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Les légitimités et le droit
Un récent billet de Pierre Trudel illustre bien certains problèmes dans une pensée, malheureusement, commune face au conflit « étudiant » qui sévit actuellement dans quelques universités et collèges du Québec. Se présentant comme une position de compromis entre l’immobilisme gouvernemental et irrédentisme des associations étudiantes pro-grève, cette pensée réclame l’ « encadrement » d’un droit de
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Courts and Eligibility to the Senate
I wrote something stupid here earlier. I thought it was very clever, of course. But I didn’t read the Constitution Act 1867, carefully enough. Of course the courts cannot pronounce on the qualifications of a sitting Senator, as Aniz Alani was kind enough to point out to me. Making a public fool of oneself is
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Politicians in Robes?
I have a new post up at the CBA National Magazine’s blog, in which I summarize and discuss a most fascinating study by Dan Kahan and his colleagues at Yale’s Cultural Cognition Project. The study tried to establish, empirically, whether judges, lawyers, law students, and members of the general public would be influenced in the
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Online Gambling
Over at the EconLog, David Henderson has an interesting post that allows me to come back to some themes I used to carp on quite a bit, but haven’t returned to in a while now. In a nutshell, it is the story of antiwar.com, a website that, naturally enough, illustrates its message with some graphic
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Keeping Secrets
I wrote, a while ago now, about the electoral practices of Georgian England, including the brazen, and fantastically expensive, corruption which elections involved. This weekend, the BBC published a fascinating story by Alasdair Gill, looking at a change in the electoral rules that happened during the Victorian age ― in 1872, to be precise ―
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Toddling On
Double Aspect turns three today. An occasion for deep thoughts, I suppose. So here is one, stolen, as the best deep (and, for that matter, shallow) thoughts are ― specifically, from Douglas Adams’ description of the BBC’s reaction to The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy back when it was a radio show. It was, Adams
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A C-51 Amendment
OTTAWA, April 1, 2015. Double Aspect has learned that a little-noticed last-minute amendment has made it into the text of Bill C-51, the controversial anti-terrorism legislation supported by Stephen Harper’s government. The amendment will introduce, alongside the new offence of “advocating or promoting terrorism,” an additional offence to be known as “advocating or promoting spring”:
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Cooperative, or competitive?
The critics of the Supreme Court’s decision in the long-gun registry case, Quebec (Attorney General) v. Canada (Attorney General), 2015 SCC 14, have lamented the majority’s failure to make good on what seemed like the promise of cooperative federalism in the Court’s recent jurisprudence. In La Presse + today, Jean Leclair argues that the judges in
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How to Be Good Neighbours
Sometimes, the soundness of a position only becomes apparent by comparison with the alternative. So it has been, for me, in the gun registry litigation, which has finally concluded this morning with the Supreme Court’s decision in Quebec (Attorney General) v. Canada (Attorney General), 2015 SCC 14. The majority finds that contrary to Québec’s claims, the federal
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Beavertail Western
Suppose you are the sheriff of a remote town in the Wild West. John, the man who used to run the town’s saloon ― the only saloon within a hundred-mile radius as it happens ― passed away, and left the saloon to a son of his, name of Steve. However, unlike John, who was never fewer
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