CARLETON UNIVERSITY
LAWS 3001A
Women and the Legal Process
Fall 2006

Professor T. Brettel Dawson
bdawson@ccs.carleton.ca

The Research Essay
Requirements and Rules

Value: The essay is worth 40% of your final grade in the course. It will have two parts: analysis (30%) and action (10%)

Due date: Friday, November 10th by 4.30pm

Submission: Submit via the Law Department Essay Chute next to Loeb D473 (around the corner, hole in the wall). Marked essays will be handed back in the final class or before.

Keep a copy of your final papers as submitted.

Do not put your paper under my door!

The Department does not accept faxed papers.

I will not accept e-mailed papers.

Length: No more than 15 pages (not including endnotes or bibliography).

Can be shorter if you can pull it off and still do a good job. Cannot be longer. Anything over the limit will be crossed out, not read and not marked.

Presentation: Typed, double-spaced on white paper. The font should be 12 point, preferably Times New Roman. Essays must be stapled in the top left-hand corner. Include a cover page with your name, student number, course name and number, title of your essay and the name of the instructor.

Format notes: Absolutely no use of colour or graphics on the cover or elsewhere except for necessary tables or graphs; no plastic covers or spiral binding. Do not enclose in a folder. No exceptions!

Extensions: If you need an extension, see or email Professor Dawson as soon as possible and before the due date. Please be prepared to provide official supporting documentation.

Penalties: Papers submitted after the due date, and without an extension, will be considered late. They will also be subject to grade penalty as follows: any assignment submitted after 4.30 pm on the due date (a Friday), will be penalized one third of a grade; thereafter an additional two-thirds of a letter grade per day.

Citation: All sources must be fully and accurately cited. Use a recognized style guide. You can also refer to the law style sheet: http://www.carleton.ca/law/style.htm. All direct quotes from other sources must be enclosed in quotation marks. All paraphrases from sources must be credited to their source. Make sure that when you take notes you identify their source and whether you are copying verbatim. Be very careful not to so closely track your notes from sources (or quotes) that you inadvertently copy the source without appropriate attribution. These situations may be regarded as potential plagiarism and/or not original. Quotes of more than 50 words should be indented and single-spaced.

Originality: Plagiarism is an academic offence. All papers must be fully original and may not be submitted in more than one course; all sources must be fully and accurately cited. Be particularly careful that you do not hand in overly similar work if you discuss your ideas or work in conjunction with a classmate in the course of developing your paper. Without exception or discussion, I will refer suspected cases of plagiarism immediately to the Dean. Refer further to the University Calendar.

Topics: Essay work must address one of the topics provided. You can choose the particular ‘research question’, angle or focus that you find most compelling for your essay so long as this is within the broad parameters of the topic outlined. You must consult with the instructor if you wish to write an essay on another topic and obtain her approval. Any essay submitted on a non-approved topic will be circulated to the student’s other course instructors for the academic year to verify originality.

TASK

Task: The essay should have an introduction and conclusion and two parts as follows:

1. Part A: Issues and analysis: Focus and scope of essay defined. Core concepts identified and analyzed in relation to theory, case law or legislation, government policy and academic literature.

2. Part B: Action: in light of your analysis and conclusions, what action steps should be taken? Choose and write up ONE Recommended Action (eg. Draft a piece of legislation to be presented for vote in Parliament, or a new government policy for (with explanatory notes) for presentation to a cabinet committee for approval; rewrite the relevant portion of a case that you find problematic; or draft a program of action to be implemented by an appropriate social advocacy group.

Purpose: The dual purposes of a research essay assignment in a third-year course are to allow you to explore in depth an area of particular interest related to the course and also to develop your critical thinking and research skills as young scholars in putting together ideas, issues, and research content. What we are trying to do here is hinted at in these two phrases, one contemporary and one rooted in Carleton’s history: “everyone can have an opinion, but is it well informed” (Globe and Mail advertising campaign 2000); and “the trained intelligence of a nation is its greatest asset, greater than any material resource.” (Henry Marshall Tory, founder of Carleton University).

The linking of Part A and Part B is to encourage you to research and analyse an issue and come to understand it well (Part A) and then to articulate what you think should be done in response, using one of the ‘tools’ for legal and social change in relation to women. (Part B).

