Was James Madison Ever for the Bill of Rights?

Abstract

This article revisits the question whether James Madison believed the Bill of Rights improved the Constitution. In particular, it asks whether the evidence supports the argument that Madison was persuaded that bills of rights serve an important educative function in constitutional government. It concludes that the evidence does not support this argument and suggests that Madison did not believe that the Bill of Rights improved the Constitution.     

Of grizzlies and landslides: the use of archaeological and anthropological evidence in Canadian aboriginal rights cases

Abstract

This paper discusses some of the most contentious problems raised by the use of archaeological and anthropological evidence in aboriginal rights litigation in Canada. The first part of the paper deals with the general impact of archaeological and anthropological theories on law. The more specific problems related to the use of archaeological and anthropological evidence in aboriginal rights litigation are the subject of the second part. The final section deals with the reverse problem, that is, the question of the law's impact on the disciplines of archaeology and anthropology.     

Science,Technology and Constitutional Rights: An Interdisciplinary Forecast for the US Congress

Abstract

In honor of the bicentennial of the United States Constitution, a Congressional agency undertook an interdisciplinary analysis of the implications of new and emerging science-based technologies for constitutionally protected civil rights and liberties. Four areas of scientific research and development were identified as most likely to give rise to significantly new technological capabilities. Some of these could challenge established assumptions about individual responsibility, civil liberties, and the powers of government: information science, molecular biology, materials science, and social science, particularly as they find applications in communications and publishing, criminal justice, medicine, public health, and bioengineering. Constitutional precedents related to freedom of the press, open scientific communications, the rights of those accused or convicted of crime, due process, equal protection of laws, and individual privacy will have to be re-examined. Science is offering individuals new choices and forcing them to make new decisions, even as it brings into question some assumptions about free will and accountability.     

Education and the Origins of Quebec’s International Engagement

ABSTRACT

This article examines some of the ways that education has served as a catalyst for the engagement of Quebec and Quebeckers with the broader world, from the educational activities of French Canadian missionaries beginning in the late-nineteenth century to the growing involvement of secular nongovernmental organizations and of the government of Quebec itself in international educational assistance in the mid- to late-twentieth century. For the government of Quebec in particular, jurisdiction over education was integral to the development of Quebec’s own international identity and the Gérin-Lajoie Doctrine that both articulated and bolstered its claim to international competence. The controversy surrounding Quebec’s international educational endeavors has declined since the 1970s, and with it the relative amount of attention and funding devoted to it by the provincial government, yet education broadly defined remains a bridge linking Quebec and Quebeckers to the wider world and catalyzing their engagement with it.     

Crafting Aboriginal Nations in Taiwan: The Presbyterian Church and the Imagination of the Aboriginal National Subject

Abstract

This study argues that since the end of World War II, the Taiwanese Presbyterian Church’s practical institutionalised arrangements for evangelisation have had the unintended consequence of creating an imagined multi-layered aboriginal national Subject. The argument is founded upon analysis of three main points. First, aboriginal members’ daily practices within the three-level federalist church polity formed in their minds an acquired “schema”, a ready-made cognitive structure that could be easily appropriated by them to imagine their own nations in a certain way. Second, when the Church promoted the translation of the Bible and hymns into aboriginal vernaculars for practical evangelising reasons, it unintentionally created tribe-based cultural-linguistic mediums as national languages upon which the contents of aboriginal nations could be elaborated and reproduced. This step further consolidated tribe-based ethnic categorisation and facilitated the reification of aboriginal nations. Third, since aboriginal ministers and elders were institutionally endowed with many strengths in comparison to other aboriginal elites, they came to serve as human activators in formulating and spreading the imagination of the multi-layered aboriginal national Subject.     

A Quiet Revolution in Diplomacy: Quebec–UK Relations Since 1960

ABSTRACT

Quebec’s modern international outlook and its current paradiplomacy can be dated largely from the Quiet Revolution of the 1960s. Since then, the provincial government in Quebec City and the federal government in Ottawa have had to tread a fine line in accommodating each other’s constitutional rights in the field of international relations—a line that has occasionally been breached, especially in the years following the Quiet Revolution and in critical periods such as those prior to the 1980 and 1995 referenda. Foreign governments have also had to engage in careful diplomacy in order to avoid upsetting either Ottawa or Quebec City—and this has been especially true in the case of the countries historically most involved with Canada and Quebec—France, the United States, and Britain. But whereas there has been some academic writing on Quebec’s relationships with France and the United States, very little attention has been devoted to Quebec–UK relations since the Quiet Revolution. This article seeks to fill that gap and argues that the Quebec–UK relationship since the 1960s can itself best be characterized as a “quiet revolution” in diplomacy that has largely avoided the controversies that have sometimes dogged Quebec’s relations with France and the United States.     

