Faculty Colloquium with Mary Liston – Persistent and Persisting Emergencies: Canada’s Continuing Democratic Vulnerabilities Pre and Post COVID-19

Event Description

Emergencies in Canada are both persisting and persistent. This talk aims to demonstrate how emergencies can be considered a kind of a longue durée in law, part of a seemingly permanent and slowly evolving public law structure that must be understood in its historicity. Historical context shows that use of emergency powers in Canada has recurring impacts on vulnerable populations from early times. The resulting democratic deficits both reflect and exacerbate executive overreach. The talk traces this lineage to recent court decisions which have held that the political executive’s actions in the context of the pandemic were ultra vires.

This is a hybrid event. Please contact eventassistant@allard.ubc.ca if you would like the Zoom link. Requests for the Zoom link must be submitted two days prior to the lecture. If you are a UBC faculty, staff or student, you must provide your department or CWL email address.

Speaker

Mary Liston is an Associate Professor at the Peter A. Allard School of Law, University of British Columbia. She teaches public law including administrative and constitutional law, legal theory, and law and literature. Her research focuses on public law broadly and administrative law in particular. It also lies at the intersection of constitutional law, legal theory, and democratic theory. She has participated in two leading casebooks as a co-author of Public Law: Cases, Commentary and Analysis and as a contributor to Administrative Law in Context. Her work has been cited by the Supreme Court of Canada in several precedential public law cases.