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Leading Canadian scholar Ruth Sullivan describes the act of statutory interpretation as a mix of art and archeology. The collection, Feminist Judgments: Rewritten Tax Opinions, affirms her assessment. If the act of statutory interpretation requires us to deploy our interdisciplinary talents, at least somewhat unmoored from the constraints of formal expressions of legal doctrine, why haven’t feminists been more inclined to write about statutory interpretation? Put another way, some scholars acknowledge that judges “are subtly influenced by preconceptions, endemic privilegings and power hierarchies, and prevailing social norms and ‘conventional’ wisdom.” Those influences become the background for how judges read legislation. Yet, there is surprisingly little literature about how feminists (or feminist decision-makers) do or could approach statutory interpretation projects. This essay offers some preliminary reflections on what feminist statutory interpretation entails, using the eleven decisions (and the attendant commentaries) presented in the collection as source material. Ten principles are proposed as a way of generating discussion about an undertheorized area of feminist scholarship (statutory interpretation).

Cases might be valuable for more than the legal lessons they offer. This paper argues that cases present an archive of evidence that can help us reason backward to better understand the fissures in the ways humans interact and how our social, political, and economic systems generate tensions in their lives. More specifically, the paper looks through a small window into the lives of the people who find themselves caught between our collective and individual expenditure aspirations. It explores the circumstances in which individuals find that their outstanding tax debts pose a threat to their ability to maintain ownership of their home. Resume: Les affaires judiciaires peuvent etre interessantes a plusieurs egards au-dela de leur utilite comme enseignements a tirer. L’auteur soutient que les affaires judiciaires presentent une veritable archive de preuves nous permettant de raisonner en amont afin de mieux comprendre les fissures dans les interactions humaines et comment notre systeme social, politique et economique est cause de tension dans la vie des gens. Plus precisement, l’article donne un coup d’œil sur la vie des gens qui se trouvent coinces entre nos aspirations de depense collectives et individuelles. Il examine les circonstances dans lesquelles les personnes constatent que leurs dettes fiscales menacent leur capacite a demeurer proprietaires de leur residence.

Queen's University's Faculty of Law is home to Feminist Legal Studies Queen's (FLSQ), a research group that expands awareness and development of scholarship in feminist legal studies, enables the development of feminist legal scholars at Queen's, and fosters connections among feminists with an interest in law. In the fall of 2014, I had the privilege of returning to Queen's Law to give the first seminar in FLSQ's 2014–15 lecture series. I was tasked with providing some reflections on why feminist legal theory matters. Some of the people attending the talk were also enrolled in the Queen's Feminist Legal Studies Workshop. The readings assigned for those students were (1) Toni Pickard's (retired Queen's law faculty member) wonderful introduction to law students at Queen's from 1987, 1 (2) Patricia Monture's (a graduate of Queen's) 2004 piece, “Women's Words,” 2 and (3) Ruthann Robson's (lesbian legal theorist and class critic) piece “To Market, To Market.” 3 What follows is the text from that talk.