Governing from the Border? Quebec’s Role in North American Security

ABSTRACT

This article aims to shed light on Quebec’s role in cross-border security governance. It exposes the challenges Quebec is facing in this area and what cross-border activities fall within its jurisdiction. The supported hypothesis in this article is that security is subjected to an increasing politicization from the Quebec government in a post-9/11 context, which contributes to the edification of an embryonic “multilevel governance.” If this politicization was noticeable in political statements and international agreements, it seems that it was more driven by conjectural imperatives than a real desire to make Quebec a leader in transnational security. Therefore, there were no diplomatic and financial commitments to make security part of the Gérin-Lajoie doctrine and develop a similar paradiplomacy as in other fields. However, on different technical and bureaucratic levels, transgovernmental relations between certain Quebec governmental organizations, including police corps, and their American counterparts were created. Consequently, they contributed to make continental action more effective, at least in a certain measure.     

Cultural rights and their contribution to sustainable development: implications for cultural policy

Abstract

This article aims to analyse the meaning and implications of cultural rights for cultural policies concerned with sustainable development. Although references to both cultural rights and sustainable development have become widespread within cultural policy documents in recent decades, the actual conceptual and operational implications often remain vague, as an ambitious discourse that may conceal a poverty of resources and capacities. As a result, the ideal horizon suggested by cultural rights and sustainable development may not always be achieved in practice, nor are the mechanisms to achieve it always well known. In this respect, the article aims to dissect the actual requirements posed by cultural rights and sustainable development, including their different notions and areas of synergy and intersections, in order to shed light on relevant cultural policy approaches. To this end, a range of examples taken from a variety of contexts will also be examined as areas of expressed needs or areas of possible solutions.     

Wrapped in Two Flags: The Complex Political History of Nunavik

ABSTRACT

During the first half of the twentieth century, northern Quebec was under federal jurisdiction. Tired of English Canadian supremacy and increasingly aware of northern Quebec’s considerable natural resources, which could provide a solid basis for future moves toward independence, the Quebec government began to take over responsibility for its northern territories in the 1960s. It established a regional administration to take charge of its northern affairs and sent officers to northern Quebec’s remote communities. For two decades, both governments administered the region and imposed two political systems on the local Inuit. This article is based on lengthy fieldwork and archival research. The historical background is described to show how Nunavik has developed as a political and social entity through its relationships with the Quebec and Canadian governments. This conflictual situation has created tensions in the Inuit community, resulting in political dissensions over the goal of self-government. Finally, this article details how the Inuit have exploited federal–provincial tensions to further their own interests.     

CANADA,QUEBEC AND THEORIES OF INTERNAL WAR

Abstract

The past several years have been marked by renewed signs of significant political unrest and separatist activity in Quebec. In the same period of time a number of scholars in different disciplines have revivified the study of domestic violence or internal war. In spite of this temporal co-occurrence, students of Canadian affairs have done little to place that Quebec independence movement in the context of a theory which would make it understandable as a “type” of behavior rather than as a completely unique activity. This paper discusses some of the requirements of such theories, as they relate to political stability and internal war, categorizes a number of existing works in regard to how they explain the sources of political resistance and revolt and attempts to relate them to the current Quebec-Canada difficulties.     

Implementing political agreement in Northern Ireland: Planning issues for Irish language policy

This paper examines the place of the Irish language in the context of the political agreement recently reached in Northern Ireland. Language planning issues are seen to turn on critical relationships between the emergent legislative framework and local Irish-speaking communities in the region. A model for community-based language planning initiatives is proposed as a means of ensuring the effective engagement of language policy with Irish-speakers. It is suggested that the issue of language rights is likely to become much more pressing as the new institutions of state seek to reflect the socio-political diversity of the region.     

Development in Nunavik: How Regional and Local Initiatives Redefine Sustainable Development in Nunavik

ABSTRACT

For more than 50 years, the Inuit of Nunavik have been subjected to development plans devised in the south by the Government of Canada and Quebec that has a profound impact on Inuit people and their culture. The latest plan, known as Plan Nord, proposes sustainable development for the North based on the protection of 50 percent of the territory. However, the Inuit of Nunavik face many social challenges and this is reflected in the socioeconomic indicators of the region. In order to alleviate these social circumstances, numerous regional and local initiatives are attempting to establish programs better suited to the culture and needs of Nunavimmiut. Examples at the regional level include childcare and midwifery services supported by Quebec. At the local level, initiatives such as the Unaaq Men’s Association and the Innavik Project are making an effort to address local needs. In this paper, following a presentation of the Nunavik governance architecture, we will analyze how local (Unaaq, Innavik) and regional initiatives (Midwifery Program, Childcare, Preparation for Post-Secondary Education, Nunavik Parks) contribute to the sustainable development of Nunavik.     

