2022 Year in Review - Part III

A quick look at some of my own research...

In Part I of this week’s Year in Review series I briefly explored the Supreme Court’s constitutional jurisprudence, and in Part II some of the great scholarship that came out this year. In today’s post I want to look back at my own professional year, including some research I put out into the world.

2022 saw the release of my edited book, Dilemmas of Free Expression (currently on sale for 40% off!). This collection features legal scholars, political scientists, philosophers, etc. exploring a host of contemporary rights issues including hate speech, the regulation of social media, defamation and anti-SLAPP legislation, language rights, the regulation of elections, protest and counter-protest, positive speech rights, compelled speech, Indigenous approaches to expression and knowledge dissemination, and several chapters on campus speech issues. My own chapter examines the social scientific evidence for the harms of hate speech and the associated difficulties relating to the diffuse nature of the harm involved when justifying limits on expression.

Another book out in 2022 was a massive 26-chapter volume I co-edited with Kate Puddister, titled Constitutional Crossroads (you can get this one for 30% off by clicking the promotion image on the right side of the page on UBC Press’s website). I wrote a separate post on this book back in November. It’s an incredible collection featuring ‘big names’ in the field as well as junior scholars, on a host of themes surrounding the Constitution Act, 1982 including institutional relationships, the Charter of Rights, reconciliation, and constitutional change. My own chapter in this collection is titled “Revisiting Judicial Activism” and argues that despite the amorphous nature of the concept it can still be useful if employed properly.

I also had a number of articles out in 2022. One explores the place of constitution conventions in our constitutional architecture, and uses new questions emanating from recent SCC jurisprudence to revisit old issues relating to the justiciability of conventions and the distinctive political role conventions necessarily play in ensuring the workability of our constitutional framework. This paper is available open access in the Canadian Journal of Political Science.

A short ‘currents’ article, also in the Canadian Journal of Political Science, explores the potential implications of the overturning of Roe v. Wade in the United States and the possibility of such a thing happening in the Canadian context (also available open access).

A Manitoba Law Journal article examines the concept of ‘unconstitutional constitutional amendments’ in the Canadian context (available open access here in pdf form). I wrote a separate post on this piece earlier this month.

And a Review of Constitutional Studies article proposes a ‘Charter values’ approach to free expression that moves beyond debates about anti-hate speech laws to promote both expressive freedom and equality/diversity. This is part of a special double issue on the 40th anniversary of the Charter (check out the full list here). I wrote a separate post on this piece a couple of weeks ago.

I was invited to write a post for the International Journal of Constitutional Law (I-CON) online forum to reply to published responses to my 2021 article “Judicial Amendment of the Constitution.” It was a thrill to have my article featured in the journal with responses by superb scholars Erin Delaney and Christopher Schmidt, and Kate Glover Berger, and in my post I attempt to address their comments and critiques on the issue of when judicial reasoning ceases to be merely interpretation but effectively ‘amends’ the constitution without recourse to the designated amending procedure. The article itself explores the complex concept of judicial amendment with discussions of Canada, India, the United States, and Australia.

I was also lucky in 2022 to secure a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) Insight Grant of nearly $250,000 to launch a new 5-year study of the regulation of online hate speech in Canada, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom. My friend Rachael Johnstone is serving as a collaborating investigator on the project, which will see us examine how the respective parliaments in these countries grapple with the rights and policy implications/challenges of trying to address hate speech in the social media age. We’ll be exploring Hansard and committee debates, media coverage, the jurisprudence under the bills of rights in each country, all to see whether the different structures under the so-called ‘Commonwealth model’ of judicial review leads to different balancing of the rights and policy objectives at stake. We already have a growing team of RAs doing initial data collection and I am very excited to get this project moving!

Finally, 2022 also came with some very nice surprises in the form of recognition of my work. My 2021 book Constitutional Pariah was shortlisted for the Canadian Political Science Association’s Donald Smiley Prize for best book on Canadian politics. And I was awarded a Faculty of Arts Research Excellence Award at my university, which came with this sweet little glass sculpture. Not sure I’ll be able to top 2022 but here’s looking forward to 2023!