The Limits of Legislation as a Tool of Reform: A Study of the Westray Reform to Organizational Sentencing
Bibliographic record
Abstract
English Abstract: These days, law reform is almost always couched in terms of new or amending legislation. While politically expedient, the notion that concrete change on the ground will naturally flow from the mere fact of making changes to the written text of a legislative provision belies common sense. This is even more true where the goals of reform efforts are directed at how legal rules that are modulated by the exercise of substantial discretion. In this paper, I consider the limits of legislation as a tool of law reform through the lens of the 2003 Westray Law, which sought to reform to organizational sentencing by adding new provisions to Part XXIII of the Criminal Code. Drawing on analysis of the impact of the reforms on organizational sentencing practice from 2004-2019, I conclude that given the characteristics of organizational sentencing practice, effective reform requires a modified approach where legislation is complemented with measures such as administrative guidance and training, to support those whose discretion is central to the application of the law. NOTE: Attached pdf is the final pre-publication copy-edited version of paper. French Abstract: De nos jours, la reforme du droit prend souvent la forme d’une modification legislative. Cette approche est certes commode sur le plan politique, mais l’idee que l’on puisse effectuer des changements concrets par le seul fait de modifier le libelle d’une disposition legislative defie le bon sens. Ce constat a davantage de force lorsqu’il est question de modifier une disposition dont la mise en application pratique decoule de l’exercice d’une discretion substantielle. Dans ce texte, j’examine les limites de la modification legislative comme moyen d’effectuer une veritable reforme du droit de la perspective de la loi Westray (2003) qui, en ajoutant des nouvelles dispositions a la Partie XXIII du Code criminel, cherchait a ameliorer l’efficacite du regime d’imposition de la peine applicable aux organisations. Sur la foi d’une etude approfondie de l’impact des modifications sur les peines imposees depuis la reforme (2004-2019), j’arrive a la conclusion qu’en raison des qualites propres au processus d’imposition de la peine aux organisations, pour accomplir une reforme efficace dans ce domaine, il serait souhaitable d’adopter une approche modifiee. Cette approche jumellerait la modification legislative a des mesures d’appui, comme des lignes directrices et de la formation, destinees a ceux qui sont, par leur pourvoir discretionnaire, appeles a mettre en application la loi. NOTE: La version pdf ci-joint est la version finale verifiee mais non mise en page de l'article.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.014 | 0.036 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.009 | 0.028 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.010 | 0.011 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.005 |
| Research integrity | 0.004 | 0.006 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.004 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".