(Why) Did Reconstruction Fail? Legislating and Constitutionalizing Civil Rights

Abstract

The Thirty-ninth Congress, which was elected in November 1864 and began its first session in December 1865, undertook three tasks: to restore the Union after the Civil War, to amend the Constitution to ensure citizenship to the freedmen, and to legislate federal guarantees for their civil rights. Considering the political constraints of their situation—a hostile President and intransigence in many of the states of the former Confederacy—this essay aims to catalogue and assess the achievements of that Congress. While the Fourteenth Amendment in the long run served its intended purpose and the Civil Rights and Reconstruction Acts secured for a while the integration of the freedmen into the polity, Reconstruction failed to win widespread consent and proved impossible, at least politically, to continuously enforce.     

Southern (Over) Exposure? Quebec and the Evolution of Canada’s Grand Strategy, 2002–2012

ABSTRACT

One of the most persistent themes in the debate on Canadian foreign policy over the past few decades concerns the influence Quebec is thought to possess over the design and implementation of Canadian foreign and defense policy. Our purpose in this article is to situate this general debate within a more specific context, of Canada’s grand strategic choices as they principally involve the country’s security and defense relations with the US. To do this, we adopt somewhat of a “counterfactual” tack; to wit, we inquire whether, in the absence of Quebec from the Canadian confederation, we should expect to have seen a fundamentally different grand strategy fashioned by Ottawa, one with different significance for relations with the US. We focus on two specific cases, both of which have figured prominently in recent Canadian–American strategic relations: the war in Afghanistan and the invasion of Iraq. We conclude that while there is something to the claim that Quebec can and does boast of a certain “specificity” in the matter of Canada’s grand-strategic preferences, it is hardly the same thing as arguing that the country without Quebec would have adopted policies on both Afghanistan and Iraq that were fundamentally different from the ones it chose to follow.     

THE USE OF SHELL-TEMPERED POTTERY IN THE CADDO AREA OF THE SOUTHEASTERN UNITED STATES

Abstract

Freshwater mussel shell was used as a temper in the manufacture of ceramic vessels by potters in the Caddo area of the southeastern United States after ca. A.D. 1300. This was at least one or two centuries after it became the dominant temper used by aboriginal groups in much of the Eastern Woodlands but generally contemporaneous with shelltempered usage in parts of the Southern Plains. The introduction of shell temper was variable across the Caddo area, and in certain regions its use was negligible in ceramic vessel assemblages until the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries but then was rapidly adopted as the dominant temper employed in vessel manufacture, particularly for utility wares. In the traditional territory of the historic Hasinai Caddo in East Texas, shell temper did not appear in vessels until the early eighteenth century, and then only in minor amounts on presumed trade vessels.     

The Special Relationship Transformed. The Canada–Quebec–France Triangle after de Gaulle

ABSTRACT

Because of France’s unique role in Quebec’s international relations, any study of Quebec’s emergence on the international scene necessarily involves an analysis of this relationship. This article proposes an examination of Canada–France–Quebec relations in the decades following de Gaulle’s resignation in 1969. Several scholars focus on France’s implicit support for Quebec independence, considering that to be the essential ingredient of their “special relationship,” whereas I demonstrate that the foregoing interpretation overlooks the fact that France began to withdraw from the Canadian internal debate soon after de Gaulle’s resignation. During the last forty years, France’s abstention from interfering in Canadian internal affairs enabled both the flourishing of Quebec diplomacy and the deepening of the France–Quebec relationship.     

Measuring Inuit Health from Ungava to Nunavik via Nouveau Québec: Episodes in the History of Researcher–Subject Relations

ABSTRACT

Inuit have been the subject of research attention since the earliest encounters with Europeans. Using the Foucauldian concept of biopolitics this article explores the history of researcher–research subject relations produced through health knowledge in the region now known as Nunavik. This history is organized in three time periods: The first is the “Ungava” era and is explored in the observations of members of the Hudson Bay Expedition and subsequent mapping efforts. The second “Nouveau Québec” era begins in 1912 when the current borders of Québec were established and lasts until 1975. After a period of indifference, research interest grows rapidly in the post-war period with a focus of social adaptation and culture change. The third era begins in 1975 with the signing of the James Bay and Northern Quebec Agreement. This marks the beginning of Inuit political development within an Inuit-controlled regional governance structure. The conceptualization of three different health surveys during this period shows an emerging complexity in how Inuit health is imagined. An upcoming fourth survey which marks the first time the study of Inuit physical, social, and community health will be initiated by an Inuit-led health authority.     

The Changing Circumpolar World for Canada,Quebec, Nunavik,and the Arctic Council

ABSTRACT

Arctic Quebec is one piece of the puzzle comprising the Circumpolar World. In fact, almost one-third of Quebec’s territory lies within the Canadian Arctic. This geographic fact places Nunavik and its people squarely in economic and political affairs swirling around the Circumpolar World, but so far their political involvement has been minimal. This article explores three main themes: the Arctic nature of Nunavik; Nunavik’s place in the political corridors of the Arctic Council, Canada, and the Circumpolar World; and global warming as a link between these topics, because of its impact on the Arctic environment and peoples and because of the growing interest of non-Arctic nations in the Arctic.