Manitoba Law Journal celebrates the release of its 47th Volume

Co-Executive Editors-in-Chief, Dr. Bryan P. Schwartz and Professor Darcy MacPherson announce the release of the Manitoba Law Journal’s (MLJ) Volume 47. Much like last summer’s release of Volume 46, this summer’s edition also contains seven issues. While Volume 47 explores the legal community in Manitoba through the eyes of the province’s current and former Chief Justices, it also features significant commentary on Canadian criminal law through three Robson Crim issues (Issues 4-6) and a standalone issue on the Hangmen of Canada, authored by former UM Law Professor and Senior Scholar, Alvin Esau.

The MLJ continues its mission in this Volume of “preserving the voices of distinguished jurists from this province,” and strives to publish high-quality scholarship in maintaining its standing as an exceptional law journal. Here are a couple of statistics that the MLJteam is particularly proud of from our SHRCC application this year:

• The MLJ received 7 Supreme Court of Canada citations in 2024-25.
• We are a diamond open-access journal, with content available through a CC-BY-ND creative Commons license. The MLJ is available through Alberta OJS, CanLII, Lexis Advance Quicklaw, HeinOnline, Google Play, Amazon and through com.

Overview of the latest Issues

Issue 1 is a retrospective on the career of the Honourable Chief Justice Richard Chartier. It begins with his oral history and features a series of remarks made at his retirement gala, including his own comments and those by fellow jurists, the Honourable Justice Freda Steel of the Manitoba Court of Appeal and former Chief Judge of the Provincial Court (2016-2023), Honourable Judge Margaret I. Wiebe. The issue concludes with a comprehensive analysis of Chief Justice Chartier’s jurisprudence by Court of Appeal researchers, Melanie Bueckert and Michael Rice, and a final word on the jurisprudential developments in civil procedure overseen by the Chief Justice, written by Dr. Gerard Kennedy, a former assistant professor at UM Law, currently an associate professor serving as Associate Dean of Graduate Studies at the University of Alberta Faculty of Law.

The second issue is a continuation of the MLJ’s The Current Legal Landscape series. It deploys a “range of methodologies to address some of the most fundamental issues in our legal system.” Included is an article on access to justice in Manitoba from the legal practitioners’ view by Gerard Kennedy, and UM Faculty of Law’s Director of Access to Justice & Community Engagement, Natasha Brown. The issue continues with an article co-authored by the Honourable Justice Malcolm Rowe of the Supreme Court of Canada on the role of appellate standards of review in the Canadian legal system. Justice Rowe’s article is followed by a word on lawyer incivility in family law by Deanne Sowter, a doctoral candidate at York University’s Osgoode Hall Law School. It concludes with an oral history of the Honourable Chief Justice Marianne Rivoalen, the first woman to head the Manitoba judiciary.

Issue 3 is another continued project, this time furthering the Underneath the Golden Boy project on legislative development in UM’s home province. It features two articles from a recent UM Law graduate, Anna Evans-Boudreau [JD/25], on Manitoban sustainable development legislation and the complexities of working within the field of freedom of information or access to information in all three levels of government, the second of which she co-wrote with Kevin Walby, Associate Criminal Justice Professor at the University of Winnipeg. Dalhousie’s Schulich School of Law assistant professor, Andrew Flavelle Martin, also provides two articles in this issue on the public perception of lawyers in public service through the lens of the hit television series, The West Wing, and on legal ethics for government lawyers in light of several provisions in the Law Society of Nunavut’s Code of Professional Conduct that are unique to that province. It concludes with an article from Dr. Ilia Roskoshnyi, a recent Postdoctoral Fellow at UM Law, on artificial intelligence and the future of the legal profession.

Robson Crim is entirely responsible for Issues 4-6 and is edited by Dr. Richard Jochelson, Dean of UM Law, and Associate Professor Brandon Trask. The Issues are comprised of 13 articles on topics ranging from a critique of the Riot Act to the reasonable expectation of privacy in the artificially intelligent surveillance state. Articles are provided by members of the Crown Prosecution services of Manitoba and Ontario, graduates from the Faculties of Law of Western University and University of New Brunswick, and professors from UM, University of Saskatchewan’s College of Law, and Dalhousie’s Schulich School of Law. These contributions, whether by practitioner, student, or professor—as with submissions to all of the MLJ’s dimensions—undergo a rigorous double-blind peer-review process.

The seventh and final issue of Volume 47, written entirely by Alvin Esau, examines the private lives and public careers of the men who carried out capital punishment by hanging in the early 20th Century. Esau’s book follows seven of post-confederation Canada’s hangmen, detailing research that tends to show the pseudo-psychopathy, scandalous lives, and obnoxious personalities linked to the heavily stigmatized profession. It is a unique perspective on the hangmen themselves, rather than those who were hanged, authored by a true scholar in the field of Canadian true crime, which the MLJ is delighted to publish.

As always, the Executive Editors-in-Chief would like to thank the student-editorial teams at the MLJ and its Robson Crim dimension for their tireless work in ensuring Volume 47 is as academically rigorous and useful as ever. Without their exceptional support, this journal would not have been possible.

Thank you to:

The MLJ Student Editors Fall 2024 to Summer 2025

• Avery Alexiuk 
• Andrew Bergen
• Serena Bevilacqua
• Simi Bhangoo
• Steven Csinsca
• Travsis Dech
• Joshua Dondo
• Yomna Eid
• Larissa Einarson
• Siena Mcilwraith-Fraticelli
• Apara Grace
• Kennedee Hills
• Brayden Juras
• Andreas Kastellanos
• Jayden Kyryluk
• Nicholas Ly
• Lauren Martin
• Sebastian Meiers
• Mathew O’Connor
• Heather Peterson
• Vilciya Rajput
• Carter Ross
• Daniel Rosenthal
• AubrieAnn Schettler
• Nawal Semir
• Selene Sharpe
• Vanessa Smith
• Dawn Steliga
• Jordan Wagner

Special thanks goes to Digital Editor, Lily Deardorff, for her coordination of Student Editors and guidance through the production process.

Issues of MLJ Volume 48, are currently becoming available in pre-print, and aims to continue to deliver readable and innovative legal commentary of the highest quality to communities both locally and globally.

Story submitted by Travis Dech, 3L.