constitutional interpretation
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What to Make of the Constitution
I have written a post on the Senate Reference hearings for I-CONnect, the blog of the International Journal of Constitutional Law. In large part, it follows up on and develops some of the ideas I had in my first impressions post last week, with a bit more context. I am cross-posting it below. *** Over… Continue reading
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Living Next to You
Despite living so close, and despite our constitution (not only the main documents, but also the Supreme Court’s constitutional jurisprudence) being substantially influenced (including a negative influence ― attempts not to repeat perceived mistakes) by the American experience, Canadians tend not to know, or not to understand, American constitutional law and theory as well as… Continue reading
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First Impressions
I will have more structured and fuller thoughts in the next days, but here are some initial impressions, in no particular order, of the Supreme Court’s hearings on the Senate Reference, almost all of which I watched. *** This case is, of course, largely about constitutional interpretation. (Much more so, in fact, than most constitutional… Continue reading
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What We Said
Apologies for the recent silence. There was no particularly good reason for it, either. Anyway, I’m back. And there is a very good reason for that: the Québec Court of Appeal has released its opinion in response to a reference by the Québec government on the constitutionality of the Federal Government’s Senate reform plans, which… Continue reading
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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… Continue reading
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What Will They Be Thinking?
Jack Balkin has an interesting post on Balkinization, discussing what he calls “arguments from the future” in constitutional law―arguments to the effect that a constitutional issue has to be resolved a certain way because of what people will think about it at some point in the future, say in 20 years. “If,” he writes, like Martin… Continue reading
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Original Myth
Any constitution, at least I suppose any constitution that has existed for a while, is surrounded by myths―stories that we tell ourselves to explain why things are as they are and, often, to reassure ourselves that they are as they ought to be. Among the myths surrounding the Canadian constitution, one of the most popular… Continue reading
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Much Ado About a Living Tree
In preparation for a guest-lecture on constitutional interpretation that I am going to give in a few weeks at McGill, I just re-read the famous “Persons Case”―Edwards v. Canada (Attorney General), [1930] A.C. 124. It is remembered for its invocation of the “living tree” metaphor and for consecrating a “large and liberal” and evolving approach… Continue reading
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Interpreting Interpretations
I would like to come back to the two cases I mentioned in yesterday’s post―A.-G. Canada v A.-G. Ontario, [1937] A.C. 326, better known as the Labour Conventions Reference, and Missouri v. Holland, because they might tell us something about a problem much broader than the issue (important though it is in its own right) that… Continue reading
Double Aspect 