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The dilemmas of citizenship: Limitations on canadian legal rights

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Abstract

Since the entrenchment of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, Canadian courts have been burdened with a disproportionate number of cases concerned with issues arising from the newly introduced legal rights. However, the transition from the Canadian crime-control model to the American-style due-process model is far from complete. The rights of the accused are consistently deemed to be secondary to the aim of reinforcing the legitimacy of the criminal justice system. Canadians' legal rights will in fact remain limited as long as judges continue to decide cases on the basis of harm done to the justice system, rather than individuals and groups.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Southern Maine, Maine, USA

    Barbara Perry

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  1. Barbara Perry
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An earlier version of this paper was presented at a joint session of the Canadian Sociology and Anthropology Association and the Canadian Law and Society Association, Leamed Societies Conference, Carleton University, Ottawa, Ontario; June 7, 1993. I thank attending colleagues for their useful feedback. I am also grateful for the comments of Piers Beime.

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Perry, B. The dilemmas of citizenship: Limitations on canadian legal rights. Critical Criminology 7, 17–36 (1996). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02461092

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