Publications
Multinational Citizenship: Practical Implications of a Theoretical Model
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(2006) with Siobhan Harty, in Law and Citizenship, (ed.) The Law Commission of Canada (Legal Dimensions Series). (Vancouver and Toronto: University of British Columbia Press), 91-118.
Re-Configuring Aboriginal-State Relations. Canada: The State of the Federation 2003
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(2005) McGill-Queen’s University Press.
This year’s Canada: The State of the Federation is focused on the reconfiguration of Aboriginal-state relations in the federation. The organizing assumption of the volume is that much of the recent intellectual and policy work in this area has not kept pace with an Aboriginal population that is becoming increasingly socio-demographically diverse, and whose relationships with non-Aboriginal peoples and governments are becoming ever more complex. To address this disjuncture between policy and reality, there is a need for fresh ideas and governance models that speak both to the autonomy of Aboriginal populations and to their relationships of interdependence with non-Aboriginal societies and governments. Particularly vital are initiatives which are relevant to the living experience of land-based, urban, and geographically dispersed Aboriginal populations. Accordingly, one of the central tasks of the volume is to assess whether the self-rule, shared-rule, and intergovernmental features of Canada’s federal geometry are sufficiently flexible to adapt to these challenges. Crucial to this process of federal reform is the cultivation of a political environment where Aboriginal peoples are no longer treated as passive policy takers but as full and equal partners in policy making and institutional design.
In Defense of Multinational Citizenship
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(2005) with Siobhan Harty. University of Wales Press (Political Philosophy Now series) and University of British Columbia Press.
At the beginning of the twenty-first century, the need to develop new forms of citizenship to meet demands for self-determination advanced by substate nations and indigenous peoples is increasingly pressing. In responding to this challenge, this book defends a form of multinational citizenzhip that provides equal recognition to the citizenship regimes of both state and substate nations. The authors develop a democratic argument for self-determination at the substate level and a revised conception of state sovereignty that is divided and shared. Through selected case studies, they present an alternative multinational model of citizenship which takes into account existing liberal nationalist and cosmopolitan theories of citizenship and self-determination.
Shaping the Constitutional Dialogue on Federalism: The Canadian Supreme Court as Meta-Political Actor
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(2005) “Shaping the Constitutional Dialogue on Federalism: The Canadian Supreme Court as Meta-Political Actor,” with James Kelly. Publius: The Journal of Federalism 35, 217-43.
This article challenges the view that the Supreme Court has become the predominant authority on the constitutional distribution of rights and entitlements among governments in the Canadian federation. By assuming this position of constitutional supremacy, critics continue, the Court has usurped key policy functions that belong to political actors, a move that has undermined democratic governance in Canada. Against this view, we argue that the management of Canada’s federal constitutional architecture is a responsibility the courts share with key political actors. We describe the Court’s role as meta-political, whereby the Court’s federalism jurisprudence supplements rather than subverts the constitutional role of political actors. We develop our thesis in relation to two subnational constituencies with a distinctive constitutional status in Canada: the province of Quebec and Aboriginal First Nations.
