The Fondation du Barreau du Québec (FBQ) has announced that Professor Jennifer Quaid’s 2020 article, “The Limits of Legislation as a Tool of Reform: A Study of the Westray Reform to Organizational Sentencing” (Revue juridique Thémis de l’Université de Montréal, 2020), has earned an honourable mention in the 2021 legal writing competition in the journal article category, ranking 2nd out of 30 texts submitted.
Professor Quaid’s article asks whether making changes to the written text of a legislative provision can really lead to concrete change on the ground through the lens of the 2003 Westray Law, which sought to reform organizational sentencing by adding new provisions to the Criminal Code. “We tend to talk about law reform as if it’s about changing laws, or enacting new laws,” she says. “But we don’t think, really, about the entire process involved in law reform. Laws are a great first start, but without adequate support that is drawn from an understanding of how the law will actually be applied, you won’t get very far.”
Drawing on analysis of the impact of the Westray reforms on actual practice from 2004-2019, she discusses how legislative amendments must be complemented with other measures to truly bring about an effective change in the law. While the study examines one particular area of sentencing, it offers much broader insights into the ways we talk about law reform – ways we don’t always notice. Often, notes Professor Quaid, law reform is thought of as a single, discreet moment in time when a piece of legislation is passed. But the idea that law can change so suddenly is misleading.
“This study really sharpened my focus on law reform as a process, and how we need to change the conversation about law reform, particularly in areas where you’re trying to change a prevailing way of doing things, or where you’re trying to change a trend or a practice that’s been in place for a long time. It’s not enough to enact a law. There are a lot of other things that have to accompany changes to legal documents and legal rules in order to make law reform effective.”
Professor Quaid also discusses this topic in depth in an interview with Faculti, a new UK-based platform that features academics discussing their research. Click here to view the interview.
The full article, “The Limits of Legislation as a Tool of Reform: A Study of the Westray Reform to Organizational Sentencing”, is available to read on SSRN. Professor Quaid received funding from several sources in connection with the research and writing of this article, including an Insight Development Grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), and seed funding from both the University of Ottawa and the Faculty of Law’s Civil Law Section. The article also benefitted from the work of Anushua Nag, a research assistant to Professor Quaid who graduated with a Master’s degree in Public Administration in 2018.
The FBQ has held its legal writing competition on an annual basis since 1984, rewarding legal writers who have distinguished themselves through their contributions to legal discourse. Click here to learn more about the annual competition (in French).
Congratulations to Professor Quaid on this exceptional achievement!