Research areas

The CEDAC focuses on three main areas at the heart of public law.

Area 1

The relationships between the different political communities that make up the Canadian federation

Area I focusses on relationships, and seeks to gain a better understanding of the constitutional dynamics flowing from the historical cleavages that have marked the evolution of the federation, such as those between Francophones and Anglophones, between minority linguistic communities and between the State and Indigenous peoples.  

More specifically, this area covers the relationships between the legal traditions of the Common Law, Civil Law and the law of Indigenous peoples, and their impacts on the dynamics between the different approaches to constitutionalism. 

Area II

Basic rights and their protection by an independent justice system

Area II has a more institutional orientation, and is designed to bring together work on individual and collective rights in particular, including work on economic, social and cultural rights, on Indigenous peoples’ ancestral and treaty rights, on minorities’ linguistic rights, on legal guarantees and, more generally, on the ways the judicial power examines and rules on constitutionality.  

Moreover, by situating Québec and Canadian experiences respecting the protection of basic rights compared with the experiences of other liberal democracies, this research area sheds light on both the specificity and the universality of our system of rights protection.    

Area III

The fundamental public law of political institutions

Area III has a strong focus on jurisprudence, and targets more specifically the study of changes in the operation of legislative, executive and administrative bodies. This area’s themes include democracy, parliamentarianism, constitutional amendment, federalism, the distribution of powers, intergovernmental relations, the administrative organization of the State, judicial scrutiny of actions by the public administration, Indigenous peoples’ right of self-determination and Crown rights, privileges and immunities.