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"Groups seeking legal equality often take a victory as the end of the line. Once judgment is granted or a law is passed, coalitions disband and life goes on in a new state of equality. Policy makers too may assume that a troublesome file is now closed. This collection arises from the urgent sense that law reforms driven by equality call for fresh lines of inquiry. In unintended ways, reforms may harm their intended beneficiaries. They may also worsen the disadvantage of other groups. Committed to tackling these important issues beyond the boundaries that often confine legal scholarship, this book pursues an interdisciplinary consideration of efforts to advance equality, as it explores the developments, challenges, and consequences that arise from law reforms aiming to deliver equality in the areas of sexuality, kinship, and family relations. With an international array of contributors, After Legal Equality: Family, Sex, Kinship will be an invaluable resource for those with interests in this area." --

Scholars have addressed at length the 'what' of judicial review under a bill of rights - scrutinizing legislation and striking it down - but neglected the 'how'. Adopting an internal legal perspective, Robert Leckey addresses that gap by reporting on the processes and activities of judges of the highest courts of Canada, South Africa and the United Kingdom as they apply their relatively new bills of rights. Rejecting the tendency to view rights adjudication as novel and unique, he connects it to the tradition of judging and judicial review in the Commonwealth and identifies respects in which judges' activities in rights cases genuinely are novel - and problematic. Highlighting inventiveness in rights adjudication, including creative remedies and guidance to legislative drafters, he challenges classifications of review as strong or weak. Disputing claims that it is modest and dialogic, he also argues that remedial discretion denies justice to individuals and undermines constitutional supremacy

Law and legal discourse both presuppose and produce legal subjects. Views on the nature of the legal subject will constantly shift, therefore, with changes in the law. Contextual Subjects argues that a new view of the legal subject has indeed emerged and that it is now embedded in the social context and relationships. This claim is developed through a contrast of Canadian family law and administrative law as it was in the mid-twentieth century and as it is today.Robert Leckey argues that it is not only the subject that is contextual. Legal discourse and adjudication have also become more contextual, making family law and administrative law themselves contextual subjects. Leckey bolsters this argument through the use of relational theory, a rich strand of feminist political theory that advocates a contextual method and seeks to promote constructive relationships that enable relational autonomy. Developments in family law and administrative law, therefore, exemplify the contextualism called for by relational theorists. Leckey points to the importance of contextualization, but he is not uncritical of relational theory, insisting that it should articulate more forcefully its normative vision of good relationships and offer clear recommendations in contested areas.Contextual Subjects is the most thorough and sustained application of relational theory to legal examples to appear to date. It is unique in Canadian legal scholarship for the way it pairs family law and administrative law, and within legal scholarship in English for its integration of common law and civil law