The Justice System
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Ideology and Canadian Judges
In case you missed my self-promotion yesterday, my new post a the CBA National Magazine’s blog is up. It argues that we need to change the ways in which we think about and study judicial ideology in Canada. Simply importing American models, which rely on using the party of the president who appointed a judge, or… Continue reading
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Raising Issues
Normally, a common law court decides a case brought before it on the issues raised by the parties. But sometimes it can ― and occasionally even has to ― raise an issue on its own. When it can do so, and how it must go about doing this are the main topics discussed in R.… Continue reading
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Shifting the Culture of Rationing
As Justice Karakatsanis observed in the opening paragraph of her reasons (for the unanimous Supreme Court) in Hryniak v. Mauldin, 2014 SCC 7, [2014] 1 S.C.R. 87 “[t]rials have become increasingly expensive and protracted.” For the Supreme Court, the length and expense of trials is an access to justice problem. But (at least some) provincial governments, notably that… Continue reading
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The Economics of Unanimity
It is often thought that judicial unanimity is a valuable commodity. Chief Justices bang heads, twist arms, and break legs in order to get their courts to produce more of it, but they don’t always succeed, and unanimity remains at least somewhat scarce on the U.S. and Canadian Supreme Courts (although more on the former than… Continue reading
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Danger: Judges Blogging
My second post for the CBA’s National Magazine is up. It deals with the question of whether judges should refrain from blogging, prompted by an ongoing controversy over a blog post by an American judge, Richard G. Kopf, in which he recommends that the U.S. Supreme Court “stfu”. This controversy has now reached the mainstream… Continue reading
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The Mainville Appointment Is Constitutional
It’s taken me a long time to gather my thoughts on this, but here goes, half-baked though they still are. As everybody knows, Justice Robert Mainville, of the Federal Court of Appeal, has been appointed to the Québec Court of Appeal, and Rocco Galati, the lawyer who first challenged the appointment of Justice Marc Nadon… Continue reading
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Le festival harpérien de l’insconstitutionnalité se poursuit : la nomination du juge Mainville à la Cour d’appel du Québec
Le vendredi 13 juin 2014, l’hon. Robert Mainville, alors juge de la Cour d’appel fédérale, a été nommé juge de la Cour d’appel du Québec par le gouverneur général sur la recommandation du premier ministre fédéral. Contrairement à ce que, jusqu’ici, ont laissé entendre certains experts et chroniqueurs, cette nomination est à notre avis inconstitutionnelle.… Continue reading
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Just Ask?
DISCLAIMER: Judging by the amount of time it took me to write this post, it is likely to make no sense. But I’m too invested in it, at this point, to give up on it. The constitutionality of Bill C-36, the federal government’s proposed anti-prostitution legislation, is in serious doubt, and there have been calls… Continue reading
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Don’t Rebuild It
I wrote yesterday about the uncertain constitutionality of the federal government’s outsourcing of the choice of potential nominees for the Supreme Court to the government of Québec (or any other province). The government’s reliance on such a process is, according to the Globe’s Sean Fine, who broke the story yesterday, not intended to create a precedent. But… Continue reading
Double Aspect 