Talk:Comparative law and justice/Canada

Mid-Semester Comments:

You are off to a good start, but of course there is more to do! First, the most basic thing: you do need to do some more proofreading. Remember that you work is out there for everyone in the world to see! Take pride in it and ensure it looks good. You might try reading your work aloud to yourself so that you can hear where there are errors.

In terms of the content: you've got a lot of good stuff. I have a lot of suggestions to make about things you can add and refine. The fact that there are a lot of suggestions doesn't mean you're doing poorly--but it does mean there's lots more to do!


 * Life expectancy is not a rate--rather, it is how long people in Canada can expect to live.
 * You might want to expand some of your basic info a little more so people get more of a sense of what the country is like. Your particular challenge in talking about Canada is that lots of people think of Canada as something like the United States's little brother, so you want to really show what's different about it.
 * Your history is ok, but again show what the roots of it are. It's particularly worth mentioning something about the conflicts between Quebecois/Francophone Canada and Anglophone Canada, and about Canada's place in the British Commonwealth (you might link to a page discussing what the Commonwealth is).
 * You haven't mentioned the family of law in Canada.
 * You should explain a bit more about the relationship between the UK and Canada--what does the UK actually control?
 * You could say more about elections in terms of the things we discussed in class; you can always look back at the PowerPoint and the course readings for more help on decoding the different types of elections.
 * I think your discussion of the appeals process is a little confused--you seem to be discussing the appeals process in British Columbia only (& I'm not sure what the "BS Supreme Court" is). Of course, this should make more sense after we discuss courts in class.
 * Try to be careful about normative statements, like "Sadly" in terms of drug crimes. You might want to think of crime rates in an internationally comparative sense, too--how does Canada compare to other places?
 * What about judicial review? And are trials adversarial or inquisitorial?

As you go forward keep these types of comments in mind in crafting your future week's responses. You want to extend and clarify your discussions more, particularly in terms of concepts and ideas that we develop in class & in the course reading. That's why it will be important to go back and revise as we move towards the end of the semester--because you are working each week before we talk about these things, so you want to go back and make sure you are using those insights.

Mlarthur 22:30, 21 October 2009 (UTC)