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Nothing Like It
Law, perhaps even more than man, is a creature of habit. It thrives on the humdrum. It likes nothing better than demonstrations that one case is just like some other in all relevant respects. It is a creature of habit in a more literal sense too, in that legal rules often crystallize out of the…
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Égalité, Liberté?
As I was thinking about the application of the liberty interest protected by s. 7 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms to the family/marriage context, which I have written about here and here, a question occurred to me: why wasn’t it invoked to argue for the unconstitutionality of denying same-sex couple the opportunity to…
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Vies Communes
Il y a quelques jours, je parlais des promesses que l’État peut ou ne peut pas exiger de gens à l’occasion de leur mariage. Cependant, dans les faits, les provinces de common law n’exigent pas que les gens qui se marient civilement promettent quoi que ce soit au sujet de leur vie future. Le Québec,…
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The Crown and the Oath
A friend comments on my earlier post, in which I argued that the oath of allegiance to the Queen which would-be Canadian citizens are required to swear is unconstitutional: The wording of the oath of allegiance found in the Citizenship Act flows directly from the preamble and various sections of the Constitution Act, 1867 which…
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Ask Not
I have written more than enough about the oath of allegiance to Queen that would-be Canadian citizens have to take, but I have thought of an analogy that I like and which just might help us think the matter through. The Canadian citizenship is like marriage ― not necessarily in some romantic or esoteric way, though there…
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Empty Promise
I wrote yesterday about the challenge now being considered by the Superior Court of Ontario to the constitutionality of the wording of the oath of allegiance that would-be Canadian citizens must swear or affirm. The oath requires one to promise loyalty and fidelity to the Queen, her heirs, and successors. As I explained, the Federal…
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True Allegiance
When I became a Canadian citizen, more than 10 years ago now, I had, a according to the Citizenship Act, to affirm that I [would] be faithful and bear true allegiance to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth the Second, Queen of Canada, Her Heirs and Successors, and that I will faithfully observe the laws of Canada…
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Scripta Volant Quoque
The Romans said ― or, more likely, wrote ― that while words fly away, writing remains. Russians say that what is written with the quill cannot be hacked away with an axe. The idea of the permanence of the written word is very widespread. It is part of the law, too, whether in the rules…
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Says Who?
Exposing the secrets of the powerful is all the rage. And there are different ways of doing that, not all of them involving spending weeks in the transit zone of the Sheremetyevo Airport. As a fascinating recent paper shows, one of these more comfortable ways involves analyzing the language of judicial opinions in order to…
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Then and Now
Much has been said and written in the last few years, both in Canada and in the United States, about the role of money in politics and also about the importance of electoral procedures in enfranchising ― or disenfranchising ― citizens. But this is not a new problem, as a description of the English electoral…
