Blog

CANCELLED: NECESSITY Film Screening

NECESSITY traces the fight in Minnesota against the expansion of pipelines carrying highly toxic tar sands oil through Native lands and essential waterways in North America. Front line communities–Native Peoples and communities of color–suffer the most immediate and severe consequences of the climate crisis: impacts on physical and mental health as well as territorial desecration and displacement. Yet with painful histories have come deep insights, forms of resilience and modes of resistance.

Workshop: Protecting the Rights of Nature: Towards a Law for BC

Warrior Lawyer Profile: Maxine Burkett

Fish in the streets, sinking cities, and an octopus in a parking garage – these are all real events that have occurred over the last few years as a result of rising sea levels. Maxine Burkett, Professor of Law at the University of Hawaii, says that these shocking events are not getting enough attention. “Climate change is not the elephant in the room but the octopus in the parking lot,” she said in 2018.

Warrior Lawyer Profile: John Borrows

Professor John Borrows’ work and accomplishments are numerous and diverse, but they all serve one goal. As Professor Borrows states, “I’m trying to reconcile Indigenous legal approaches with common law itself.” Borrows has worked tirelessly to realize a tripartite version of Canadian legal pluralism, with Indigenous law enjoying the same weight as common and civil law. This greater voice for Indigenous law means greater power for law derived from, intertwined with and responsible to the natural world. Borrows’ work demonstrates how law can be drawn from the land.

Warrior Lawyer Profile: Polly Higgins

In 2019 the Earth lost a powerful legal advocate in Polly Higgins. Ten years earlier, concerned by the growing environmental and climate crises and motivated by a love of nature gained from growing up on the wild west coast of Scotland, Higgins turned her back on a successful career as a high-paid corporate lawyer and devoted herself full time to protecting the Earth and all its inhabitants.

Warrior Lawyer profile: Cormac Cullinan

If a tree falls in the forest… does it have a case? If the forest plays a vital role in the earth’s defence against climate destruction, who could say that the forest doesn’t deserve to exist? If it does, perhaps we need a whole new legal paradigm, one that can balance human rights against the right of a forest to exist and flourish. It’s on this leading edge of advocacy and philosophy that we find Cormac Cullinan, “Wild Lawyer.” 

Legal professionals call on PM Trudeau and Premier Horgan to meet with Wet’suwet’en Hereditary Chiefs

Today 38 settler and Indigenous legal professionals from across Canada sent an open letter to BC Premier John Horgan and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau demanding that they meet with the Wet’suwet’en Hereditary Chiefs without delay to resolve the conflict over the proposed Coastal GasLink pipeline in a manner that upholds the principle of reconciliation, respects the authority of Wet’suwet’en law, implements the Indigenous right to free, prior and informed consent, and upholds the honour of the Crown.

Book Launch: Transnational Business Governance, Marginalized Actors and Regulatory Quality

Warrior Lawyer Profile: Rafael Maldonado

Guatemala emerged from a 36-year civil war in 1996 in which approximately 200,000 people died or were disappeared. Mining activity is immensely controversial in Guatemala, particularly due to its impact on Indigenous communities and the environment that sustains them. Lawyer Pedro Rafael Maldonado Flores has been instrumental in defending both the environment and the defenders protecting the natural world.

Warrior Lawyer Profile: Michelle Maloney

In an age of environmental crisis and political inaction, our world needs leaders and warriors. Enter Dr. Michelle Maloney, an Australian lawyer at the forefront of advocating and strategizing towards systemic change within our legal system and broader society.

Warrior Lawyer Profile: Camille Labchuk

"We are expanding rights constantly to [marginalized] groups … and there’s a lot progress left to be made for women, for … racialized communities, for the environment certainly and especially for animals,” Canadian animal rights lawyer Camille Labchuk told Silver Donald Cameron of The Green Interview in 2016. “The situation won’t improve, she said, “without people being extremely vocal, extremely active and trying innovative legal strategies.”

STOP UnderMining Indigenous Rights

Hear the Xinca Indigenous People of Guatemala and their Canadian supporters speak about the struggle against El Escobal mine, owned by Vancouver-based Pan-American Silver, founded by Ross Beaty.