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What to Thump
This morning the Supreme Court heard the oral argument in Mouvement laïque québécois v. Saguenay (Ville de), a case on the validity, under the Québec Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms of a municipal by-law authorizing the mayor and those municipal councillors who wish it to publicly read a prayer just prior to the official…
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Une image et mille maux
Le jugement de la Cour supérieure du Québec dans Hammedi c. Cristea, 2014 QCCS 4564, condamnant un journaliste à payer 7000$ de dommages et intérêts à un couple dont il avait, sans son consentement, pris et publié la photo parce que la dame portait un niqab suscite beaucoup de controverse. Éloïse Gratton a, fort poliment, suggéré…
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The Shootout
This morning the Supreme Court heard the oral argument regarding Québec’s demand for the long-gun registry data which the federal government wants to destroy, pursuant to the legislation which abolished the registry two years ago. I have uploaded a very rough (and probably somewhat incomplete) transcript of the argument here. In this post, I will summarize…
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Permanent Campaign or Permanent Censorship?
Richard Pildes has an interesting post over at the Election Law Blog, discussing Michael Ignatieff’s take on the “circumvention” of election campaign spending limits by the Conservative Party of Canada in their “permanent campaign” which, Prof. Ignatieff believes (and, in fairness to him, so do many others), destroyed him as a potential Prime Minister. The “permanent…
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More Dead than Ever
While the Supreme Court is getting ready for the oral argument in Québec’s challenge to the abolition of the long-gun registry by the federal government (set for October 8), a different challenge to the constitutionality of the Ending the Long-Gun Registry Act was dismissed by Ontario’s Superior Court of Justice earlier this month in Barbra Schlifer Commemorative Clinic…
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Forgotten Balance
Over at Concurring Opinions, Frank Pasquale has a post defending the EU Court of Justice’s decision that enshrined the “right to be forgotten” in European law. Arguing against “a reflexively rejectionist position” which he sees emerging among some American commentators, prof. Pasquale writes that it fails to “recognize the power of certain dominant firms to…
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Missing Blueprints
Last week, in a series of decisions headlined by Bank of Montreal v. Marcotte, 2014 SCC 55, the Supreme Court confirmed the commitment to making provincial and federal laws operate side by side, in the name of co-operative federalism, which has been a staple of its federalism jurisprudence in recent years. When the Court had last…
Double Aspect 