Criminal Law

Liability for criminal conduct requires an intent to cause harm. An important question in criminal law is the degree to which lesser states than actual knowledge can form the basis for a criminal conviction. In the decision of the Supreme Court of Canada in R. v. Briscoe, 2010 SCC 13 released today, the Court makes […]

In the Canadian legal system, there are generally two elements required to prove a crime: the act (actus rea) and the mental state (mens rea). Generally, without proof of these two elements there can be no criminal conviction. However, what may at first seem like a simple equation of two parts, can actually become a