Between social action and choice systemic law reform: reflection from a case study on the requests for amendment of the rules of procedure of the Canadian Criminal Code

In this case study we examine the social action, which precedes the formal process of creating criminal law, and more specifically the traces it leaves on the heels criminal procedural reform. Our study focuses on the requests to reform the Criminal Code, submitted by social groups to the Canadian Minister of Justice, during the first 35 years of the Criminal Code's existence. The analysis clearly takes into account who asked what and why, yet in the face of demands to reform, it ultimately seeks to problematize the rationality generated by the political system to choose one argument over another, to exclude one in favour of another, to distinguish which one "merits" statutory recognition and which does not. Our goal is to describe the process of criminal law reform by creating a framework for the relationship between the social production of normative expectations and the formal selection of some of these by the political system.