which focused almost exclusively on the role played by national civil rights organisations between 1955 and 1%5. It argues that only by comprehending the groundwork laid in the 1940s and 1950s, through litigation and voter registration drives at a grassroots level, can the significance of later black protests be fully understood. In line with the findings of other state studies, it highlights the pivotal role played by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) which, assisted by a nexus of local organisations, formed the backbone of early civil rights struggles at a local level. Thus, the thesis aims not only to provide a corrective for the existing gap in the historiography of the Little Rock school crisis, but also seeks to broaden and deepen our understanding of the ways in which indigenous black movements developed and sustained protest strategies at state and local levels across the South.

Within the United States, the southern strategy of Massive Resistance to federally mandatedr acial desegregationh ad its origins in 1948, a year which saw the confirmation of Cold War hostilities in Europe. As a result, the dialogue surrounding matters of race was infused with Cold War rhetoric. Between 1950 and 1954, Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy added to this milieu, reinvigorating anticommunism and red-baiting as political weapons. Allied to the traditional southern fear of "outsiders," many southerns egregationists seized upon anti-communism as a weapon to undermine opponents promoting change to the region's racial status quo. This thesis, however, challenges the notion that all segregationists used anticommunism against all integrationists at all times. Rather, anti-communism could be a subtle, flexible political tool which individuals and groups tailored to suit their own needs. At times, it was used to rebuff specific civil rights campaigns, activists and organisations. At others, it was used sparingly. One of the main tenets of this thesis is that, hitherto, segregationists have commonly been treated in rather one-dimensional terms by historians of the civil rights movement. By examining their diverse responses to anti-communism and wider Cold War anxieties, it is argued that they were not the homogeneous political group that many have suggested, but in many ways were as resourceful and pragmatic as those they opposed in the civil rights movement. This thesis also examines some apparent anomalies in the uses of anticommunism and Cold War rhetoric. Opponents of segregation berated segregationists for undermining America's attempts to court newly independent, post-colonial states in the Caribbean, Asia and Africa. No predominately non-white country, they argued, would align with the US-dominated West rather than the Soviet East with such blatant racism endemic in the American South. Segregationists were accused of being more totalitarian than their Soviet counterparts, and of bringing Soviet-style one party rule to the region. Finally, by looking in depth at two southern states, North Carolina and Virginia, this thesis will do more justice to the nuances and complexities of anticommunism than would be possible in a broader, regional study. Both states were at the legislative forefront of Massive Resistance, and both propounded a more sophisticated -- though no less determined -- brand of racism than most of their counterpartsi n the Deep South, largely as a consequence of their reliance on external investment.

This thesis highlights the emergence of a wrongful system conception of rights violations. In the modern welfare state, many constitutional rights violations are not discrete, one-off events but instead result from the combined conditions and dynamics of a state-sponsored system. These rights violations are pervasive and ongoing and are detected not through the existence of malevolent intent, but through an assessment of the outcomes and effects of the system on particular groups of individuals. / This thesis explains why wrongful system rights violations can only be effectively remedied through detailed structural reform programs. It identifies the nature and main features of such programs. It asks whether and what capacity the courts have to sponsor these kinds of programs. / The question of court-sponsored structural reform is approached from an institutional competency perspective that focuses on the courts' remedial capacities. Accordingly, this thesis examines the courts' remedial powers---concentrating on equity---and also the courts' remedial limits. / To examine remedial limits, the courts' dominant remedial framework---corrective justice---is examined. The inability of the corrective remedial framework to ground structural reform remedies is discussed, and the disjuncture between court remedial rhetorical and court remedial practice is highlighted. This thesis argues that a strictly corrective remedial framework is inappropriate in constitutional rights adjudication and advocates the development of a broader remedial framework in this field of adjudication, a framework more suited to the development of structural reform remedies.

Thesis (Ph.D) -- Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, 2000. / Adviser: Andrew Hess. Typescript. Vita. Bibliography: unnumbered leaves. Access restricted to members of the Tufts University community. Also available via the World Wide Web;

Thesis (M.Soc.Chg.Dev.)--University of Wollongong, 2006. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references: leaf 120-124.

Thesis (M.A.)--Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, South Hamilton, Mass., 1998. / Abstract and vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 124-126).

Thesis (doctoral)--Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen, 1927. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 6-8).

Habilitationsschrift-Hamburg. / Bibliography: p. [269]-288.