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Danai Preces Legentes
Although courts in different countries are not infrequently called upon to consider similar issues, it is not very often that they do so at the exact same time. But that might be the case this year with the question the constitutionality of municipal councils opening their meetings with prayers. In Canada, the dispute concerns the…
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Eux non plus
Je voudrais revenir sur le sujet de la laïcité des représentants de l’État, dont j’ai déjà énormément parlé en lien avec la « Charte des valeurs québécoises » proposée par le gouvernement du Québec. Un aspect du débat qui entoure cette proposition que je n’ai pas abordé jusqu’à présent, c’est l’existence d’un assez large consensus…
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Undue Spiritual Influence
One of the most fascinating cases ever decided by the Supreme Court of Canada is one that you have never heard about ― or at any rate hadn’t heard about until two weeks ago, if you read Yves Boisvert’s account of it in La Presse. The case is Brassard v. Langevin, (1876-77) 1 S.C.R. 145 ―…
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Caption Contest
The decision of the Superior Court of Ontario in McAteer v. Canada (Attorney General), 2013 ONSC 5895, upholding the constitutionality of the reference to the Queen in the citizenship oath stresses the importance of the legal distinction between the Queen as a person, and the Queen as (a symbol of) an institution. Accordingly, those who have written about…
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Hornblower and the Oath
I have just come across an excellent illustration of the complex ― I am tempted to say schizophrenic ― relationship between our constitutional law and the monarchy, which is at the heart of the litigation about the constitutionality of the reference to thee Queen in the Canadian citizenship oath. On the one hand, as Justice…
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Constitutional Conventions and Senate Reform
Fabien Gélinas and I have written a paper on the (under-appreciated yet crucial) role of constitutional conventions for assessing the constitutionality of the federal government’s plans for reforming the Senate, which are the subject of references now being considered both by the Supreme Court and by the Québec Court of Appeal. (The factums for the…
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A Little Knowledge
Twitter and the blogosphere (ok, the parts of Twitter and the blogosphere that I frequent) are pretty excited about the Constitute Project, which sets out to “offer[] access to the world’s constitutions that users can systematically compare them across a broad set of topics.” Google, which has provided money and support for the project, proclaims that…
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A Chance for Justice
I have written a good deal about access to justice and the related issue of self-represented litigants. These problems are very difficult; I doubt that any quick solutions can be found for them, and it doesn’t help that, as I wrote here, the complexities that must be dealt with are often forgotten. These problems are…
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Say It Ain’t So
I wrote yesterday about the decision of the Superior Court of Ontario in McAteer v. Canada (Attorney General), 2013 ONSC 5895, which upheld the constitutionality of the reference to the Queen in the oath of allegiance which would-be Canadian citizens must take. As I said in that post, believe that the decision is wrong. Here is…
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As Expected
The Superior Court of Ontario has ruled yesterday that the Canadian citizenship oath, which requires would-be citizens to promise “allegiance” to the Queen, is constitutional, thus rejecting the challenge of a group of anti-monarchists who argued that it infringed their freedoms of speech and of religion, as well as their equality rights under the Canadian…
