Le concept de conscience du droit permet de s’intéresser à la compréhension et à l’utilisation du droit dans la vie quotidienne, afin d’étudier comment des personnes expérimentent leur rapport à celui-ci. En discutant à partir de données obtenues lors d’une enquête ethnographique menée au sein d’hôpitaux, l’objectif du présent article est de contribuer aux études sur la conscience du droit en montrant comment la recherche ethnographique favorise la compréhension de la dimension relationnelle de cette conscience du droit chez des personnes œuvrant professionnellement au sein d’organisations hautement structurées. Cette exploration de l’apport de l’ethnographie à une étude sur la conscience du droit appliquée à une enquête aux urgences québécoises permet de mieux saisir les liens existants entre une démarche de collecte de données (l’ethnographie) et la mobilisation d’un concept (la conscience du droit) dans une étude liée au droit et à la société.

This paper examines the consequences of post-release management programs, arguing that these initiatives extend penal power beyond formal sentencing through mechanisms such as surveillance, discretionary policing, and information sharing. While prolific offender programs are framed as risk-management strategies rather than punishment, they operate in ways that mirror carceral control, restricting autonomy and increasing individuals’ susceptibility to criminalization. Drawing on qualitative interviews with crime analysts and police officers, I analyze how the prolific label structures police interactions, justifies heightened scrutiny and reinforces recidivist assumptions that shape sentencing and enforcement decisions. The findings challenge clear-cut distinctions between carceral and non-carceral interventions, highlighting how penal control functions fluidly across legal and administrative domains. By linking empirical findings to broader theoretical discussions of punishment, surveillance, and risk governance, this study contributes to ongoing debates on the expansion of state power in contemporary criminal justice.

It is well understood that safeguarding confidentiality is paramount to ensuring the success of research and the protection of participations. However, professional responsibilities and ethics of care can, at times, manifest in a requirement, or even a desire, to breach promises of confidentiality. We unpack this tension by drawing on research on the concepts of legal privilege, the right to report and the duty to report, the impacts of disclosures, as well as a study conducted with socio-legal and criminological researchers and criminalized or socially sanctioned communities who have participated in qualitative a research project. Our findings illustrate that while researchers with a clinical designation (e.g., nurses and social workers), enjoy clarity on professional duties, for researchers without such professional policies (e.g., criminologists) there is little guidance on when and how disclosures could and should take place. That said, when faced with the potential of actual and imminent threats of harm to an identifiable person, most researchers align with Supreme Court of Canada guidance, and would consider reporting, but with much deliberation regarding what constitutes harm, to whom one should report, and the consequences of disclosures. In the interests of contributing to this conversation, we conclude this paper with a decision-making framework that puts the Wigmore test into conversation with the Supreme Court of Canada’s 1999 Smith v Jones decision.

Guelph, Ontario, is one of a few cities in Canada that relies solely on groundwater for drinking water. City officials anticipate that the municipality will experience a water deficit in the near future. In response to water security issues residents have actively engaged in the state-sanctioned water source protection committee. This article explores the water management planning process upheld by Ontario’s Clean Water Act, 2006, and examines the question: Is the Clean Water Act’s participatory mode to water governance inclusive of “environmental, health, and other interests of the public”? The analysis of this question engages with the political ecology literature and, in particular, Linton and Budds’s three-part hydrosocial cycle framework. It is argued that the technology of regulatory law (i.e., the Clean Water Act, 2006) constructs the power dynamics and social relations within the state-sanctioned water committee resulting in the weakening of the environmental interests expressed by the public.

Alors que la constitutionnalité de la Loi sur la laïcité de l’État était contestée devant la Cour supérieure du Québec, détournant les regards pour les orienter vers la question du port de symboles religieux dans la fonction publique, se jouait un autre enjeu de laïcité sur un terrain inattendu. Les politiques gouvernementales de gestion de la pandémie de COVID-19 allaient en effet mettre à l’épreuve deux principes aux fondements de la laïcité québécoise – la séparation des Églises et de l’État ; la liberté de conscience et de religion –, sans que ces atteintes ne soient diagnostiquées comme telles. Cet article se penche sur cet impensé des débats récents sur la laïcité québécoise à partir d’un rappel de ses fondements historico-juridiques, puis d’une analyse des effets du dispositif juridique mis en place pour lutter contre la COVID-19 sur l’autonomisation de l’État à l’égard du religieux et la liberté de conscience et de religion.

What does it mean to be a public Catholic institution in Canada? How does this Catholic identity evolve with the secularisation and diversification of society, and with the rising awareness of the complicated legacy of Catholicism and colonisation in Canada? This article explores those questions drawing on document analysis and interviews with staff working in Catholic health care. Taking a legal pluralist approach, it documents how Catholic health-care institutions navigate between transnational canon laws and ethics, and human rights law. Catholic health care is situated in a web of national and transnational legal regimes. We argue that this navigation takes different forms to adapt to societal changes, such as the authorization of Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD). This article speaks directly to how Christianity continues to play a subtle, but still constant presence in Canadian Catholic hospitals, and debunks tropes that construct relationships between state and religion as one of clear separation.