Vanessa MacDonnell (University of Ottawa – Common Law Section) has posted The New Self-Defence Law: Progressive Development or Status Quo? ((2014) 92:2 Canadian Bar Review 301) on SSRN.

Here is the abstract:

For more than three decades, feminist law reformers have argued that the law must better account for the different ways that men and women act in self-defence. In R v Lavallee, the Supreme Court agreed. Perhaps it should come as no surprise, then, that when the Conservative government introduced changes to the self-defence provisions in 2011 the amendments would reflect this evolution. In this paper I assess whether the law of self-defence is stronger now that feminist demands for change have been translated into law. In particular, I ask whether the new provision is likely to produce better results for groups whose self-defence claims have not always been dealt with satisfactorily.