McGill GLSA Research Series

This volume consists of selected papers presented during the 16th edition of the annual McGill Graduate Law Conference. The conference was entitled “Law and Prejudice”, and took place on May, 4-5, 2023 at McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. 

Law is often perceived to affect attitudes and behaviours beyond its instrumental consequences. Legal rules can shape public behaviour beyond deterrence, which makes law a powerful tool for communicating norms and values. Law is assumed to mirror social consensus, which is why scholars have wondered whether law might change prejudice and, consequently, affect domains beyond the law’s grasp. However, while changes, movements, voices and issues may develop and alter the social fabric, it is possible that the law may be slow to catch up. The resulting redundancy in law may, sometimes, go unnoticed and shackle the very people or issues the law was enacted to protect. Subjects such as climate change, gender equality issues, and invasion of privacy, in addition to many others, increasingly challenge our existing conceptions of legal normativity. Identifying the prejudices in law and criticizing them in relation to the current social reality is, thus, indispensable and, arguably, necessary.