LEGISLATION DEROGATING FROM THE QUEBEC CIVIL CODE

The author studies how, by the introduction of Statute Law in Civil matters, the Civil Code is been modify. He focuses mainly on the Consumer Protection Act, the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, the Workmen’s Compensation Act, the Automobile Insurance Act, and other Statutes that either derogate, complete or enlarge the scope of the provisions of the Civil Code.

‘Bottom dog men’: Disability, Social Welfare and Advocacy in the Scottish Coalfields in the Interwar Years, 1918–1939

This article connects with and builds on recent research on workmen's compensation and disability focussing on the Scottish coalfields between the wars. It draws upon a range of primary sources including coal company accident books, court cases and trade union records to analyse efforts to define and redefine disability, examining the language deployed and the agency of workers and their advocates. It is argued here that the workmen's compensation system associated disability with restricted functionality relating to work tasks and work environments. Disability became more visible and more closely monitored and this was a notably contested and adversarial terrain in Scotland in the Depression, where employers, workers and their collective organisations increasingly deployed medical expertise to support their cases regarding working and disabled bodies. In Scotland, the miners' trade unions emerged as key advocates for the disabled.

Incentivizing Safety and Discrimination: Employment Risks under Workmen’s Compensation in the Early Twentieth Century United States

This article takes criticisms of employment discrimination in the aftermath of the creation of workmen’s compensation legislation as a point of entry for arguing that compensation laws created new incentives for employment discrimination. Compensation laws turned the costs of employees’ workplace accidents into a risk that many employers sought to manage by screening job applicants in a manner analogous to how insurance companies screened policy applicants. While numerous critics blamed insurers for discrimination, I argue that the problem was lack of insurance. The less that companies pooled their compensation risks via insurance, the greater the incentives for employers to stop employing people they would have previously been willing to hire.