“Noticing” intersectionality in sexual assault trials: the influence of feminist organisations on the Barton decision
Bibliographic record
Abstract
In what some might consider to be a ground-breaking decision, the Supreme Court of Canada (SCC), in the case of R v Barton, took judicial notice of the fact that myths, stereotypes and discriminatory practices which operate against sexually assaulted women within the Canadian criminal justice system become compounded when the woman in question is Indigenous and more so, when the Indigenous woman is a sex worker. Given the circumstances of the case, several feminist organisations filed factums on appeal as interveners prior to the SCC’s decision. This thesis aims to explore the intersectional arguments of the feminist interveners vis-a-vis their influence on the decision in Barton, as well as possible impact(s) the reasoning of the SCC could have within the justice system, going forward. In achieving this aim, I engage the methodology of doctrinal research. I also interview some lawyers who acted as counsel for intervening organisations at the SCC and experienced the dynamics of the case from a close vantage point. The theoretical approach adopted is Indigenous feminism, given the intersectional nature of the Barton dynamics. The conclusions drawn and recommendations made following the results of the research are crucial in critical assessments of the Barton decision, for lawyers, sexual assault complainants, and the criminal justice system. Most importantly, they are crucial for Indigenous women, who have for too long, had to deal with multiple layers of discrimination within the Canadian society and the criminal justice system as a consequence of the intersection between their race and their gender.
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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 | 0.069 | 0.159 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.040 | 0.066 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.024 | 0.013 |
| Open science | 0.004 | 0.017 |
| Research integrity | 0.016 | 0.022 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.007 | 0.001 |
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".