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Recommended Reading
Nichols, Joshua Ben David. A Reconciliation without Recollection? An Investigation of the Foundations of Aboriginal Law in Canada. University of Toronto Press, 2020.
Hamilton, Robert, and Joshua Nichols. “Reconciliation and the Straitjacket: A Comparative Analysis of the Secession Reference and R v Sparrow.” Ottawa Law Review 52, no. 2 (2021). Published electronically April 30, 2021.
Nichols, Joshua. “Respect and Submission in Contexts of Transition: Reviewing Judicial Interpretation from R v Drybones to R v Montour.” Osgoode Hall Law Journal 62, no. 2 (forthcoming).
© privat
2025/2026
Joshua Nichols, PhD
Associate Professor of Law
McGill University, Montreal
Born in 1978 in Chetwynd, BC, Canada
BA (Hons.) in Political Science and MA in Sociology, University of Alberta; PhD in Philosophy, University of Toronto; JD, University of British Columbia; PhD in Law, University of Victoria
Arbeitsvorhaben
Recollecting Legalities: Constitutional Reconciliation and the Future of Multinational Democracies
In recent decades, the question of Indigenous self-determination has become an increasingly pressing concern at national and international levels. Yet, taken as a legal object, it seems not to “fit” into the confines of existing constitutional or international law. My project resolves this problem by focusing on the role that systems of internal colonization have played within liberal democracies. Through a comparative analysis of legal changes that occurred in Canada and South Africa starting in the 1920s, I argue that courts effectively withdrew the question of Indigenous self-determination from international law by treating it as a strictly domestic issue. Further, as the courts have recently tried to work their way towards acknowledging Indigenous jurisdictions, the problem is revealed as being about an absolutist assumption of sovereignty that impedes constitutional reconciliation. From this perspective, the real problem of Indigenous self-determination is not one of “fit” within existing constitutional or international legal instruments, but of the persistence of assumptions of absolute sovereignty applied to Indigenous peoples. Based on a comparative analysis of constitutional reconciliation undertaken in Canada and South Africa, my project offers practical lessons for moving beyond sovereign absolutism towards multinational federalism and more just forms of democratic constitutionalism.Recommended Reading
Nichols, Joshua Ben David. A Reconciliation without Recollection? An Investigation of the Foundations of Aboriginal Law in Canada. University of Toronto Press, 2020.
Hamilton, Robert, and Joshua Nichols. “Reconciliation and the Straitjacket: A Comparative Analysis of the Secession Reference and R v Sparrow.” Ottawa Law Review 52, no. 2 (2021). Published electronically April 30, 2021.
Nichols, Joshua. “Respect and Submission in Contexts of Transition: Reviewing Judicial Interpretation from R v Drybones to R v Montour.” Osgoode Hall Law Journal 62, no. 2 (forthcoming).