Calling Power to Account : : Law, Reparations, and the Chinese Canadian Head tax / / ed. by David Dyzenhaus, Mayo Moran.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Asian Studies Backlist (2000-2014) eBook Package
• MitwirkendeR: Backhouse, Constance,; Dyzenhaus, David,; Eberts, Mary,; Go, Avvy,; Klimchuk, Dennis,; Lu, Catherine,; Macklin, Audrey,; Mclaren, John,; Moran, Mayo,; Rivers, Julian,; Sebok, Anthony J.,; Smith, Lionel,; Sossin, Lorne,; Webber, Jeremy,
• HerausgeberIn: Dyzenhaus, David,; Moran, Mayo,
• Place / Publishing House: Toronto : : University of Toronto Press, , [2016]; ©2005
• Year of Publication: 2016
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (450 p.)

Courts today face a range of claims to redress historic injustice, including injustice perpetrated by law. In Canada, descendants of Chinese immigrants recently claimed the return of a head tax levied only on Chinese immigrants. Calling Power to Account uses the litigation around the Chinese Canadian Head Tax Case as a focal point for examining the historical, legal, and philosophical issues raised by such claims.By placing both the discriminatory law and the judicial decisions in their historical context, some of the essays in this volume illuminate the larger patterns of discrimination and the sometimes surprising capacity of the courts of the day to respond to racism. A number of the contributors explore the implications of reparations claims for relations between the various branches of government while others examine the difficult questions such claims raise in both legal and political theory by placing the claims in a comparative or philosophical perspective.Calling Power to Account suggests that our legal systems can hope to play a part in responding to their own legacy of past injustice only when they recognize the full array of issues posed by the Head Tax Case.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Preface and Acknowledgments -- Contributors -- Context and History -- Mack v. Attorney General of Canada: Equality, History, and Reparation -- Litigating Injustice -- Legal Discrimination against the Chinese in Canada: The Historical Framework -- Can We Do Wrong to Strangers? -- The Head Tax Case and the Rule of Law: The Historical Thread of Judicial Resistance to 'Legalized' Discrimination -- Limits on Institutional Capacity to Address Injustice -- The Limits of Constitutionalism: Requiring Moral Behaviour from Government -- Delivering the Goods and the Good: Repairing Moral Wrongs -- Rights and Wrongs, Institutions and Time: Species of Historic Injustice and Their Modes of Redress -- Redress for Unjust State Action: An Equitable Approach to the Public/Private Distinction -- Legal Theory and Gross Statutory Injustice -- Gross Statutory Injustice and the Canadian Head Tax Case -- The Juristic Force of Injustice -- Private Right and Public Wrong -- The Timing of Injustice -- Mack v. Attorney General of Canada and the Structure of the Action in Unjust Enrichment -- A Brief History of Mass Restitution Litigation in the United States -- Time, Place, and Values: Mack and the Influence of the Charter on Private Law -- Appendix I: Appellants' Factum -- Appendix II: Mack v. Attorney General of Canada: Judgment of the Ontario Court of Appeal -- Index