Contributor

James Brink

James Brink is an associate with Ormston List Frawley LLP, a law firm in Toronto that advises small to mid-size Canadian public and private companies on corporate organization and restructuring, contracts, financing, as well as their securities compliance obligations. James also regularly works with the firm’s litigation department in connection with commercial and personal disputes ranging from breach of contract to online defamation.

James is a graduate of Osgoode Hall Law School and Redeemer University College.

Proximate justice: a symposium on Christian realism

Last summer, Comment magazine publishing partner Steven Garber wrote a powerful introduction to a new idea: making peace with proximate justice.

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More From This Contributor

A student-at-law responds

No one will admire us for not padding our dockets, or hold parades because we held to the spirit, and not just the letter, of convoluted tax or securities provisions.

Squares or Triangles? Cutting up the Market

James Brink argues for a thicker account of institutions, and against a soft tyranny in the ?institutional creep? of the ?neoclassical? understanding of markets in society.

How to Start a Slow Reformation in a Fast and Easy Society

My argument is that, in order to accomplish a reformation, in order to change the world, we need to build institutions. A thorough-going reformation takes time. Perhaps it takes a long time. It took a generation to build Redeemer University College in Ancaster, Ontario (my alma mater) to the point it is at now. It took a generation before the Work Research Foundation acquired the staff, resources, and networks to do the quality work it is doing now.

New Wine into Old Skins

In my last article, I said guilds could be the vanguard of a new civil society. Valiant words, but there are significant obstacles to overcome before we see any progress. Moreover, all the examples of functioning guilds that I have used so far have one thing in common: they are not in Canada. The question then arises, can guilds can ever take hold in Canada? If so, how?

Guilds and Civil Society

The new economy is not a friendlier economy. Revamped hiring practices make it easier to discharge workers… If you’re in, great. If you’re out, well, it’s awfully difficult to get inside. Imbalances in the organization of work make it tough to argue for a civil society where all the spheres, including the economic realm, are largely self-regulating.

Guilded Independence

The company man is a classic figure of the employer/employee model. We know the type: he—it's usually a man—started sweeping the shop-floor as a youth of 17 and stayed in the same town with the same company his whole life. After 25 years, he received his gold watch;...