Eric M. Adams & Jordan Stanger-Ross

Eric M. Adams & Jordan Stanger-Ross, « Promises of Law: The Unlawful Dispossession of Japanese Canadians ». Osgoode Hall Law Journal, 54:3 (Spring 2017).

Through a close reading of administrative, political, and legal documents and the representations of Japanese Canadians, the authors explain why in the 1947 case of Nakashima v. Canada the Exchequer Court of Canada failed to recognize the promise of officials to hold the property of Japanese Canadians in trust.  Those reasons included competing conceptions of citizenship, legality, and justice, rather than simple racial deceit and financial opportunism.   The article is an important contribution to our understanding of the nature of law.