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Safety, First
Yesterday, the Ontario Court of Appeal issued an interesting decision in R. v. Michaud, 2015 ONCA 585, a test case challenging the constitutionality of regulations requiring trucks to be equipped with a speed limiter that prevents them going faster than 105 km/h. The Court found that the regulations infringed the truckers’ right to the security of…
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Don’t Blame the Courts
Critics of judicial review of legislation, such as Jeremy Waldron, argue that judicial invalidation of democratically enacted laws often occurs in the realm of reasonable disagreement. Perhaps we have a moral right to assisted suicide; perhaps not; it’s a difficult question and we can disagree about the answer ― and it’s not obvious that in…
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What the Judge Googled for Breakfast
A recent decision of an American appellate court provides a vivid illustration of the complexity of the issues surrounding the courts’ treatment of scientific information that I have been blogging about here. The case is a prisoner’s suit against the medical staff at his prison, alleging that their refusal to let him take medication against reflux oesophagitis prior to…
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The Fog of Law
The Prime Minister has announced that, should his government return to power after the election, it will seek to enact legislation criminalizing the travel to some parts of the world, considered to be hotbeds of terrorism. Both the list of areas in question and the details of the legislation are sketchy at this point, so…
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Show ‘Em
Earlier this week, an American court issued a decision on a topic that is all but certain to come up for discussion in the weeks after October 19: the ballot selfie, and the attempts ban it. Judge Barbadoro of the U.S. District Court in New Hampshire declared unconstitutional that state’s law that made it an offence to…
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Persuasion and Voting from Abroad
When Norman Spector and I debated the disenfranchisement of Canadians abroad on the CBC’s The 180 a couple of weeks ago, he pointed to the fact that some expatriates ― such as Americans he met in Israel while he was Canada’s ambassador there ― vote on the sole basis of the candidates’ policies towards their current…
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False Friends
The elevation of Justice Brown to the Supreme Court has provoked an outpouring of anguish and anger about the system of judicial appointments in Canada. The critics of the current arrangements, whereby judges of superior, federal, and appellate courts are in effect appointed by the federal government, with relatively little ex-ante and no ex-post control by…
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Stare decisis stricto sensu c. Strickland (c. Canada): connaissons-nous bien la portée des jugements de la Cour fédérale?
Dans l’arrêt Strickland c. Canada (Procureur général) du 9 juillet dernier, arrêt que mon hôte a brillamment commenté sous d’autres aspects, le juge Cromwell, dans des motifs majoritaires non contredits sur cette question par les motifs concordants des juges Abella et Wagner, a soutenu «qu’aucune cour supérieure provinciale ne serait liée» (par. 53) par un jugement…
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Uber and Civil Disobedience
I have a new post over at the National Magazine’s Blog, arguing that to the extent that Uber and other firms of the sharing economy breach the laws that prevent them from offering their services to the public, we should assess their claims that such laws are unjust on their merits, instead of rejecting them…
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Law and Innovation, Again
In my July post for the National Magazine’s blog I wrote that the decision of Ontario’s Superior Court rejecting the attempt by the city of Toronto to stop Uber operating there without a “taxicab broker” license was a reminder of the fact that technological innovation often challenges the law not directly, but by enabling innovative business…
Double Aspect 