Personal Relationships of Dependence and Interdependence in Law

H. Graham Rawlinson is a corporate lawyer with the international law
firm Torys in Toronto. He is co-author of The Canadian 100: The 100 Most
Influential Canadians of the 20th Century.

The Law Commission of Canada, an independent federal law reform agency,
has produced just the sort of book that makes it such an invaluable part
of contemporary Canadian dialogue on law reform. Five Canadian law
professors have provided short but provocative essays that consider the
specific legal dynamics that govern human relationships involving
dependence and interdependence, and Commission president Nathalie Des
Rosiers establishes their common themes with an excellent introduction.

Relationships like those between a client and her therapist, or between
a lawyer and a client, or between a citizen and a bureaucrat, have
little in common on the surface. But these essays demonstrate that they
each are critically reliant on a legal framework that goes a long way
toward determining the success of the relationship and governing the
risks of, for example, breach of trust, exploitation, and termination of
the relationship. Traditional legal frameworks employed to govern these
sorts of relationships—such as contracts, or fiduciary
obligations—are found to be sometimes profoundly limited in their
ability to respond to such risks. As a result, the essays conclude that
new and innovative legal approaches to human relationships involving
dependence and interdependence should, for example, seek to empower
vulnerable parties by enhancing the interdependent aspects of these
relationships and protecting such interdependence through legal reform.
Case analysis and theoretical context in each case are combined with
practical suggestions for reform, making this slim volume a highly
relevant contribution to the debate about the way the law treats what
are increasingly vital spheres of human interaction.