Canada
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New Swearwords
The Prime Minister wants to make a meaningless addition to our unconstitutional citizenship oath Continue reading
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Losing Our Way
Neither “society’s tolerance” nor the “captive audience” doctrine justify censorship of anti-abortion ads Continue reading
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Do You Really Have to Go?
Lessons for Canada and New Zealand on resignations of MPs Continue reading
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Aborting Freedom of Expression
If a city can censor anti-abortion ads to prevent hurt feelings, is there anything that could not be censored? Continue reading
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Was Scalia Spooky?
Antonin Scalia’s views on snooping, in the 1970s and later Continue reading
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Erasing Constitutional White Spots
A critique of Vanessa MacDonnell’s theory of quasi-constitutional legislation One of my first posts on this blog dealt with the topic of quasi-constitutional rights and quasi-constitutional laws, in which such rights are mostly, although not exclusively, found. I have not really returned to that subject since, except in commenting on one case in which the… Continue reading
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Where Is the Grass Greener?
In a recent article in Constitutional Forum, Peter Russell argues that Canada needs to imitate New Zealand by creating a Cabinet Manual that would, notably, contain an authoritative although not legally binding statement of the principal constitutional conventions, especially those that regulate the formation of governments. While this would, in prof. Russell’s view, have a… Continue reading
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The Real Problem of Judicial Arrogance
What judicial arrogance is, and is not Alice Woolley has published a much discussed post over at Slaw, describing and decrying what she regards as “the problem of judicial arrogance”, and also the way in which lawyers and, presumably, legal academics enable this arrogance. Having been quite critical of the ways in which judges regard and… Continue reading
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Why Do the Write Thing?
Sir Geoffrey Palmer and Andrew Butler, both of them former legal academics and current barristers, Sir Geoffrey having also served as Attorney-General and Prime Minister in between, are about to publish a book advocating that New Zealand enact a “written” constitution. They have also set up a Twitter account and a website to both promote the book and… Continue reading
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Unconstitutional
Thoughts on the constitutionality of the new Supreme Court appointments process In my last post, I argued that the process for appointing Supreme Court judges announced by the federal government last week is not a positive development. It will neither increase the transparency of the appointments nor de-politicize them, while creating an illusion of having done… Continue reading
Double Aspect 