Moving Toward Justice: Legal Traditions and Aboriginal Justice

The struggle to reform Canada’s justice system is nothing short of a cry for justice itself, and the response to this cry is too slow and too narrow. The essays collected in Moving Toward Justice include analyses of the challenges of legal pluralism, restorative justice, gender and race in sentencing, notions of community, and reconciliation in Aboriginal justice. Part I of the book examines the legal and political context for Aboriginal justice, theories of law and the constitution, as well as theories of development and administration that compel much broader initiatives of Aboriginal self-government.

Part II examines specific initiatives and the problems some of them have created. Justice reform is complex and controversial. The challenges increase when the context for reform includes the search for greater safety and security in Aboriginal communities, recognition of cultural integrity, and the need to promote inter-societal respect.

This book aims to underscore the urgent need for Aboriginal justice reform, to suggest the outlines of the constitutional and administrative changes that will allow reform to occur, and to explore a series of specific issues that have arisen from reforms already made. It is a book for scholars, policy makers, and all those interested in or working with justice issues.