Kirsten Anker and Tina Piper, “Codification and Mt Royal: Designing a Place for Precious Things”
Codification and urban planning were both central to the project of modernisation: humans and their lived spaces were subjected to the deliberate, rational design of a central authority in the name of progress, social hygiene and order. In examining the case of the contemporaneous drafting of the Civil Code of Lower Canada and the planning of Mt. Royal Park in the mid-1800s, we hope to show the specificities of how that modern project played out in colonial Quebec in a linguistically and legally plural society. We argue that the process of designating a park as a defined space for nature in the city has parallels in the designation of the code as the location of law with similar implications for the relationship between humans and their environment as for that between a people and their law.
About
Kirsten Anker is Associate Professor at the Faculty of Law, McGill University. She teaches property, legal theory and Aboriginal law/Indigenous legal traditions, with research interests extending also to evidence, dispute resolution, resource management and legal education. Her book Declarations of Interdependence: A Legal Pluralist Approach to Indigenous Rights explores various aspects of claiming Native (Aboriginal) Title as a way to inspire a re-imagination of law. She has written widely on the challenge to orthodox understandings of law and sovereignty posed by the recognition in Australia and Canada that Indigenous law “intersects” or co-exists with state law, and draws on studies in legal theory, anthropology, Indigenous and occidental philosophy, translation and language. Current projects include work on Indigenous legal traditions in formal legal education, non-static digital mapping in land claims, the privatisation of Indigenous consultation, and ecological jurisprudence.
Tina Piper is Associate Professor at the Faculty of Law, McGill University. She teaches and researches in the areas of intellectual property law and legal history. She co-published a book entitled Putting Intellectual Property in its Place: Creative Labour and the Everyday (Oxford University Press) with Laura Murray and Kirsty Robertson. She was an IPLAI Resident Faculty Fellow from 2013 to 2015. She is a member of the Centre for Intellectual Property Policy (CIPP). Before joining McGill University, she trained as a biomedical-electrical engineer and completed her doctorate of law at the University of Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar. Tina also works with a number of community groups and has sat on the boards of POPMontreal, CKUT and Creative Commons Canada. She was an Action Canada Fellow (2005-2006). She has been a member of the Law Society of Upper Canada since 2004.