Tag: diversity

Dissidents Need Not Apply

Ideological hiring in Canadian law schools

It is hiring season at many Canadian law schools, when they fill or expand their faculties’ ranks with rookie professors or, more rarely, newcomers from other schools. Usually (not always), hiring is restricted by seniority level and by area of research or teaching. Sometimes, hiring at Canadian law schools is explicitly restricted by demographic characteristic: it may be that only Indigenous applicants will be considered for some positions, or in other cases, that white men need not apply. This is supposed to make law schools more equitable and representative (though see Joseph Heath’s recent post at his In Due Course Substack on the limits of demographic representativeness as a metric for Canadian institutions).

But at some Canadian law schools, would-be academics must be meet another set of criteria: ideological ones. This is not a new phenomenon. For example, way back in 2018, the University of Victoria was publicizing its hiring with a tweet calling for candidates “passionate about social justice“. But I have been reminded of it once again by this tweet from a member of the hiring committee at Windsor Law:

And Windsor’s actual ad is pretty clear too. Immediately after listing the areas of interest to the school, it explains:

Windsor Law welcomes candidates who bring social justice and critical perspectives, including interdisciplinary, comparative approaches, intersectional, critical race, feminist and/or queer theory, to their research, teaching, and service.

Granted, this isn’t an explicit statement to the effect that people who do not bring “social justice and critical perspectives” are not welcome. But, even apart from the extrinsic evidence of Prof. Ceric’s tweet, the implication is unmistakable. It’s not as if people might be in doubt about whether “social justice” devotees would be considered for a job at a Canadian law school, and at Windsor of all places, to the point that they, and no one else, need to be reassured about this. On the contrary, if not an absolute requirement, then ideological acceptability is, at least, a major advantage.

Nor is Windsor alone. This year’s ad from the University of Toronto Law School “seek[s] candidates who value diversity and whose research, teaching, and service bear out a commitment to equity, diversity, and inclusion”, and requires applicants to “submit a brief statement of contributions to equity and diversity”. This is not just a generic “social justice”, but one specific (though very popular) pew in that ideological church. If you do not subscribe to what, for example, Yascha Mounk has described as the “identity synthesis” view on equity, diversity, and inclusion, or indeed if you simply devote your legal research to other matters, UofT will not even look at your application, which will be incomplete without the statement.

These ideological litmus tests are antithetical to the spirit of free inquiry and the pursuit of truth which define a research university. The point of a university is to expand and share human knowledge ― not to be the research arm of a political movement, no matter how righteous. We do not know in advance which way the data and the logic of our arguments will point; we might guess, of course, but we have to be open-minded about the possibility that our assumptions will be disproven. Maybe data and logic support “social justice”; but maybe they do not. If the latter possibility ― or the former ― is peremptorily foreclosed at the outset, then what is being done is no longer scholarship but advocacy falsely flying the scholarly flag.

This is troublesome enough when an individual does it, but, as I have argued in my contribution, over at the Verfassungsblog, to the ongoing debate about “scholarly activism” (or “scholactivism”), individual activists can contribute to academia ― provided that they are checked by people who disagree with them. But when entire institutions commit to ideological dogmas, this checking cannot take place. Indeed, attempting to fundmentally question the activist findings of a colleague becomes a form of sabotage to the institution’s mission. An institution that does research with a pre-determined valence is not a university at all but, at best, a think-tank. And when many, if not most, of a country’s law schools ― and let’s not kid ourselves; for ever Windsor, Vic, and UofT who are explicit about their ideological requirements, there is another law school or three that simply isn’t transparent ― make the same ideological commitment, that country no longer has a legal academy. At best, it has a thriving industry of social justice think-tanks.

It is worth noting, too, that these are public universities we are talking about. A public university is not merely failing to discharge but actively abandoning its public mission if it decides to put itself into the service of a movement whose ideology some significant portion of the public rejects ― rightly or wrongly, this does not matter. It becomes a partisan actor, albeit one that has the privilege and the gall to be financed by its opponents as well as its supporters. When the opponents wise up to what is going on and decide to tie the purse strings, the university should not be surprised ― let alone accuse them of authoritarianism and other frightful things.

