Jasminka Kalajdzic and Irina Ceric, "Policing Protest Via the Civil Law: Class Actions, Injunctions, and the ‘Freedom Convoy’" (2022) 70:2 Criminal Law Quarterly 247. Available to Westlaw subscribers.
Excerpt:
“As experts on injunctions and class actions, respectively, the authors set out to analyze Li v. Barber in its doctrinal and historical contexts and for its potential policy implications. We first consider how the civil law tools of class actions and injunctions (separately and in combination) have operated in the protest context historically, especially with respect to civil disobedience. We then turn to the normative question, how should they? An absence of policing in the Ottawa context left private citizens with only one legal avenue: to don the mantle of private attorney general. Ms. Li and her counsel leveraged two kinds of civil procedure against a better organized, well-resourced foe, and in doing so, neutralized and at least temporarily defunded a movement with concerning ties to white nationalism.1 Their success sets an important precedent for the use of class injunctions where the state has largely abandoned a segment of the population. Nevertheless, we argue that the normative answers depend on who is wielding these tools. Groups and individuals opposed to progressive movements and protest action may find inspiration in Ms. Li’s strategy, aiming the twin civil processes against Indigenous people or environmental and social justice activists in a manner that pits private individual against private individual. We conclude by examining the role of police tasked with enforcing civil injunctions generally and in respect of the “Freedom Convoy” specifically."