Mark Mancini
-
Against Pure Pragmatism in Statutory Interpretation II: Evaluating Rizzo
Part II in a 3 part Double Aspect series Continue reading
-
Against Pure Pragmatism in Statutory Interpretation I
The first post in a three-part Double Aspect series. Continue reading
-
The Top Statutory Interpretation Cases of 2020
A banner year for interpretation Continue reading
-
An Oddity in Strom
In October, the Saskatchewan Court of Appeal released its much-anticipated decision in Strom. Strom raised a number of important issues: “ “at the intersection between professional regulation, Ms. Strom’s private life, and the s.2(b) Charter guarantee of freedom of expression in the age of social media.” Strom was a registered nurse. Her grandfather tragically… Continue reading
-
Constitutional Law Ruins Everything. A (sort of) response to Mancini’s “Neutrality in Legal Interpretation.”
This post is by Andrew Bernstein. No! I am not an academic nor was meant to be.Am a mere practitioner, one that will doTo settle a dispute, argue an appeal or twoWhen advising clients, the law’s my tool.Deferential, if it helps me sway the courtArgumentative, and (aspirationally) meticulous.Case-building is my professional sportTrying my hand at… Continue reading
-
Guest Post: Andrew Bernstein
We continue our week of guest posts. This time, we will be posting a contribution from Andrew Bernstein (Tory’s), in response to my post last week on the ideal of neutrality in legal interpretation. Continue reading
-
Declarations of Unconstitutionality as Judgments In Rem: A Response to Professor Daly
This post is written by Marc-Antoine Gervais, and a larger paper on the subject will appear in the McGill Law Journal (vol. 66). Canada’s model of judicial review of legislation is unusual. On the one hand, it is “diffuse” in that all courts of law (and many administrative tribunals) may decide constitutional questions. On the… Continue reading
-
Guest Post: Marc-Antoine Gervais
It is my pleasure to announce a guest post today by Marc-Antoine Gervais, on the subject of declarations of invalidity as in rem judgments. The post is a response to Paul Daly’s recent post on declarations of invalidity in the aftermath of the Sullivan decision. Marc-Antoine has a larger paper coming out in the McGill… Continue reading
-
Neutrality in Legal Interpretation
Nowadays, it is unfashionable to say that legal rules, particularly rules of interpretation, should be “neutral.” Quite the opposite: now it is more fashionable to say that results in cases depend on the “politics” of a court on a particular day. Against this modern trend, not so long ago, it was Herbert Wechsler in his… Continue reading
-
Linguistic Nihilism
One common line of attack against textualism—the idea that “the words of a governing text are of paramount concern, and what they convey, in their context, is what the text means (Scalia & Garner, at 56)—is that language is never clear, or put differently, hopelessly vague or ambiguous. Put this way, the task of interpretation… Continue reading
Double Aspect 