Let me address, briefly, some objections that have been made to me when I have raised some of these points on Twitter. One claim is that “social justice”, for example, is not at all an ideological term, but simply a way of saying that legal scholars should be thinking about how to make society more just. Quite apart from the fact that the idea of a just society is already ideologically contentious (see e.g. the second volume of Hayek’s Law, Legislation, and Liberty ― called The Mirage of Social Justice), these claims are beyond implausible. Nine times out of ten, at least, the phrase “social justice” describes the ideal, or an ideal, of progressive, left-wing politics, and one has to live under a rock not to know this. The same sort of argument used to be made about “equity, diversity, and inclusion” back when the Law Society of Ontario demanded that all the lawyers in the province “promote” this stuff, and it was equally disingenuous. And the suggestion that it’s all about being able and willing to teach the “social justice” or “critical” views (as in, teaching about them as part of a balanced overview of existing opinion, as opposed to imposing them on students), which is anyway belied by references to research in both the Windsor and the UofT ads, is just as detached from reality.

And then there is the view that what Windsor, in particular, is doing is fine because its mission statement describes it as “justice-seeking: Building on a long-standing commitment to social justice that seeks fairness, equity and dignity, with a particular focus on relationships with historically marginalized communities”. It’s not obvious to me that UofT, for example, has a similar excuse, but never mind. Much more importantly, few, if any, of the people who might find this argument persuasive would have accepted it in the context of a mission statement imbued with a different set of values.

Consider, for example, the Trinity Western University’s “covenant” that required students and faculty to, among other things, abstain from sex outside a heterosexual marriage. TWU has a mission of its own, that of being an evangelical Christian institution ― a private one, mind you, not a public one. But, when it wanted to create a law school of its own, law societies in British Columbia and Ontario demanded that it drop the “covenant” because it discriminated against gay and lesbian students. If you think that TWU’s mission is no excuse for excluding people who do not fit in, but Windsor’s is, then you are applying an obvious double standard.

You might, like the academic who made this argument to me on Twitter, describe it as “pluralism”, but it’s an awfully convenient sort of pluralism, one that only imposes obligations on the people you disagree with, and allows you to indulge your pre-existing preferences at no cost. It all sounds fine so long as you get to be in power and call the imposition of your preferences on others by various high-minded names. If the other side gets in and starts ordering the public square to what it regards as the common good, or the highest good, or whatever other label it describes theocracy with today, you’ll have no cause for complaint. They’ll be doing unto you what you are already doing unto everyone.

Canadian legal academia has an ideological groupthink problem, which becomes worse every year as many law schools restrict hiring to people who share the prevailing orthodoxy. The solution is simple enough ― stop imposing litmus tests, and remember that people with whom you disagree, including about values and principles, can still be smart and interesting to engage with even they are profoundly mistaken. If they are willing to argue with you in good faith, return the compliment. And if you are so convinced of your values’ and principles’ superiority, you have nothing to fear from students being exposed to some others. They’re smart enough see the difference as well as you.

Misplaced Zeal

The Law Society of Ontario’s “Statement of Principles” cannot be defended as advocacy for the Law Society

In a post at Slaw, Alice Woolley argues that lawyers’ state of mind, and in particular their personal commitment to the causes they are asked to represent, should not factor into an assessment of whether they are acting ethically ― and further, that this logic applies not only to lawyers’ representation of clients, but also to their compliance with other obligations requiring them to take particular positions, such as the Law Society of Ontario’s “statement of principles” policy. Though no legal ethicist myself, I am inclined to agree with Professor Woolley general point that a lawyer’s advocacy need not be anchored in a personal commitment to a cause ― but only so far as advocacy on behalf clients is concerned. Advocacy outside the context of legal representation, where the lawyer is acting on someone else’s behalf, is a different matter. Professor Woolley’s conflation of these two contexts is, in my respectful view, a serious mistake.

