Bad Law: Rethinking Justice for a Postcolonial Canada

By John Reilly and Jane Wong

Former Alberta judge John Reilly examines the Canadian justice system after years of confronting its failures in relation to Indigenous peoples and communities.

In Bad Law, Reilly revisits assumptions he once held as a judge and asks how Canadian legal institutions might change in a postcolonial society. Building on arguments developed in his earlier books, he focuses on the effects of adversarial and punitive justice and on what he learned from Indigenous communities during his legal career.

Reilly contrasts the dominant criminal-justice model with restorative approaches rooted in Indigenous legal and community traditions. He uses historical examples, legal cases and personal experience to argue for a system that places greater emphasis on repairing harm, restoring relationships and reducing the conditions that contribute to repeated offending. These are Reilly's arguments, presented from his perspective as a former jurist.

The book is suited to Indigenous law, restorative justice, Canadian politics, public policy and legal-reform collections. It is both a critique of existing institutions and an account of an individual judge changing his mind.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1771603348
• ISBN13: 9781771603348
• Release Date: September 2019
• Publisher: Rocky Mountain Books Incorporated
• Length: 280 Pages
• Weight: 0.70 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.4" x 8.4"
• Age Range: 18 years and up
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher