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AbstractRational choice theory has drawn attention to the phenomenon of structure-induced equilibrium in situations of potential cycling. When there is no majority, first preference or Condorcet winner, the outcome is determined by agenda control and institutional rules of decision making. Within that context, the status quo has a special advantage because of the parliamentary amendment procedure, in which the status quo, as the default option to the bill in formal form, is not voted upon until the last stage. The unsuccessful attempts of the Canadian government of Prime Minister Brian Mulroney to respond legislatively to the Supreme Court's Morgentaler decision illustrate these general principles of rational choice. The government was unable to get legislation passed because, with cyclical configurations of opinion in both the House of Commons and the Senate, institutional rules, especially the order of voting required by the parliamentary amendment procedure, favoured the status quo.

AbstractResearch shows that adhesions to the numbered treaties were of two types: "internal" and "external." In an internal adhesion, a band living within the previously ceded area agreed to the terms of the treaty, and no new transfer of land was involved. In an external adhesion, a band living outside the previously ceded area agreed to the terms of the treaty, thus adding a previously unceded piece of territory to the treaty area.This distinction is essential to understanding the long-running Lubicon Lake dispute. From the federal government's point of view, all of northern Alberta was ceded in Treaty Eight; so the Lubicons, who live within this area, are entitled to make only an internal adhesion. In contrast, the Lubicons claim to live on unceded land and thus demand to make an external adhesion. Their claim to possess unextinguished aboriginal title to a specific tract of land is used to justify demands for compensation that would not be paid in the case of an internal adhesion.

AbstractThe European appropriation of Indian land in North America has often been justified through versions of the "agricultural argument" to the effect that the Indians did not need the land and did not really own it because they did not permanently enclose and farm it. Thus the European settlers could resort to original appropriation as described in Locke'sSecond Treatise. This article examines the agricultural argument as exemplified in the writings of John Winthrop, John Locke and Emer de Vattel. Analysis shows that the argument is formally consistent with the premises of natural rights philosophy because it assumes the equal right of both Indians and Europeans to engage in original appropriation. But the historical record shows that the argument actually applied to only a small portion of the land acquired by the Europeans. Sovereignty is the issue that should receive further inquiry.

Behind the legal dispute over aboriginal rights in North America lies the question of whether European settlers had a right to appropriate land used by the original residents for hunting & gathering, for the purpose of farming. While the approach that conquest produces a sufficient title is logical, it is too much of an appeal to raw power to satisfy political theorists. One justification for the European takeover of Indian lands -- that the Indians were not using most of the land & did not really own it because they were hunters rather than farmers -- is considered. Three versions of this approach -- by John Winthrop, first governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, the English liberal philosopher John Locke, & Emer de Vattel, an eighteenth-century expert on international law -- are considered. Recent debate on the agricultural argument is examined, & it is noted that the argument deals with only a small proportion of the actual events accompanying the European takeover of the New World. The real issue, in consequence, is one of sovereignty, & this should receive further study. In Reply to Professor Flanagan, Nicholas Griffin (McMaster U, Hamilton, Ontario) holds that Flanagan believes that the agricultural argument will stand without the distinction between the state of nature & civil society, having in mind a system of bourgeois private ownership using a market mechanism. Flanagan's argument requires stronger assumptions than those he presents, & the appropriate question should be whether one group has the right to demand that another change its way of life in order to solve the perceived problems of the former. InReply to Griffin, Flanagan notes that he did not propose the agriculture argument as a satisfactory justification for the European seizure of North America. F. S. J. Ledgister