The Women’s Court of Canada (WCC) is an innovative project bringing together academics, activists, and litigators in order literally to rewrite the Canadian Charter equality jurisprudence. The WCC grew out of a LEAF-sponsored colloquium entitled “In Pursuit of substantive Equality,” held in September 2003 and February 2004. Taking inspiration from Oscar Wilde, who once said “the only duty we owe to history is to rewrite it,” the WCC now operates as a virtual court, and ‘reconsiders’ leading equality decisions, rendering alternative decisions as a means of articulating new conceptions of substantive equality. The WCC is engaged in an ongoing critique and re-envisioning of Canadian case law in order to invigorate the equality debate by bringing new voices to the debate and encouraging new thinking about equality issues to the benefit of legal education and the broader public across Canada.
The first phase of the WCC Project focused on the reconsideration of six Supreme Court of Canada cases, which were published in the Canadian Journal of Women and the Law in early 2008. These six cases, which affect the lives of Aboriginal women, women with disabilities, poor women, women with children, and women workers include:
- Symes v. Canada
- Eaton v. Brant County Board of Education
- Native Women’s Association of Canada v. Canada
- Law v. Canada
- Gosselin v. Quebec
- Newfoundland (Treasury Board) v. NAPE
In March 2008 the WCC celebrated its official launch on March 6-7 through a lively panel discussion of “Gender and Judging” and a Symposium entitled “Rewriting Equality”. “Rewriting Equality” brought together a number of constituencies interested in the direction of equality jurisprudence, including public and private lawyers, representatives of community organizations, members of equality-seeking groups, legal academics and law students, in order to critique and re-envision Canadian case law.
To watch the webcast of the complete Symposium and to learn more about the WCC please visit:
WCC
