Critical Conversations in Canadian Public Law is the first 100% open-access collection of peer-reviewed essays devoted entirely to critical appraisals of public law topics in Canada. Set to be published by the University of Ottawa Press in 2023, Critical Conversations in Canadian Public Law highlights the intersections of critical perspectives— including decolonial and Indigenous legal theory, critical race theory, feminisms, and critical disability theory—with doctrinal public law topics, broadly defined.

The goal of the Critical Conversations collection is to showcase interdisciplinary thinking on topical public law issues at the forefront of the evolving relationship between state and society. In Canada, this relationship is undergoing a period of significant reinvention, as evidenced, for example, by the movements for reconciliation, decolonization and Indigenization, the calls to recognize and remedy systemic racism in institutions including police forces, and the extension of human rights protections to prohibit discrimination based on gender identity or expression. By centering critical perspectives on public law topics, Critical Conversations in Canadian Public Law fills a gap in existing Canadian public law literature, which tends to prioritize traditional, largely liberal, public law scholarship. This collection bridges the divide between “public law,” as it is conventionally conceived, taught, and understood, and “critical theory”, by identifying critical theories as not only relevant, but imperative, to robust, fully contextualized understandings of public law topics. This approach marks an original and significant intervention into the field of public law in Canada.

The collection includes 17 chapters organized into five thematic sections. The diverse contributors to Critical Conversations include legal academics, former judges, and activists from across Canada, writing in both English and French. Additionally, the text opens with an Introduction authored collectively by the editorial team that investigates and interrogates the field of “critical public law” writ large, mapping the contours of the field and laying the foundation for future work in this area, and closes with a short conclusion that draws together key themes, ideas, questions and problems from the 17 chapters.

Contributions by: Efrat Arbel, Andrée Boisselle, Nathalie Chalifour, Yin-Yuan Chen, Allison Christians, Gordon Christie, Ruby Dhand, Lorena Fontaine, Véronique Fortin, Ashleigh Keall, Lisa M. Kelly, Lisa Kerr, Harry Laforme, Jamie Chai Yun Liew, Ravi Malhotra, Meenakshi Mannoe, Aaron Mills, Avnish Nanda, Mona Paré, Kim Pate, Dayna Scott, Samuel Singer, Kerry Sloan, Reakash Walters, Vincent Wong, Donna Young