TOPICS

Review the Focus Section on Women, Law and Social Change in NEXUS, Magazine of the University of Toronto, Faculty of Law (handed out in the first class AND available online at the website for University of Toronto Law School. http://www.law.utoronto.ca/visitors_content.asp?itemPath=5/4/0/0/0&contentId=344

Select an article on a topic of particular interest to you and use it as a starting point to identify a topic or research issue you want to follow up. The topics that are permitted will be related to one of the following articles in NEXUS:

• The Women’s Court of Canada,Prof. Denise Réaume
• The ‘Opt-Out’ Revolution, Prof. Brenda Cossman
• Reflections on Mothering, Prof. Jennifer Nedelsky
• Labour Law, Work and Family, Profs. Kerry Rittich and Joanne Conaghan
• Cultivating Gender Equality, Prof. Lorraine Weinrib
• Improving the Law of Spousal Support, Prof. Carol Rogerson
• Shared Parenting, Prof. Martha Shaffer
• The Debate Over Faith Based Arbitration, Prof. Audrey Macklin
• Trailblazers (you might want to expand beyond U of T law graduates if this subject interests you and note, the recent book by Mary Jane Mossman, First Women Lawyers: A Comparative Study of Gender, Law and the Legal Professions (Oxford: Hart, 2006).

Last words

I recommend that you DO NOT contact the professors at University of Toronto to discuss their articles! However, you could research for their writing in related areas to get you going on in-depth research. Their biographical details and some recent publications are listed on the website at http://www.law.utoronto.ca/

Your essays must address issues or themes related to law, women, and social change:

Law: Understood broadly; encompassing :

The actions or decisions of people in the legal system (lawyers, advocates, legislators, judges) and institutions (courts, police, legislatures, international fora)’.
domestic and international law (judicial decisions, legislation, human rights and Charter of Rights, international conventions, treaties customary law); can draw on Canadian and non-Canadian examples. Be careful not to present a US focused essay or research; make sure that you research and write from a ‘Canadian point of view’.
policy (implementation of programs by government).

Women: understood to encompass women with different races, classes, sexual orientation, cultures, religions, disabilities; diverse ways of seeing the world and experiencing it. You don’t need cover all womens experience, but to be conscious of which women/what experience you are addressing.


HOW TO PREPARE YOUR ESSAY

Select a topic area of interest and read the relevant material in NEXUS. Then, do some general reading to broaden out your understanding of the area and help you to identify a particular element, issue or problem that you find interesting to research in detail. Shape this into a focused topic or question to be addressed in your essay.
Then research your topic using the resources available to you. These may include primary legal sources (e.g., statutes, decisions by judges); policy, statistical and social studies and reports (e.g., by government, research institutes, Royal Commissions, Bar Associations, individual researchers); secondary sources (e.g., articles in scholarly periodicals, books ) and supplementary material (e.g., Parliamentary/Committee deliberations, community-based sources.) It is not likely that you will conduct any primary research in preparing your essays (e.g,. You are not expected to conduct interviews or surveys or undertake field work).

In your introduction, identify the topic and focus of your essay and what you think is important to resolve or discuss. Set the context for what makes the topic contemporary or important or worth talking about.

For Part A, make sure you lay the relevant basis for your topic as you structure and move through your essay: a factual basis: what is happening or has happened? An issues basis: what are the issues? What is at stake? A legal basis: what legislation, case law, what provisions or proposals of international law are in force or relevant to your work? Are there any changes or reforms pending? A theoretical basis: Draw on the work of academics and activists who have written about the issues to develop an analysis or understanding of the issue: how do they think about or frame this area? What are the key factors to be taken in account? How can we think about this area?

Do a clear analysis (develop an argument in relation to the question you are seeking to answer) of the topic in light of the facts, issues, law and relevant theory: examine what you think of how things are now, what needs to done, what can be done through law, etc. depending on what your topic requires.
Then, do ‘Part B”: what should be done and how? Select one of the routes outlined above (legislation, policy change, social advocacy, or a rewrite of a judicial opinion) to articulate your action strategy. Don’t get bogged down in form here.
Write a conclusion that draws together your themes, ideas and findings.

How your essays will be assessed

Your essays will be assessed on the following grounds before an overall grade is assigned:

For Part A in particular: Quality of the research: to what extent have you located and used relevant and up to date academic research material from good sources? (Please note that newspapers and newsmagazines are not generally considered to be good academic sources).

Quality of the analysis: how well have you analysed the research and the issues? To what extent have you developed a cogent argument towards sustainable conclusions in addressing the topic of the essay?

Quality of the writing: have you defined your topic clearly? Is your writing polished and clear? (My best advice is that, rather than finishing the first draft the day the essay is due, you finish it a few days earlier to allow you time to revise your whole essay at least once editing for accuracy, logical development, paragraph and sentence structure, spelling and punctuation. Some writers do separate revisions: for content of the paper, for flow, and for typos).

For Part B in particular, creativity, innovative thinking, clarity. How has your proposed ‘action’ addressed the problem? How does it reflect the analysis of the issues in Part A? How well linked is Part B to Part A?

Technical quality: are all sources cited completely and accurately using footnotes, endnotes or in text references (consistent with a recognized style guide)? Is there a bibliography?