Munyonzwe Hamalengwa is a Ph.D candidate at Osgoode Hall Law School.

There are millions of words that have been written both by conservative and progressive judges, lawyers, scholars, political scientists, social scientists, historians and journalists on various judicial philosophies and interpretative doctrines, but the influence of the status of the litigant in influencing judicial decision making has rarely been theorised, analysed and documented.

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in General, IP
Comments: 0

Munyonzwe Hamalengwa is a Ph.D candidate at Osgoode Hall Law School and is taking the Intellectual Property Theory course.

Feminism along with marxist, critical legal studies and critical race theories have mounted serious challenges to the inherited western legal tradition that has claimed that law is neutral and objective even though law, from time immemorial has neither been class, gender and race neutral nor objective. There was a time when slaves, poor people, aboriginals, women and blacks could not vote; when women, aboriginals and blacks could not serve on juries or go to school; when women, aboriginals and blacks could not own property; indeed when blacks were property of others themselves; when women could not enter into contracts; when women, aboriginals and blacks could not be lawyers; when blacks could not enter a room or drink water through the door or fountain used by white people; when blacks and aboriginals were enslaved or colonized; when women and black people’s evidence in courtrooms was only accorded half the value of evidence given by a white man etc etc. Yet law managed to claim and still claims that it is neutral and objective.

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in IP
Comment: 1