Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Degree

Master of Laws

Program

Law

Supervisor

Michael Coyle

Abstract

This thesis employs Juergen Habermas’s discourse theory of law to argue that Canada’s duty to consult with indigenous communities is based on extra-legal communicative presumptions that fail to reflect the basic norm of communicative equality. It derives a set of communicative norms from discourse theory, demonstrates their dovetailing with discursive norms found within the intersocietal communicative practices of at least selected indigenous legal orders, such as treaty-making, and argues for normative revisions of the duty to consult appropriate to Canada's intersocietal legal order.

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