In this article, the authors argue that the longstanding trend of excluding graduate studies in law from the discourse on legal education has detrimental effects on both the discourse and the future of the law faculty. More specifically, disregarding graduate legal education is at odds with the reality of graduate studies in Canadian law faculties today, ignores the challenges of graduate programs in law, and perpetuates inaccurate distinctions about both the career aspirations of law students and the relationship between undergraduate and graduate legal studies. In the authors’ view, these concerns can be overcome by reframing the discourse. Once the purpose of legal education is understood to be the cultivation of jurists and the law faculty is seen as an integrated whole of people, place, and program, graduate legal education moves easily into the discussion on the future of the law faculty. Including graduate studies in the discourse is an opportunity to explore, and be hopeful about, the institutional missions of law faculties and their place in the university, the optimization of legal education at all levels, and the methods by which participants in graduate studies should fulfill their responsibilities to the future of the discipline.

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Dominant narratives about the institutional life of the Supreme Court of Canada pay too little attention to the empirical and theoretical insights of legal pluralism. They do not say enough about the Court’s place in a world in which the nature and experience of law are often understood without reference to state sources or institutions. As a result, the prevailing narratives do not speak to many social realities, fail to build on rich pluralist critiques of the Court’s jurisprudence, and disregard the aims and promise of doing legal theory.Relying on the Reference Re Senate Reform as a case study, this article points to shortcomings of contemporary understandings of the Court and proposes a way to overcome them. Part I presents four readings of the Supreme Court’s opinion in the Reference. Each focuses on a different dimension of the case—the doctrinal, the metaphorical, the institutional and the contextual. The readings are an invitation to notice the assumptions embedded in interpretations of the Reference and to explore the larger narratives of which they are a part. Part II takes up that invitation. It shows that the dominant narratives often reflect state-centric traditions of legal theory and impede inquiries into the Court’s place in a legally and institutionally plural world. It then presents a research agenda that maps a route toward filling this gap. Drawing on lessons of legal pluralism, the agenda encourages us to confront what we think we know—and what we tend to ignore—about the morality of the Court’s institutional design, about the Court’s place in Canada’s constitutional imagination, and about the significance of the Court in light of the myriad ways in which we access and pursue justice.Les discours principaux sur la vie institutionnelle de la Cour suprême du Canada prêtent trop peu d’attention aux avancées empiriques et théoriques du pluralisme juridique. Ils n’en disent pas suffisamment sur le rôle de la Cour dans un contexte où la nature et l’expérience du droit sont en grande partie compris sans faire appel à des sources ou à des institutions gouvernementales. Conséquemment, les discours dominants ignorent plusieurs réalités sociales, ne tiennent pas compte des critiques pluralistes traitant de la jurisprudence de la Cour, et négligent le potentiel de la théorie du droit.Cet article se base sur le Renvoi relatif à la réforme du Sénat pour faire ressortir les lacunes des conceptions actuelles concernant la Cour et propose une façon d’y remédier. La première partie de l’article présente quatre analyses du Renvoi qui traitent des dimensions doctrinale, métaphorique, institutionnelle et contextuelle de celui-ci. Ces analyses font ressortir les présomptions au sein de chaque interprétation du Renvoi, et nous invitent à explorer le discours encadrant chacune d’elles. La deuxième partie répond à cette invitation et démontre que les discours dominants reflètent une approche théorique centrée sur le rôle de l’État qui nous empêche de remettre en question la place de la Cour dans un monde marqué par ...

Thinking boldly about Senate reform means no longer relying on claims about Canada’s constitutional amending formula as a crutch for stagnation. Despite rhetoric to the contrary, theamending formula is not responsible for stalled progress on Senate reform. To be sure, the formula is intricate, detailed, and sustains multiple reasonable interpretations. It was difficult to entrench and requires widespread support to be changed; it calls on political actors to reach some measure of consensus in order to achieve certain constitutional reforms. However, the amending formula is neither impenetrable nor incomprehensible.  It is neither a Rubik’s cube nor an instruction manual. And, it should not be cast as the scapegoat for the effects of partisanship or failures of leadership in implementing reform.