courts
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A Purely Hypothetical Maiden
In one of my first posts, I wrote―referring to the suggestion in Stanislaw Lem’s The Cyberiad that there are “three distinct kinds of dragon: the mythical, the chimerical, and the purely hypothetical, … all, one might say, nonexistent, but each nonexist[ing] in an entirely different way”―that “judicial activism is something like the dragon of constitutional… Continue reading
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In Vino Veritas
Un article publié aujourd’hui sur le site de La Presse parle d’un recours collectif intenté contre la SAQ parce que, selon l’avocat du demandeur, « les marges bénéficiaires de la SAQ sont actuellement disproportionnées, déraisonnables et exorbitantes alors qu’elle se trouve en position de monopole ». Bien que la SAQ soit en mesure d’acheter son vin… Continue reading
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The Wrongs of Rights?
The New York Review of Books has an interesting piece by David Cole on Michael J. Klarman’s From the Closet to the Altar: Courts, Backlash, and the Struggle for Same-Sex Marriage. The thesis of the book (which I haven’t read, so I’m relying on prof. Cole’s summary) is that litigation in pursuit of the recognition… Continue reading
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Judicial Independence, Freedom, and Duty
Judicial independence is a familiar idea, though it is also a difficult one, in more than one sense. Difficult to accept, on the one hand, because independence from political, and ultimately electoral, control seats uneasily with our notions of democracy in which political power (which judges exercise, since they make their decisions in the name… Continue reading
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Keeping Judges Busy
The Globe and Mail reports that the federal government will go to the Supreme Court to review the constitutionality of its Senate Reform project. Opponents of the reform have dared it to do so for years. They’ll get their wish now. The Supreme Court’s was already asked to rule on Senate reform project once, by Pierre… Continue reading
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The Forms and Limits of Persuasion
There was a very interesting piece by Maggie Koerth-Baker yesterday in New York Times magazine, about the ways in which we make up and change our minds. The immediate context to which it is directed is U.S. presidential campaign, in which both contenders (though especially Mitt Romney) have had some notorious “flip-flops.” But of course the… Continue reading
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The Best and the Rest
A friend has drawn my attention to what seems like an interesting book, Laughing at the Gods: Great Judges and How They Made the Common Law by Allan C. Huntchinson, a professor at Osgoode Hall. I haven’t had a chance to start reading it yet but I will eventually, because prof. Hutchinson’s topic is directly… Continue reading
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Don’t Try This at Home
I had missed this story when it came out, but better late than never. The CBC reports on the work of a Windsor Law professor, Julie Macfarlane, according to whose estimation “up to 80 per cent of people in family court and 60 per cent in civil cases represent themselves.” This is is, as she says,… Continue reading
Double Aspect 