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.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:QMM.30330 |
| Date | January 1999 |
| Creators | Sharp, Naomi. |
| Contributors | MacDonald, Roderick (advisor) |
| Publisher | McGill University |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Coverage | Master of Laws (Institute of Comparative Law.) |
| Rights | All items in eScholarship@McGill are protected by copyright with all rights reserved unless otherwise indicated. |
| Relation | alephsysno: 001740762, proquestno: MQ64306, Theses scanned by UMI/ProQuest. |
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