Academic

Price Discrimination in Income Taxation

Posted on March 26, 2011
I have posted a draft of a new working paper on SSRN. It is entitled, "Price Discrimination in Income Taxation: Defending Half-Hearted Anti-Avoidance" and is available for download now. Here is the abstract: Governments throughout the developed world worry incessantly about the implications of sophisticated tax planning for their tax revenues...

Labor and the Future of the Egyptian Revolution

Posted on March 01, 2011
ForeignPolicy.com?s Middle East Channel published my latest thoughts on Egypt?s labor movement and its role in Egypt?s future democracy. The essential argument is that if Egyptians want to establish a successful democracy, they must establish a social democracy along the lines of the Scandinavian countries...

Prof. Brian Langille: Political Strikes are Not Illegal Strikes

Posted on February 16, 2011
Last week many newspapers reported on a new development in the protests that have been focussing the world's attention upon Egypt. As the New York Times headline put it, "Protest in Egypt Takes New Turn as Workers Go on Strike". Reporters described how workers in myriad work places had decided to join the protest movement by going on strike...

The Demands of the Egyptian January 25th Youth Movement

Posted on February 07, 2011
One of the most unexpected features of the ongoing revolution in Egypt, a/k/a "the January 25th Youth Movement," is its leadership, or more precisely, its apparent lack of leadership. Accordingly, some have dubbed it the "Facebook" or "Twitter" or more generically, the "Social Media" revolution...

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Prof. Mohammad Fadel: the Arab demonstrations, the sub-prime mortgage crisis, and "black swans"

Posted on February 03, 2011
This commentary was first published on the Foreign Policy magazine website on Feb. 2, 2011. The nationwide decline in housing prices that began in 2006 was supposed to be, we were told, impossible. Because its impact was limited initially to the sub-prime mortgage market, which was a relatively small part of the overall home-mortgage market, policy makers at the Department...

Faculty of Law to host Magna Roundtable

Posted on January 31, 2011
Magna Panel Discussion Thursday, March 3 4:00-6:00 p.m. The Faculty of law will be hosting a roundtable to discuss the collapse of Magna?s dual class share structure, one of the largest change-in-control transactions in Canadian history. Controlling shareholder Frank Stronach received (indirectly through the Stronach Trust) consideration of roughly $1 billion in cash and stock for the sale of his...

Introducing the Canadian Securities Law Portal

Posted on January 25, 2011
For several decades, various expert panels have examined the possibility of creating a national securities regulator in Canada. On May 26, 2010, the Government of Canada tabled for information in Parliament the proposed Canadian Securities Act, which would establish a Canadian securities regulator...

Copthorne Holdings Panel Discussion, Thursday, January 27 at 6 p.m.

Posted on January 19, 2011
The Supreme Court of Canada will be hearing Copthorne Holdings Ltd. v. Her Majesty the Queen this coming Friday, January 21 at 9:30 a.m. The appeal is concerned with interpreting various elements of the "general anti-avoidance rule" ("GAAR") of section 245 of the Income Tax Act...

Waiting for Godot: Foreign Aid in Haiti, by Kate Mikos and Mariana Prado

Posted on January 12, 2011
By Kate Mikos and Prof. Mariana Prado Haiti is currently in the headlines again due to the ravages of a cholera epidemic that has hit citizens still reeling from a humanitarian disaster brought on by last year's earthquake, and has been compounded by hurricanes, floods, a problematic election and general unrest...

Prof. Jeffrey MacIntosh: "Systemic Fallacy"

Posted on December 10, 2010
The following first appeared in the National Post on November 23, 2010. SYSTEMIC FALLACY A national regulator wouldn?t have prevented the credit crisis By Jeffrey MacIntosh In its legal argument filed with the Quebec Court of Appeal, the federal government argues that securities regulation can and should address systemic (or economy-wide) risk ? and that a national regulator would be...

Prof. Jeffrey MacIntosh - "The Houdini Gambit"

Posted on November 24, 2010
This commentary by Prof. Jeffrey MacIntosh was first published in the Financial Post on November 23, 2010. The Houdini Gambit Do the feds have the constitutional jurisdiction to create a national securities regulator? Not surprisingly, the federal government thinks so...

Two New Papers

Posted on November 23, 2010
I have recently posted two new papers to my ssrn page. The first, titled ?Is Historicism a Viable Strategy for Islamic Legal Reform? ,? explores the different possibilities historicism offers for advocates of Islamic legal reform using the example of a report attributed to the Prophet Muhammad in which he is quoted as saying ?No folk who appoint a woman...

Selective Use of Data in the Debate about a National Securities Regulator for Canada: A Comment on The Lortie Paper

Posted on October 22, 2010
1. Introduction Pierre?s Lortie?s recent paper[1] seeks to discredit federal reform initiatives to create a national securities commission by making the following claims: Canadian capital markets rank above those in other countries as various international bodies suggest; the empirical evidence does not exist to support such a reform; and, the current passport system that operates in tandem with the Canadian...

Prof. Ran Hirschl publishes new book, "Constitutional Theocracy"

Posted on September 30, 2010
Prof. Ran Hirschl has published a new book, Constitutional Theocracy (Harvard University Press, 2010). Publisher's web page From the publisher: At the intersection of two sweeping global trends - the rise of popular support for principles of theocratic governance, and the spread of constitutionalism and judicial review - a new legal order has emerged: constitutional theocracy...

