Plusieurs ouvrages publiés par nos diplômé.e.s se sont retrouvés sur les tablettes de votre libraire dans les dernières semaines:

Image de la couverture du livre Les nouveaux voisins de Catherine McKenzie– Le septième roman de Catherine McKenzie, BCL’99, LLB’99, a été publié dans sa traduction française, Les nouveaux voisins. Lire la critique >

Image couveture du livre Vague d'effroi de Peter Kirby

– Peter Kirby, BCL’83, LLB’85, a publié Vague d’effroi, un suspense policier qui met en scène l’hiver montréalais. Lire la critique >

Couverture du livre Dictionnaire critique du sexisme linguistique

– Le Dictionnaire critique du sexisme linguistique, dirigé par Michaël Lessard, BCL/LLB’15, et Suzanne Zaccour, BCL/LLB’16, est au palmarès des 100 meilleurs livres québécois du magazine littéraire Les libraires. Explorer le palmarès >

Where are Black Canadians in the cannabis debate?

Anthony Morgan, BCL/LLB’12, Policy Options, 24 January 2018

In our country’s conversation on legalizing cannabis, whose voices really matter? Canada’s cannabis legalization is only months away, and politicians, the police, political pundits, public policy professionals and professors have overwhelmingly dominated the debate. Sadly, and unsurprisingly, the voices of average citizens from racialized and Indigenous communities have been largely unsolicited, sidelined or silenced. Keep reading >

‘He didn’t have a choice’: How depression cost Gerald Le Dain his Supreme Court post

Bonnie Brown, LLB’95, The Sunday Edition – CBC Radio, 14 January 2018

In 1988, only four years after his appointment to the Supreme Court of Canada, Justice Gerald Le Dain, BCL’49, LLD’85, suddenly resigned from his post – or so it seemed. In January, The Sunday Edition aired the documentary One Judge Down, produced by Bonnie Brown, and publicly revealed the story behind Le Dain’s resignation for the first time in thirty years: he was forced off the country’s highest bench because he was struggling with depression. The documentary notably features Le Dain’s former clerk, Professor Richard Janda. Listen to the documentary > (CBC Sunday Edition)

Following overwhelming response from the audience, The Sunday Edition followed up on the Le Dain story: Pressure mounts to correct the injustice done to the late Supreme Court Justice Gerald Le Dain

#MoiAussi: Un pavé dans la mare

Aurélie Lanctôt, BCL/LLB’17, Tout le monde en parle, 14 janvier 2018

Une lettre s’attaquant au mouvement #MoiAussi, signée en France entre autres par Catherine Deneuve, a créé une onde de choc à l’échelle mondiale. Aurélie Lanctôt était de passage à Tout le monde en parle pour dénoncer le texte, qu’elle accuse de culpabiliser les femmes qui ont pris part à la vague de dénonciations. Elle a aussi annoncé #EtMaintenant, un nouveau mot-clic pour promouvoir l’apport positif de #MoiAussi. Voir l’entrevue à Tout le monde en parle >

Stanley Hartt ‘always worried’ about how his obituary would read. So he wrote his own

Stanley Hartt, BCL’63, National Post, 5 January 2018

Stanley Hartt, who was Brian Mulroney’s chief of staff and died this week at age 80, pre-wrote his own obituary as part of an autobiography. The National Post published an excerpt from this document. Keep reading >

A Semi-Autonomous Cricket Farm to Feed the World

Carl Engelking, Discover, 19 December 2017

When Gabe Mott, Shobhita Soor, BCL/LLB’15, MBA’15, and Mohammed Ashour proposed building a commercial-scale cricket farm optimized with robots and data, the idea earned the McGill University students the $1 million Hult Prize, the largest student competition for social good, in 2013. But when it came to launching the concept, they needed to leave convention behind, including most of what had been written in science journals about rearing billions of crickets. Keep reading >

La bataille en coulisses d’Hubert T. Lacroix

Vincent Brousseau-Pouliot, LaPresse+, 1 décembre 2017

Pour ses détracteurs, Hubert T. Lacroix, BCL’76, est le PDG de Radio-Canada qui a fait les coupes budgétaires du gouvernement Harper. Celui qui avait été nommé par les conservateurs pour « démanteler » le diffuseur public, a-t-il souvent entendu. « C’est ce que j’ai trouvé le plus difficile », dit-il. Poursuivre la lecture >

We Hold These Truths to Be Self-Evident, That All Robots Are Created Equal

Amanda Wurah, BCL/LLB’17, Journal of Futures Studies, December 2017

In February 2017, the European Union Parliament voted in favor of a report destined to create a legal framework around artificial intelligence. One of the report’s most controversial proposals is the suggestion to grant electronic personality to robots, thereby making them legal agents. Some commentators have stated that this amounts to giving robots the ability to possess human rights. Amanda Wurah argues that the EU’s decision is not only sound, but warranted. Keep reading [.pdf] >