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The Idea of the Marketplace
Apologies for the lack of blogging for the past week. We had this minor disturbance of a hurricane, and then I went to a conference in Chicago to present my paper on federalism and judicial review. My topic today is the highlight of that conference, a keynote address by Robert Post, Dean of the Yale…
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L’argent en politique
Depuis une dizaine de jours, des chroniqueurs de La Presse ont publié une série d’articles sur la diminution du montant maximal de don à un parti politique, proposée par le gouvernement du Parti Québécois. Après Vincent Marissal et Alain Dubuc, la plus récente intervention est celle de Lysiane Gagnon, ce matin. (C’est aussi la meilleure, car la plus…
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Not So Great Expectations
Whatever his other merits and demerits, Conrad Black has made some noticeable contributions to the development of the law of justiciability in Canada. The latest came this week, in the form of a judgment of the Federal Court of Canada, in Black v. Advisory Council for the Order of Canada, 2012 FC 1234. The first…
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The Confusion in Hate Speech
The Alberta Court of Appeal delivered an interesting decision on the meaning and application of prohibition on “hate speech” in the province’s human rights legislation. The case, Lund v. Boissoin, 2012 ABCA 300, concerned the publication in a Red Deer newspaper of a letter to the editor urging citizens to resist “the homosexual agenda”, and…
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Almost Arbitrary
On the Volokh Conspiracy blog, Eugene Volokh has a post about an interesting case just decided by a federal district court in California. The case, Hebrew University of Jerusalem v. General Motors LLC, concerns GM’s right to use the image of Albert Einstein if an advertisement for one of its gas-guzzlers. Einstein died in 1955…
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Don’t Try Again
The BC Court of Appeal recently delivered an important decision in the area of election law. The case, Reference Re Election Act (BC), 2012 BCCA 394, is the Court’s take on the provincial legislature’s attempt to respond to the Court’s earlier judgment in British Columbia Teachers’ Federation v. British Columbia (Attorney General), 2011 BCCA 408,…
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Federalism and Judicial Review
First of all, apologies for my silence in the last 10 days. I have a partial excuse in that I gave a guest-lecture in Fabien Gélinas’ constitutional law class at McGill last Thursday, about the Rule of Law and the legitimacy of the judges’ law-creating activity, which of course had me freaking-out to prepare. But…
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Religious Freedom Is (a) Right
The Globe’s Doug Saunders has produced a very unfortunate op-ed this morning, arguing that “religious freedom” is at best redundant, at worst positively harmful, and that Canada should not be in the business of promoting it. The occasion for his outburst is the upcoming creation of the Office of Religious Freedom within the Department of…
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You Can Stay
On the topic of extradition, which I raised in yesterday’s post, there is an important very recent decision of the Ontario Court of Appeal, United States v. Leonard, 2012 ONCA 622. The decision concerns applications for judicial review by two Aboriginal Canadians of extradition orders authorizing their surrender to the authorities in the United States…