Mandatory Census Doesn't Raise Privacy Concerns; Abolishing it Does

Posted on September 01, 2010
Trudo Lemmens: Is privacy really at the heart of mandatory census change? (This commentary first appeared in a slightly different version in he Hill Times on August 23, 2010) Big policy decisions are always a balancing act. Nothing unusual thus when the government invokes one interest?privacy--to justify the cancellation of the mandatory long census, which serves another interest--the gathering of...

Prof. Ben Alarie on taxwiki.ca

Posted on July 17, 2010
An important experiment is beginning in documenting the administration and content of Canadian income tax law. The experiment is called taxwiki.ca. What is this experiment, and why is it necessary? The Office of the Auditor General recently pointed out that there is insufficient accurate guidance being provided to Canadian taxpayers by the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA)...

An Open Letter to Benjamin Netanyahu: Please Stop Whining

Posted on June 04, 2010
Benjamin Netanyahu, I read your Gaza Flotilla speech you made the other day in Jerusalem. It was a bold speech, defiant. You explained that Israel has had no choice, that it acted in self defence?it always does?and you called on the world, accusing it of hypocrisy...

Comprehensive Draft Federal Securities Act Released Today

Posted on May 27, 2010
The federal government today released a draft securities act filed in support of its constitutional reference to regulate capital markets activity. The draft act is largely based on provincial securities legislation: for example, the provisions relating to disclosure of information, prospectus offerings and the public interest power remain generally the same...

Profs. Austin and Lemmens on Biobank Governance, Privacy, and Informed Consent

Posted on April 22, 2010
By Prof. Trudo Lemmens Medical research is increasingly relying on biobanks, large repositories of human biological material and related health information. These can be best conceived as elaborate research infrastructures, which allow researchers, often brought together in international research consortia, to study in more detail the long-term interaction between genes, environment and life-style...

Watch visitor Prof. Edward Altman and panel discuss the global credit meltdown

Posted on April 01, 2010
On March 3, 2010, the Faculty of Law hosted a discussion on "Current Conditions and Outlook in Global Credit Markets." Professor Edward Altman, of the Stern School of Business, New York University, gave a presentation, followed by a panel discussion with international and Toronto specialists in the field...

Khadr and Prerogative Power

Posted on April 01, 2010
(from Spring 2010 Rights Review 3:1) by David Schneiderman What one might call ?older? constitutional law has been very much in the news lately with the two controversial prorogations by Prime Minister Harper; the Government?s failure to disclose documents relating to Afghan detainees being released by Canadians to face torture; and the Supreme Court of Canada failing to provide a...

Ben Alarie: Tax law on poker winnings, Read it and weep

Posted on March 24, 2010
NB: from the Globe and Mail More and more Canadians are earning tidy sums playing poker on off-shore poker websites. They often practise incessantly, refine their skills using coaches and software programs, and participate in online forums dedicated to strategy...

Ed Morgan: Canadian educators need education on hate speech

Posted on March 23, 2010
This commentary was first published in the National Post on March 22, 2010. Educate yourself about Canada?s hate laws, the Provost of the University of Ottawa told conservative pundit Ann Coulter in advance of her visit. Campus authorities apparently fear Coulter?s reputation for provocative views...

"Hot to Tame a Prerogative"

Posted on March 15, 2010
by David Schneiderman From The Globe and Mail (March 10, 2010) Opposition efforts to get at the facts about Afghan detainee abuse appear not to have entirely abated, despite former Supreme Court of Canada justice Frank Iacobucci's appointment to advise the government about releasing documents...

Should Securities Regulators Care about Systemic Risk?

Posted on January 20, 2010
One of the implications of the global financial meltdown is a renewed focus on the purposes of securities regulation and whether these purposes should include considerations relating to systemic risk. Monitoring systemic risk has traditionally been within the realm of financial institution (i...

Profs. Anand and Green on "The Move Towards a National Securities Regulator"

Posted on January 19, 2010
Profs. Anita Anand and Andrew Green have posted a new article on SSRN titled "Why is this Taking so Long? The Move Towards a National Securities Regulator." Abstract: Game theoretical analysis can be useful in contexts such as securities regulation, where multiple decision makers (i...

Prof. Jacob Ziegel - Federal judicial appointments: nothing has changed

Posted on December 03, 2009
This article first appeared in The Lawyers' Weekly, November 20, 2009. Some of us entertained a slender hope in 2006 that the Harper administration, after its election into office, could be persuaded not to use federal judicial appointments to feed the patronage mill...

Do Interventions at the Supreme Court of Canada Make a Difference?

Posted on November 02, 2009
Andrew Green and I have just posted a draft of a new paper to SSRN, Interventions at the Supreme Court of Canada: Accuracy, Affiliation, and Acceptance. This is a work in progress that has been prepared for this Friday's Symposium on Interventions by the Asper Centre here at the Faculty of Law...

Profs. Trebilcock and Iacobucci - "Patent protection, the new mother of invention"

Posted on September 30, 2009
This commentary was first published on the Globe and Mail website on September 22, 2009. After years of effort, a Toronto startup company called i4i invented an important piece of technology to dramatically enhance software programs, such as Microsoft Word...

Prof. Anita Anand - "Why macro is prudent"

Posted on September 24, 2009
This commentary was first published in the Financial Post on September 23, 2009. The G20 leaders meet today in Pittsburgh. While macroprudential regulation is likely to be on the agenda, countries continue to wrestle with how, if at all, this concept fits within existing legal frameworks and indeed whether new regulators or committees will be created in each country...

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