- Assess and compare the significance and impact of legal systems or codes (significance):
Sample activities:
- Assess the significance of the Constitution Act, 1982, and the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms to human rights in Canada.
- Analyze the role of global dispute resolution institutions and agencies in international human rights and economic development issues.
- Assess the role of the judiciary as a constitutional check on legislative power.
- Analyze the role of the International Court of Justice (the World Court) at The Hague in cases involving human rights abuses.
- Determine the importance of key legal principles, cases, social forces, and events in the evolution of
- Assess the impact that a law, court decision, or legal principle has on legal structures and/or the lives of citizens.
- Assess the impact of social and/or political forces on the development of law.
- Analyze continuities and changes in legal systems or codes across jurisdictions (continuity and change):
Sample activities:
- Compare and contrast different views on the role of the correctional system in Canada.
- Analyze how and why laws, justice system structures and practices, legal precedents, and legislative agendas change over time.
- Analyze forces that reinforce continuity and factors that have both short-term and long-term effects on legal systems and the administration
of justice.
- Explain and infer multiple perspectives on legal systems or codes (perspective):
Sample activities:
- Analyze whether Canadian laws regarding the rights of minority groups evolved because of, or in spite of, popular support for change.
- Analyze legal principles such as fairness, justice, equality, the presumption of innocence, and the rule of law by examining a variety
of legal issues, controversies, and cases.
- Make reasoned ethical judgments about legal systems or codes (ethical judgment):
Sample activity:
- Investigate ways the legal system has been used in the past to maintain inequalities.
- Make reasoned ethical judgments about controversial decisions, legislation, or policy (ethical judgment):
Sample activities:
- Assess cases in which the legal system has made rulings on human rights, and evaluate the extent to which these decisions advanced
or infringed on the rights of those affected. - Consider how laws affect society and how society affects laws.
- Examine the roles of the different branches of government in the development of law in Canada and how laws affect or accommodate
different groups.
Consider the interactions between various sides in trials and other legal disputes.