Elizabeth A. Sheehy

• LLB, LLM, LLD (honoris causa)
• Head of Faculty at University of Ottawa

On the 4th of June 2024, 13 Swedish academics (including the lead author, who is based at UCL in London, UK) and psychologists raised caution related to the use of the so-called ‘parental alienation' belief system in Swedish Family Courts through the article ‘Parental Alienation is Pseudoscience’ published in the Swedish magazine directed at psycho...

This article recounts the campaign for justice for Helen Naslund, a Canadian woman who lived in rural Alberta when she killed her abusive husband Miles in 2011 as he slept. Rather than go to trial on self-defence, on the advice of counsel Helen pled guilty to manslaughter and then, consequent to a joint submission on sentencing made with the Crown,...

This article explores the recent expansion of Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD) in Canada and its negative implications for women with disabilities. In 2021, the government extended MAiD to people with disabilities who are not dying, which the authors contend is a modern form of eugenics. Structured as a conversation and deploying a systemic, equa...

Internationally, the “rough sex defence” appears to be on the rise. Used to suggest that women enjoy violence as part of “sex play,” it invites judges and jurors to find either consent to acts causing bodily harm or an honest but mistaken belief in consent. Our review of the Canadian case law from 1988–2021 examines how courts approach this defence...

This paper explores Canadian family law cases involving claims of parental alienation and of family violence from 2014–2018, reporting the data on these claims, their resolution, and their impacts upon custody and access. A close reading of those cases where both alienation and intimate partner violence claims are made reveals troubling patterns in...

This article compares the process and substance of the reform of the partial defence of provocation in New South Wales, Australia, in 2014 and in Canada in 2015. While the two jurisdictions passed laws that similarly restricted the defence, their law reform processes and the impetus that drove the reforms in each jurisdiction were quite disparate....

This article uses the transcripts from an abused woman’s trial in Canada for first-degree murder of her husband to explore the expert testimony provided by Dr Evan Stark to support a potential defence of self-defence. His evidence focused on coercive control theory and provoked extreme resistance from Crown prosecutors, such that self-defence was u...

This reflection argues that we cannot measure the success of Domestic Violence Death Review Committees (DVDRCs), or the optimal forms and rules to govern them, without resort to feminist knowledge and practice around male violence against women and intimate femicide. An independent, feminist antiviolence movement is critical to the work of DVDRCs:...

This commentary draws upon the work of feminist media scholars and those who study the strategies of men’s rights activists to reflect upon the media and men’s rights reaction to the publication of the author’s book on battered women who kill. The parallels between the responses from these two sources prompt the author to make suggestions as to how...

Feminist efforts to reform criminal defences to homicide have largely focused on expanding self-defence for women who kill their abusers on the one hand, and constricting defences for men who kill their female partners and former partners on the other. Self-defence is the preferred defence for battered women who kill: it is a complete defence; it c...

Despite law reforms intended explicitly to improve their prospects of receiving fairer consideration within the criminal justice system, it is still the case that most battered women accused of homicide are not successful in relying on self-defence. Defending battered women charged with homicide offers substantial challenges for defence lawyers. Ac...

The keynote address takes the conference title and theme, "Legalising Justice for All Women", and considers it in the context of the Canadian women's movement's efforts to draft and to defend a rape law that will serve the interests of all women. Two specific examples are used: the work of feminist activists in shaping a new rape law, Bill C-49, in...

This article takes stock of what is happening in the defence of battered women who are charged with homicide across three jurisdictions – Australia, Canada and New Zealand. In Part 1 the current legal requirements for the most relevant defences in all three jurisdictions are briefly outlined, with a focus on those legal developments that are likely...

This article examines trends in the resolution of homicide cases involving battered women defendants from 2000 to 2010 in Australia, Canada and New Zealand. Australia and Canada appear to have some commonalities in their treatment of such cases with higher acquittal rates and a greater reliance on plea bargaining to produce manslaughter verdicts, a...

Murder, Medicine and Motherhood, by Emma Cunliffe, should be read by lawyers, judges, and medical experts if we are to prevent the kinds of tragic prosecutions that changed the lives of Susan Nelles, Lindy Chamberlain, and the many women convicted of homicide based on the testimony of Dr. Charles Smith in Ontario. Before I say how much I admire thi...

Sexual Assault in Canada is the first English-language book in almost two decades to assess the state of sexual assault law and legal practice in Canada. Gathering together feminist scholars, lawyers, activists and policy-makers, it presents a picture of the difficult issues that Canadian women face when reporting and prosecuting sexual violence. T...

In this section, Elizabeth A Sheehy’s contribution focuses on one important feature of the 1992 feminist-inspired law reforms — the new “reasonable steps” requirement for the “mistaken belief in consent” defence. Her paper picks up on the themes of resistance to rape law reforms, evocation of rape mythologies, and the misuse of “expert” evidence. S...

In the chapter that follows, Elizabeth A Sheehy sets the stage for this book. She describes three legal landmarks that Jane Doe’s engagement with the Canadian legal system achieved, but her real point is that Jane Doe waged and won her legal battles on her own terms. These terms included her insistence on being present in the courtroom when her rap...

