The Court's Exercise of Plenary Power: Rewriting the Two-Row Wampum
Supreme Court Law Review, Second Series, Vol. 16, pp. 285-301, 2002
18 Pages Posted: 23 Feb 2011
Date Written: 2002
Abstract
This paper focuses on the Supreme Court of Canada's decision in Mitchell v. M.N.R., [2001] S.C.R. 911, as an illustration of what is wrong in contemporary jurisprudence on Aboriginal rights. The concurring judgment of Binnie J. is discussed as a potential preview to the Court's approach to claims of Aboriginal self-determiniation. This paper digs into the ruins of Aboriginal law, to make sense of the doctrine of sovereign incompatibility, to come to some sense of how the field of Aboriginal law has come to trap Aboriginal peoples. The paper closes with suggestions about how Aboriginal rights might be resurrected from the ruins of Aboriginal law.
Keywords: Aboriginal law, Aboriginal rights
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation