Richard Jochelson
Richard Jochelson is a faculty member in the Department of Criminal Justice at the University of Winnipeg and holds his PhD in law from Osgoode Hall. He has published articles dealing with obscenity, indecency, judicial activism and police powers. He is a member of the Bar of Manitoba and co-authored Sex and the Supreme Court: Obscenity and Indecency Law in Canada with Kirsten Kramar (2010).
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The Disappearance of Criminal Law
Police Powers and the Supreme Court
In The Disappearance of Criminal Law, Richard Jochelson and Kirsten Kramar examine the rationales underpinning Supreme Court of Canada cases that address the power of the police.
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Thinking About Justice
A Book of Readings
How do we think about justice? Is it an act? An ideology? A philosophy? We are divided in our understandings of justice between those who seek fundamental social change versus those who seek incremental change and between those who argue that justice exists versus those who think it is a ruse – between internal and external perspectives. However, a promising axis of scholarship aimed at bridging these divides is emerging. Thinking about Justice introduces readers to these three ways of thinking about justice in a variety of contexts including prisons, policing, the courts, youth crime, Aboriginal people, the media, poverty and work in the sex industry. Ultimately, Thinking about Justice seeks to embrace the potentialities of justice, to explore the avenues through which justice seekers interact, debate and achieve some mode of cohesion and find a new, inclusive way forward.
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Sex and the Supreme Court
Obscenity and Indecency Law in Canada
Canadian laws pertaining to pornography and bawdy houses were first developed during the Victorian era, when “non-normative” sexualities were understood as a corruption of conservative morals and harmful to society as a whole. Tracing the socio-legal history of contemporary obscenity and indecency laws, Kramar and Jochelson contend that the law continues to function to protect society from harm. Today, rather than seeing harm to conservative values, the court sees harm to liberal political values. While reforms have been made, especially in light of feminist and queer challenges, Kramar and Jochelson use Foucault’s governmentality framework to show that the liberal harm strategy for governing obscenity and indecency continues to disguise power.