Teresa Scassa - Blog

"Violence Against Women in Law Schools", (1992), 30 Alberta L.R. 809

"Language of Judgment and the Supreme Court of Canada", (1994) 43 U.N.B.L.J. 169

"Social Welfare and Section 7 of the Charter: Conrad v. The Municipality of the County of Halifax", (1994) 17 Dalhousie Law Journal 187

"Language Standards, Ethnicity and Discrimination", (1994) 26 Canadian Ethnic Studies  103-121

"Language, Culture and the Courts:  Bilingual Education in the United States", (1996) 26 Canadian Review of American Studies 31.

"National Identity, Ethnic Surnames and the State", (1996) 11 Canadian Journal of Law and Society 167.

"Text and Context: Making Sense of Canada's New Personal Information Protection Legislation", (2000-2001) 32 Ottawa Law Review 1-34

“Consumer Privacy and Radio Frequency Identification Technology” (with Theodore Chiasson, Michael Deturbide and Anne Uteck, (2005-2006) 37 University of Ottawa Law Review 215-248

Radio Frequency ID tags are poised to replace the UPC barcode as a mechanism for inventory control in the wholesale and retail contexts.  Yet the tiny chips offer a range of potential uses that go beyond the bar code.  In this paper we define RFID technology and its applications.  We explore the privacy implications of this technology and consider recent attempts in the U.S. and European Union to grapple with the privacy issues raised by the deployment of RFIDs at the retail level.  We then consider the extent to which Canada’s Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act  will apply to RFID technology, before making recommendations for initiatives to proactively address the privacy issues that RFIDs will raise.

“Global Reach, Local Grasp: Constructing Extraterritorial Jurisdiction in the Age of Globalization” (2007) 6 Canadian Journal of Law and Technology 29-60. (With Stephen Coughlan, Robert Currie and Hugh Kindred) PDF Available here.

The reach of national law is often greater than its grasp. Canada, like other countries, has effective legal power over its territory and all within it. However, one consequence of the current process of globalization, for good or ill, is that Canadian interests are no longer contained exclusively within Canadian borders. Canada thus finds it increasingly necessary to consider asserting its legal jurisdiction beyond its frontiers. In this we consider issues of jurisdiction, distinguishing between territorial and extraterritorial jurisdiction, and defining and discussing legislative/prescriptive jurisdiction, executive/enforcement jurisdiction, investigative jurisdiction and judicial/adjudicative jurisdiction. We discuss the mechanics of extraterritorial action, and  the means by which extraterritorial action is taken.  We also consider the policy justifications which have primarily motivated Canada to act extraterritorially in the past. In the second part of the paper, we consider whether the lessons of the past are applicable to the future. Primarily we will do this by pursuing four “case studies” of areas of law which raise new and challenging issues. These include i) the internet; ii) personal data protection, iii) human rights and iv) competition in the marketplace.

“Information Privacy in Public Space:  Location Data, Data Protection and the Reasonable Expectation of Privacy”, (2009) 7:2 Canadian Journal of Law and Technology 193-220. PDF available here.

The sheer volume of location data that is now being collected by private sector companies in relation to a wide range of products and services poses serious challenges for privacy and data protection law.  This paper considers a central challenge to privacy posed by the collection and compilation of location data  -- the accessibility of this data to law enforcement agents through exceptions to the general principles of consent for disclosure that exist under private sector data protection legislation in Canada.  Recent court interpretations of these exceptions – primarily in the internet context – paint a muddled picture of their relationship to the right to be free from unreasonable search and seizure under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.  This paper considers whether the permissive disclosure provisions of the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA) and its substantially similar counterparts mean that law enforcement agents have ready access to information about our movements and activities, or whether s. 8 of the Charter plays a role in limiting the circumstances in which disclosure without notice or consent may take place.