Professor Woolley gives the examples of hypothetical lawyers who undertake to represent clients for reasons that have nothing to do with a personal commitment to their causes. They want to get paid and cannot think of a better way to make their living (or at least, as good a living as the practice of law allows them), and care little for the justice of their clients’ cases. They are, however, competent and hardworking, and successful as a result. These lawyers, Professor Woolley argues, are not truly “zealous” advocates ― they feel no particular zeal ― but it would be wrong to think of them as unethical. “Lawyers’ ethics”, she insists, “are about acting as required by their role and professionalism, not personal belief or commitment.”

That seems right to me. A system of professional ethics that required lawyers to wholeheartedly embrace their clients’ cases would be both unattractive and impracticable. Many clients would have to be unrepresented, because no lawyer would agree with them, while professional regulators would have to become inquisitors to find out how lawyers well and truly felt. Note, though, that so far as the Model Code of Professional Conduct of the Federation of Law Societies is concerned, the idea that representation must be “zealous” is only a gloss, and as Professor Woolley shows an unfortunate gloss, on the actual rule, which rather requires it to be “resolute”. (5.1-1) Professor Woolley argues that her hypothetical halfhearted lawyers are not “resolute”, but I’m not sure about that. To the extent that they work hard and diligently pursue whatever recourse is open to their clients, without regard to their own feelings about them, I would not describe them as lacking in resolve, though this is a point about semantics and I don’t think much turns on it.

Be that as it may, as Professor Woolley suggested I might, I think that the position of lawyers who are not engaged in advocacy on behalf of clients is different from that of those who are. Lawyers arguing clients’ cases are widely understood not to be presenting their own views; conflations of the lawyers’ positions with the clients’ are routinely criticized by lawyers and others ― for example when judges or politicians with experience as criminal defence lawyers are (mis)represented as approving of the crimes of which their former clients were accused (and in many cases guilty). Acting as an advocate for a client, a lawyer is a mouthpiece, a hired gun; the rules of professional ethics not only do not require him or her to inject personal approval into the representation, but positively forbid injecting disapproval.

Outside the special context of client representation, however, these understandings and rules do not apply. Indeed, the Model Code‘s the requirement of resolute advocacy applies specifically in that context: “When acting as an advocate, a lawyer must represent the client resolutely and honourably within the limits of the law” (emphasis mine). The rule does not speak to the lawyer acting as an individual, a citizen, with something of his or her own to say. When expounding and advocating for their own views, lawyers are, it seems to me, held to the same expectations of integrity as other people. If a lawyer gives a talk at a bar association event on the importance of access to justice, yet charges exorbitantly high fees and never undertakes any pro bono work, that lawyer deserves to be condemned as a hypocrite ― even though such a condemnation would be quite inappropriate in response to the same lawyer’s invocation of access to justice in argument on behalf of a client. The same goes for advocacy of any other ideal or value, including of course those referred to in the “statement of principles” policy ― equality, diversity, and inclusion. A lawyer advocating for these things without actually believing in them is a hypocrite whom right-thinking members of society are entitled to condemn.

I’m not sure whether Professor Woolley actually disagrees with this view, in the abstract. Yet she thinks that it is inapplicable to the situation of the Ontario lawyers whom the Law Society wants “to promote equality, diversity and inclusion generally, and in [their] behaviour towards colleagues, employees, clients and the public”. That’s because “the Statement of Principles is not about lawyers doing things on their own behalf, but rather on the profession’s.” In effect, by requiring us to produce this statement, the Law Society has enlisted us all as advocates for its own views, so that the norms of advocacy, of client-representation, apply.

