The Justice System
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How to Get It Right on Wrongs
Ontario’s Superior Court has created a new tort. But should it have, in the circumstances? In Doe 464533, 2016 ONSC 541, a delivered a couple of weeks ago, Ontario’s Superior Court of Justice awarded substantial damages to a person whose ex-boyfriend posted an intimate video of her online, in addition to showing it to some… Continue reading
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Absence of Evidence…
Last week, the Alberta Court of Appeal delivered an interesting decision rejecting a constitutional challenge to the province’s prohibition on private health insurance brought by way of an application. In Allen v Alberta, 2015 ABCA 277, the Court held unanimously that the applicant hadn’t provided a sufficient evidentiary basis for his challenge, and that it should have been… Continue reading
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Good Advice
Randy Barnett and Josh Blackman have an interesting piece in the Weekly Standard, with some pointed advice to the eventual Republican presidential nominee, whoever that might be, regarding the choice of nominees to the U.S. Supreme Court. Admittedly, it will be most interesting to constitutional law junkies and fascinated observers of the American legal system… Continue reading
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Safety Regulations and the Charter
I wrote earlier this week about the decision of the Court of Appeal for Ontario R. v. Michaud, 2015 ONCA 585, which upheld the constitutionality of regulations requiring trucks to be equipped with a speed limiter that prevents them going faster than 105 km/h. The Court found that the regulations could put some truck drivers in danger by… Continue reading
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What the Judge Googled for Breakfast
A recent decision of an American appellate court provides a vivid illustration of the complexity of the issues surrounding the courts’ treatment of scientific information that I have been blogging about here. The case is a prisoner’s suit against the medical staff at his prison, alleging that their refusal to let him take medication against reflux oesophagitis prior to… Continue reading
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False Friends
The elevation of Justice Brown to the Supreme Court has provoked an outpouring of anguish and anger about the system of judicial appointments in Canada. The critics of the current arrangements, whereby judges of superior, federal, and appellate courts are in effect appointed by the federal government, with relatively little ex-ante and no ex-post control by… Continue reading
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Living with Imperfect Judges
The arguments about limiting appointments to the Supreme Court to bilingual candidates are rather tired, not to mention more or less moot. But they keep coming back, over and over again. I actually wrote about the topic a while ago, but since it is in the news again, following the appointment of (the apparently bilingual)… Continue reading
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Who Are These People?
I wrote yesterday that the “conservative judicial appointments” narrative that the Globe and Mail’s Sean Fine has spent the last several months developing was essentially unsupported by the evidence. A few hours after I published my post, there was a new judicial appointment ― that of Justice Russell Brown to the Supreme Court ― and Mr.… Continue reading
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What’s the Big Deal?
The Globe and Mail’s Sean Fine has for months been pushing a “conservative judicial appointments” narrative, and he was back at it this weekend, with a lengthy piece on “Stephen Harper’s Courts.” We are, I take it, supposed to be worried about a “judiciary [that] has been remade” by ideologically shaped appointments. Mr. Fine quotes quite a… Continue reading
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Adequate Alternatives
Last week, the Supreme Court issued an interesting decision which, although apparently only concerned with judicial review (of the administrative law sort) and the respective jurisdiction of the Federal and superior courts, also tells us something about the role of the courts more generally. The case, Strickland v. Canada (Attorney General), 2015 SCC 37, was an… Continue reading
Double Aspect 