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La primauté de la législation
La semaine dernière, la Cour supérieure du Québec a rejeté la demande visant, entre autres, à faire déclarer inconstitutionnelle la “Loi 204”, qui exempte rétroactivement l’entente sur la gestion du futur amphithéâtre de Québec, conclue entre la ville de Québec et Qubecor, de l’exigence d’un appel d’offre (dans la mesure où cette exigence s’y appliquait, ce que…
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En Français S.V.P./In English Please
In 2008, the Township of Russel, just outside Ottawa, passed a by-law requiring any new commercial sign to be bilingual. An angry activist and a shopkeeper challenged the validity of the by-law. The Court of Appeal for Ontario has rejected their challenge, in Galganov v. Russel (Township), 2012 ONCA 409, released last Friday. Before getting…
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A Reasonable Opinion
The Supreme Court delivered an interesting decision in Halifax (Regional Municipality) v. Canada (Public Works and Government Services), 2012 SCC 29, yesterday. On the surface, it is a rather dull, or at least purely technical, case about the proper method of assessing the value of land occupied by a historical monument. But it has much broader implications,…
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The Best and the Rest
A friend has drawn my attention to what seems like an interesting book, Laughing at the Gods: Great Judges and How They Made the Common Law by Allan C. Huntchinson, a professor at Osgoode Hall. I haven’t had a chance to start reading it yet but I will eventually, because prof. Hutchinson’s topic is directly…
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The Good of Religion: Video
I wrote a couple of weeks ago about a discussion with professor Robert P. George, of Princeton, about “religious liberty and the common good.” The video of the discussion is below.
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Can the Viceroy Do Wrong?
Radio-Canada reports that Québec’s former Lieutenant-Governor, Lise Thibault, is trying to avoid having to stand trial on charges of fraud, forgery, and breach of trust, by invoking the common law rule that the Queen can do no wrong. As her lawyer puts it, criminal proceedings oppose the sovereign and the subject, and the sovereign cannot…
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Gun-Registry Hearing Today
Something almost as exciting as the Euro has started today in Montreal: the merits hearings in the gun-registry litigation, which I have been covering extensively. As I am not in Montreal, I am totally dependent on the media for any information about it. Things are not very encouraging so far. The reports by Radio-Canada and…
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Law Like Love
“What is law like? What can we compare it with in order to illuminate its character and suggest answers to some of the perennial questions of jurisprudence?” That’s the opening of Jeremy Waldron’s “Planning for Legality,” 109 Mich. L. Rev. 883 (2010), a review of Scott Shapiro’s book Legality. When I read it recently, it immediately reminded me of…
Double Aspect 