Schwartz, M.H., Hess, G.F., & Sparrow, S. M. (2013). What the Best Law Teachers Do. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. Pages: 355. Price: 29.95 USD (hardcover). ISBN 978-0-674049-14-7After almost 15 years of teaching, I am still flummoxed by the earnest, engaged student who takes the class off kilter. You know the scene. You pose a question for the class to consider, a question rooted in the materials students were asked to prepare in advance. EES (our earnest, engaged student) throws up her hand. She says she does not want to weigh in on that question, but has a different point she would like to make.1 Where does that moment go? On the one hand, you do not want to quash EES's enthusiasm; on the other hand, you want to keep the class focused at a particular point because it's an important building block.Enter Sophie Sparrow. She doesn't look like a rock star. #ThinkSparrow is not trending (in contrast to #ThinkTink). But Sophie has been recognized as one of the 25 most influential leaders in legal education in 2012, 2013, and 2014, and she was an inaugural recipient of the National Award for Innovation and Excellence in Teaching Professionalism.In 2014 and 2015, I had the pleasure of working with Sophie Sparrow and Gerry Hess at a progressive teaching workshop at our faculty. They were the most graceful teachers I have seen in action: subtle, funny, focused, organized, thoughtful, and other-oriented.So, when one of my colleagues, let's call that person EES, volunteered a reply to a query Sophie and Gerry had put to our group that took us in another direction, I was rapt: How would this moment unfold? Sophie looked at EES and said in a calm voice, "That is not the question we are asking." She then turned to another colleague with her hand up and asked her to respond. It was so simple. I don't think EES felt suppressed, rebuked, or embarrassed because EES continued to engage actively through the workshop. As a member of the class, I wasn't distracted by the exchange, which was brief and unapologetic. Nor did not take us, and the discussion, off course. It was elegant.That is what it is like to be in the room with great teachers. You'll get a taste of this experience when you read What the Best Law Teachers Do. The book borrows from the genius of Ken Bain's classic, What the Best College Teachers Do (Bain, 2004). While re- searching the book, Michael Schwartz, Gerry Hess, and Sophie Sparrow toured the United States to meet and learn about the talents of 26 excellent law teachers. As the authors succinctly state, the project had three goals: to identify outstanding law teachers, to synthesize the principles that guide their teaching, and to document those principles in a way that is useful to others (Schwartz, Hess, and Sparrow, 2013, p. 4).What the Best Law Teachers Do has 10 chapters. Seven chapters focus on documenting how exceptional law teachers engage in the learning process. These chapters include evidence of how they relate to their students, set expectations, prepare to teach, engage students, provide feedback and assessment, and develop strategies for ensuring students learn lasting lessons. These chapters and another on the personal qualities of excellent teachers form the core of the book. Flanking the focus on the teachers' practices is an opening chapter that develops a working definition of exceptional learning and a closing chapter that offers some suggestions for how the book might be used.It cannot have been easy to narrow the field of professors to 26. The authors gathered nominations from law students, professors, deans, and alumni. They had a website with a call for nominations and reached out on listservs. They asked each of the over 250 people who were nominated to provide evidence of their sustained, salutary effect on students, a statement of their teaching philosophy, and two years' of student evaluations. That request narrowed the pool to about 110 teachers. …

This article has a modest aim—to engage feminists and progressive international tax scholars in a shared dialogue about the importance of protecting and enhancing the state’s revenue-raising and international revenue distribution roles. To this end, the article reviews some of the feminist and critical race scholarship that might assist international tax scholars and policy makers concerned with issues of international revenue distribution; explains the role of tax treaties in allocating tax revenues between nations; applies a feminist analysis to the problem of this international revenue allocation project; and offers some tentative thoughts about a feminist approach to allocating a greater portion of international tax revenues to low-income countries.

Over the last twenty years, feminists interested in law reform have struggled with the difficulty of reaching consensus on a method for valuing women's unpaid work in the home. This article highlights the significance of Fobel v. Dean as a defining moment in legal recognition of the value of women's unpaid labour in the home in tort law. It reviews the reasons why Fobel v. Dean presents a breakthrough in the case law on damage awards in tort for women's unpaid work in the home. It also suggests changes to the methods adopted by courts to quantify the value of women's unpaid work in the home that might be endorsed in cases that will become future defining moments. Durant les vingt dernieres annees, les feministes qui s'interessent a la reforme du droit ont eu beaucoup de difficultesa trouver un terrain d'entente sur une methode pour evaluer le travail domestique non remunere accompli par les femmes. Le present article met en lumiere l'importance de l'arret Fobel c. Dean qui marque la reconnaissance judiciaire, en droit de la responsabilite civile, de la valeur du travail non paye des femmes a la maison. L'article explique en quoi l'arret Fobel c. Dean represente une percee dans la jurisprudence touchant les dommages accordes en responsabilite civile pour le travail non remunere des femmes. L'auteure suggere egalement des modifications aux methodes adoptees par les tribunaux pour quantifier la valeur du travail domestique non remunere accompli par les femmes en vue d'assurer que la jurisprudence en cette matiere continue de progresser.

This article explores the process of norm migration through the study of one tax expert, Victor Thuronyi. It situates the literature on the role of experts in tax norm migration and identifies core themes and gaps in the tax transplant literature; explores five themes, connected to the literature on the role of tax experts and tax transplants, that arise from a study of Victor Thuronyi’s contributions to tax transplantation; and concludes with some reflections on the benefits and challenges of having highly specialized, non-insider tax experts engaged in the exercise of drafting tax laws. Comparative tax, tax policy, tax experts.