Students and local residents are engaged in a protest on the Quad and inside one of the administration buildings at Dalhousie. The University is considering a legal claim against the protesters as part of efforts to exclude their activities from campus.
Ryan Sharpe / Wikimedia Commons
Hypothetical Facts #
Suppose that Dalhousie University wants to bring a claim against a group of student and local-resident protesters under the Protection of Property Act, RSNS 1989, c 363. The protesters are part of the “Divest Dalhousie” movement that is pressuring the University to divest its endowment portfolio of all assets in the fossil fuel sector. The ongoing protest, which has been mostly peaceful and carried out in sunny weather, is taking place on the main quad and inside one of the administration buildings.
The Problem #
What questions, raised by these facts, need to be answered to figure out whether the University’s claim will be successful?
Analyzing the Problem: Issue Spotting #
Notice that this week’s problem does not ask you to determine whether or not Dalhousie will actually be successful in its claim against the protestors. The problem instead asks you to identify the questions that you will need to answer along the way. We sometimes refer to this practice of identifying the right questions to ask as “spotting the legal issues”.
After reading this week’s problem any number of questions might come to your mind. The trick with issue spotting is to identify and articulate the questions that have legal relevance. For example, a question that does not have any legal relevance in this context is: What was the weather like during the protest?
But how do you know whether a question is legally relevant or not? This is where the cases and the statute you will read this week come in. These materials frame and define the legal issues you are trying to spot. Your task is to read the materials with an eye toward finding the relevant issues and describing them in terms of our problem’s facts.
Have a look #
As you mull over this problem, consider going for a walk or ride through the quad. Does anything about the physical space affect the way you approach your analysis?
In line with the problem-based learning approach described in the lesson, your next step is to select one of this week’s readings as a starting point and then choose a pathway through the readings to address the problem. As you do this, keep track of the order in which you read the materials and think about how this might affect your analysis of the problem.
Readings for this Week
Choose one of the reading materials from the list below--ordered alphabetically--to start analyzing this week's problem. At the end of your reading path you should have covered each of the materials on the list.
- Committee for the Commonwealth of Canada v Canada, 1991 CanLII 119 (SCC), [1991] 1 SCR 139: Two individuals from the Committee for the Commonwealth of Canada went to Montreal's Dorval Airport to promote their group's activities and goals and to recruit new members by engaging with passers-by and distributing information materials. They were asked to cease these activities by the airport's assistant manager, who advised them that political propaganda activities at the airport were prohibited under the relevant Regulations.
- Harrison v Carswell, 1975 CanLII 160 (SCC), [1976] 2 SCR 200: Sophie Carswell was charged with unlawfully trespassing on the Polo Park Shopping Centre after engaging in a strike on the mall sidewalk as part of a labour dispute with her employer, a tenant of the mall.
- Protection of Property Act, RSNS 1989, c 363: This statute establishes a quasi-criminal action in trespass to land and sets out the conditions under which such an action can be made out, including what counts as an "occupier" of the relevant premises.