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Ideology in Constitutional Scholarship
Is most writing about constitutional law and theory (in the United States, but perhaps also in Canada) “intellectually corrupt”? In a post on the Bleeding Heart Libertarians blog, Jason Brennan, a philosopher and economist from Georgetown, says that it is. But, while his description of constitutional scholarship is, unfortunately, right, his explanation and evaluation of…
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Independence Enough Day
Ontario’s Small Claims Court relies on the work of 400 “deputy judges” – practising lawyers who take up part-time judging gigs, for an average of 19 sitting days a year. Subs. 32(1) of the the Courts of Justice Act provides that they are appointed by “[a] regional senior judge of the Superior Court of Justice…
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In an Unknown Language
It is not every day, or even every month, that courts get to quote and discuss a statute enacted in the reign of Edward III. But the BC Court of Appeal did just that in an interesting decision it issued last week, in the case of Conseil Scolaire Francophone de la Colombie-Britannique v. British Columbia,…
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Happy Canada Day!
A few quotations to indulge, for a day, in that un-Canadian feeling, patriotism. “There is room enough in this country for one great free people; but there is not room enough, under the same flag and the same laws, for two or three angry, suspicious, obstructive nationalities.” – Thomas D’Arcy McGee “[L]et your motto be…
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Small is Beautiful
How many judges should a country’s highest court have? Those of Canada and the United States both have nine, but Jonathan Turley, of George Washington University, argues in an op-ed in the Washington Post that that’s not nearly enough. Although made with the U.S. context in mind, his argument, if persuasive, would be relevant to…
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Google, Speaker and Censor
Some recent stories highlight Google’s ambiguous role as provider and manager of content, which, from a free-speech perspective, puts at it at once in the shoes of both a speaker potentially subject to censorship and an agent of the censors. The first of these is an interesting exchange between Eugene Volokh, of UCLA and the…
Double Aspect 