On February 10, 2022, the Quebec Court of Appeal released its judgment regarding the constitutionality of An Act respecting First Nations, Inuit and Métis children, youth and families. In finding the Act mostly constitutional, the Court emphatically confirmed that s. 35 of the Constitution Act¸1982 protects Indigenous peoples’ right to self-government. No appeal court in Canada has ever taken this step, and the Court’s judgment will have far-ranging consequences for the rights of Indigenous peoples. Jameela Jeeroburkhan and Nicholas Dodd of Dionne Schulze assisted an intervening party in preparing its written submissions and Nicholas has prepared a short summary of the major takeaways from the decision to help you understand more.

Portrait of four people who attended law school at McGill between 1992 and 2016 - the span of a generation. What do they have in common? All four took turns doing research at the Paul-André Crépeau Centre for Private and Comparative Law, whose mission is to develop and promote the Canadian civil law tradition from a comparative perspective. And like many members of the McGill graduate community, this quartet has a lot to say!

Mr. Dionne has had an exceptional career, the highlights of which are listed below. The Dionne Schulze team would like to congratulate him on this well-deserved honour!

An internationally renowned white water river in Quebec was granted legal personhood, a first in Canada, in an effort to protect its ecosystems from future development following the adoption of two parallel resolutions by a local Indigenous community and municipality, setting the stage for a similar effort for the St. Lawrence River.

The distinctive approach of McGill’s Faculty of Law provides fertile ground for cutting-edge thinking on the environment and sustainable development, as evidenced by three research projects conducted by members of this Faculty at the post-graduate level. Ms. Sarah-Maude Belleville-Chénard is leading one of these research projects and is attempting to understand the role and place of indigenous knowledge in the construction of the discourses on the rights of nature and their governance.