Conference which used Jane Doe's 1998 ground-breaking legal victory against the Toronto police to assess feminist strategy in the decade following, as well as the role of racism and colonialism in sexual assault law and practice. This collection represents a segment of 60-plus papers presented at the conference and three solicited papers. The art o...

The authors, a collective of feminist legal scholars from Carleton University and the University of Ottawa, reflect on which works have been most influential to their scholarship. The article describes over 60 influential feminist works and mentions the contributions they made to the field. Many of the works consider the intersectional experience o...

In this article, Elizabeth Sheehy argues that Jane Doe v. Metropolitan Toronto Police, wherein the police were held accountable in law for sex discrimination in violation of women's section 15 equality rights under the Charter and for negligence in their investigation of a serial rapist, represents a high point in feminist litigation. She details t...

The author uses the premises and inquiries advanced by the literature on social inclusion to consider its potential for the re-visioning of criminal law and policy. She notes that criminal law and social inclusion are fundamentally at odds, but argues that governments and policy makers committed to inclusion in social and economic policy cannot ful...

The legal system deals harshly with an abused woman who kills her male partner. It metes out severe ‘punishment’ bearing scant relation to the ‘crime’ of choosing a violent man as a partner: this results in the woman being “thrice punished”. Her first punishment is enduring hell in the relationship itself, without access to effective legal interven...

Evidence law is not simply a body of “neutral rules” of general application: its doctrines have been developed to reflect particular interests and understandings of the social world in which we live. Nowhere is its partiality more exposed than in the rules governing the use of evidence in the prosecution of rape, which was itself a sex specific cri...

The author argues for the repeal of mandatory minimum sentences based upon their role in the distortion of defences available to battered women on trial for the homicide of their violent mates. After reviewing other legal strategies aimed at eliminating the discriminatory biases facing women who attempt to plead self-defence, and illustrating the w...

This special issue of the Osgoode Hall Law Journal takes up the theme of mandatory minimum sentencing in Canada: the historical and current manifestations in criminal laws; its public policy dimensions; its impact on diverse communities; the pressures it exerts at different points in the criminal process; and its constitutional implications. Mandat...

Cet article examine la vague de fond contre la re9rme des lois inspirke par 1esfPministes. L 'auteure relie /'escalade de la violence faite a m femmes et la prkencedirn courantdans la lpgishtion qui rksiste h f'egalitk, a m rJactions qu 'elle a percues chez les femmes. Feminist efforts to expose, challenge, and eliminate direct, indirect, and syste...

This article will firstly provide an overview of feminist theorizing around equality. It will secondly turn to the case law decided pursuant to the equality guarantees (sections 15 and 28) of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms in an effort to extract the broad principles and analytic approaches used by the courts in Canada, particularly wh...

This paper examines the impact on women — as victim/witnesses and as accused persons — of the Supreme Court of Canada's decision in R v. Daviault regarding the defense of intoxication.Prior to the decision in Daviault, the defense of intoxication was available for only one class of criminal offenses: those described as "specific intent" offenses (d...

Women have always been involved in resistance struggles against apartheid in South Africa. Most recently, many women have turned their energies to the process of creating a Bill of Rights for a post-apartheid South Africa.This process has included two conferences in which, as a white Canadian academic with some experience of the struggles around th...

The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and, more specifically, the sections which 'guarantee' equality, sections 15 and 28, present Canadian feminist litigators with a unique opportunity to articulate women's realities within a constitutional framework and to demand a legal response. The recent decision of the Supreme Court of Canada in R. v....

This paper provides an overview of Canadian feminist literature on law, starting with a brief chronology of the development of the scholarship from the time of the Report of the Royal Commission on the Status of Women (1970). The authors break the literature down into the five substantive areas most often written about: criminal law, family law, in...

This paper provides an overview of Canadian feminist literature on law, starting with a brief chronology of the development of the scholarship from the time of the Report of the Royal Commission on the Status of Women (1970). The authors break the literature down into the five substantive areas most often written about: criminal law, family law, in...

In 1993, the Canadian Bar Association [CBA] Task Force on Gender Equality in the Legal Profession, headed by the Honourable Bertha Wilson, produced the first national examination of the situation of women lawyers in Canada. Touchstones for Change: Equality, Diversity and Accountability generated accolades and denunciations from within and outside t...

Rape and fear of rape have a constant and pervasive impact upon the lives of women. The laws which prohibit rape, and the legal process by which this crime either is or is not punished, reinforce relations of dominance between men and women, shape attitudes and ideologies regarding male and female sexuality, and colour women's experience of rape an...

This edited collection assesses sexual assault law, legal practice, and activism in Canada as of 2009. It represents both a celebration and a review of where Jane Doe’s brave advocacy has taken us in the more than ten years that have passed since she won her case against the Toronto Police in 1998 in her litigation, Jane Doe v Metropolitan Toronto...

In the last chapter, Teressa Nahanee concluded that lenient sentences imposed on men who are convicted of sexually assaulting Inuit women can no longer be tolerated. Implicit in this conclusion is her concern for a recognition on the part of judges that sexual assault is one of the most serious harms that any woman could ever suffer. The sentence i...

The legal system has long been a target for lobbying by activists interested in achieving rights for marginalized groups of people in society. The women's movement is no different in this respect. Since the late nineteenth century, women have sought to achieve law reform through legislation (Cleverdon 1974; Backhouse 1985) and through the courts (M...