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Pronoun Police?
Does human rights legislation let government police people’s use of pronouns? I have already written here about the way the federal government’ recently introduced Bill C-16 will restrict freedom of expression by adding “gender identity or expression” to the long and growing list of “identifiable grounds” of criminalized hate speech. In that post, I did
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Constitutional Purposes vs. Constitutional Text: On R. v. Pino
In my previous guest post at Double Aspect, I asked an intractable question: what is it that we are doing when we are engaged in constitutional interpretation? Depending on how one answers this question, different sources of meaning will become more or less significant. However, one source must always be at least relevant: the Constitutional
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Oliphant on R. v. Pino
Announcing a guest-post by Benjamin Oliphant Benjamin Oliphant, who recently published a guest-post on constitutional interpretation in the context of the debate about whether Parliament can require new Supreme Court judges to be bilingual, will be back with another post later today. He will be returning to the topic of constitutional interpretation, this time to
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Churchill on Prison
Winston Churchill’s thoughts on his time as a prisoner (of war) I’m not sure, and am too lazy to verify, whether if Winston Churchill is the only head of a Commonwealth government to have been a prisoner; but there cannot have been many. (UPDATE: As my friend Malcolm Lavoie points out to me, Nelson Mandela
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Permanent Censorship, Again
Ontario’s proposal for regulating pre-campaign political spending is wrong Earlier this week, The Globe and Mail reported that the Ontario government is proposing to introduce legislation that would limit the flow of private money into the political process (and introduce public subsidies to political parties). There is no bill yet, as the government is consulting
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Bilingualism, the SCA Reference, and Buffet-Line Constitutional Interpretation
Professors Grammond and Glover, as well as my gracious host Léonid Sirota, have all addressed the constitutionality of requiring judges to be bilingual in order to be qualified for appointment to the Supreme Court. In my view, all are excellent efforts to come to grip with difficult constitutional problems, and taken alone, I find each of
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Oliphant on Constitutional Interpretation
Announcing a guest-post by Benjamin Oliphant Just a quick note to announce that Benjamin Oliphant, my esteemed co-author on two articles on the place of originalism in Canada and of many brilliant papers of his own (as well as a busy lawyer in his spare time), will shortly by posting his take on the discussion between Sébastien Grammond,
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A Third View on Legislating Two Languages at the SCC
In the last number of days, Professor Grammond and incoming AUT Law School lecturer (and my very generous blogging host) Léonid Sirota have posted thoughtful analyses of whether Parliament can legislate a requirement that judges of the Supreme Court understand French and English without the assistance of translation. Grammond argues yes; Sirota says no. The
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Glover on Judicial Bilingualism & the Constitution
Announcing a guest-post by Kate Glover Just a brief note to announce a forthcoming guest-post by Kate Glover, a constitutional law professor at Western, on whether Parliament could constitutionally enact legislation requiring judges appointed to the Supreme Court to be bilingual. Sébastien Grammond rekindled the discussion on this topic with a guest-post over at Administrative Law
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Expanding Hatred Again
Don’t expand the Criminal Code’s hate speech provisions. Repeal them! This morning, the federal government has introduced a new bill in Parliament, C-16, that would, if enacted, add “gender identity” and “gender expression” to the definition of “identifiable grounds” used in the advocacy of genocide and hate speech provisions of the Criminal Code. (It would
Double Aspect 