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Federalism and Judicial Review
A paper of mine has been chosen for a presentation at the Third Annual Constitutional Law Colloquium at the Loyola University Chicago School of Law. It is about the legitimacy of judicial review of legislation on federalism grounds – that is, courts striking down legislation because it infringes not individual rights, but the division of…
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Don’t Try This at Home
I had missed this story when it came out, but better late than never. The CBC reports on the work of a Windsor Law professor, Julie Macfarlane, according to whose estimation “up to 80 per cent of people in family court and 60 per cent in civil cases represent themselves.” This is is, as she says,…
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An Ancient Parliamentary Right
I learned something about constitutional and Parliamentary tradition yesterday, and decided I’d post about because I was probably not alone in my ignorance of this quirk. Apologies to those in the know already! *** Each session of the mother of parliaments, at Westminster, and her daughters throughout the Commonwealth, starts with a Speech from the…
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Drop That Gun! (But Keep the Bullets)
The Superior Court of Ontario has recently delivered its decision in The Queen v. Montague, 2012 ONSC 2300, an interesting case at the intersection of the topics property rights, and gun rights, about which I wrote here and here. In fact, in the latter post, I had mentioned a previous decision in this case, by the…
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Humpty Dumpty
Last week, the Globe’s Neil Reynolds blamed all the troubles, real or imaginary, of Canadian federalism on the “peace, order, and good government” (POGG) clause of s. 91 of the Constitution Act, 1867. Undeterred by his failure last time around to grasp the actual constitutional law he was bewailing, which I pointed out here, Mr.…
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Not for Sale
On to the third (and maybe last) part of my comments about the the BC Supreme Court’s judgment striking down hearing fees the province imposed on litigants who wanted to go to trial, which I summarized here. On Thursday I wrote about the separation of powers aspect of the judgment; on Friday about its suggestion…
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Don’t Piss Off the Crocodile
As promised, I have some comments on the B.C. Supreme Court decision striking down hearing fees, which I summarized here yesterday. In fact I’ll have a lot of comments, too many for just one post. I start off today with some thoughts on what I take to be the main line of argument in Justice…
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You Read It Here First
I thought I was late, but at least I beat La Presse. I wrote on Tuesday about the latest decision of Québec’s Superior Court in the gun-registry litigation. La Presse has a story about it today. Nothing really new there.
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One’s Day in Court: Priceless?
In 1998, British Columbia started charging litigant stiff “hearing fees” for each day of a civil trial. Last week, Justice McEwan of the B.C. Supreme Court issued a monster of a judgment declaring them unconstitutional. The decision is very interesting for all sorts of reasons, but it is also abusively long. Fortunately for you, I have…
Double Aspect 