Now, I do not think that the Law Society itself understands its policy in this way. When the “statement of principles” was first introduced, the Law Society explained that “[t]he intention” behind it “is to demonstrate a personal valuing of equality, diversity, and inclusion” (emphasis mine). Subsequently, it backtracked on this and claimed that requiring lawyers to “promote equality, diversity, and inclusion” “does not create any obligation to profess any belief or to seek to persuade anyone about anything”. If the former view of the “statement of principles” ― contradicted but never withdrawn from the Law Society’s website ― still holds, then, contrary to what Professor Wolley says, it is very much “about lawyers doing things on their own behalf”, albeit at the regulator’s behest. If the subsequent view is correct ― though I find it implausible, and the Law Society itself refused to make it the basis of a settlement of the challenge to the “statement of principles” brought by Ryan Alford and the Canadian Constitution Foundation ―, then lawyers are not asked to be advocates either on their own behalf or on the Law Society’s.

But suppose that the Law Society is, in fact, seeking to enlist the lawyers subject to its regulatory power as advocates for its own views, as Professor Woolley thinks. This would be a startling proposition. Unlike in any other case of representation, lawyers do not consent to this “retainer”. Unlike with any other client, they are not given a choice to decline representation if they find the client or the cause unacceptable, or simply beyond their availability or ability. Nor are they permitted to withdraw. They are, in a word, conscripted, coerced to act for the Law Society on pain, for most of them, of losing their livelihood. All the arguments against conscription, both deontological (it is simply wrong for one person to use other persons for his or her own purposes in this way) and consequentialist (conscripts are unlikely to provide good service), apply.

And why exactly is this conscription necessary? The Law Society is sufficiently well-heeled, what with charging over $1200 a year to members like me who are not even practising law, and double that to those who are, not to need pro bono representation. Lawyers are not even required to provide free representation to those who desperately need and, thanks in part to the Law Society’s cartelization of the legal services market, cannot afford it. Why is it entitled to something those in more need lack? Why does it need thousands upon thousands of (free) lawyers ― more than any client in the history of the universe ever had?

Moreover, there appears to be no limiting principle to the idea that the Law Society is entitled to conscript lawyers to represent it. If it can force us to advance its views and objectives with respect to “equality, diversity, and inclusion”, why not on other issues? If the Law Society comes to the view ― perhaps a not unreasonable view ― that its interests would be better served by the government of Ontario being formed by a given political party, can it mandate lawyers “promote” this party’s electoral fortunes? Can the Law Society, instead of hiring consenting lawyers ― and, presumably, paying them ― to defend its policies against Professor Alford and the CCF simply command some to work for it nolens volens? This would, to repeat, be a startling view ― and, to repeat also and give the devil its due, the Law Society itself does not take a position that commits it to advancing it ― but it seems to follow from Professor Woolley’s argument that there us “no regulatory impropriety in requiring” lawyers to advance particular views and values “to pursue the profession’s objectives”.

Professor Woolley is right that whether a lawyer’s heart is in his or her work for a client, or merely his or her brain and sitzfleisch, is irrelevant. But this is not true of the lawyer’s expression of his or her own views, where a lawyer is no more permitted to be hypocritical than any other person. Opposition to the Law Society’s “statement of principles” requirement proceeds in part from a sense that accepting it would require commitment to “equality, diversity, and inclusion” regardless of whether one adheres to these values (and arguably, more specifically, to how they are understood by the Law Society) ― and therefore, in many cases, hypocrisy. Professor Woolley claims that this is not so, because the requirement has nothing to do with personal belief, and is in effect a forced retainer of every licensed legal practitioner by the Law Society. Yet the Law Society does not think so. A power to conscript its members in this fashion would be an extraordinary one, and is quite unjustified in a free society. I see no reason to believe that it exists. Professor Woolley’s zeal in defending the Law Society is misplaced.

A Hard Case

Thoughts on the Supreme Court’s dismissal of a religious freedom claim based on Aboriginal beliefs

Last week, the Supreme Court issued its decision in Ktunaxa Nation v British Columbia (Forests, Lands and Natural Resource Operations), 2017 SCC 54, which held among other things that the guarantee of religious freedom under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms does not prevent the state from interfering with the object of one’s worship. Beliefs, says the majority in an opinion by Chief Justice McLachlin and Justice Rowe, are protected ― but not the things that these beliefs attach to. Justice Moldaver, while concurring  in the result, vigorously disagrees with this approach. So does much enlightened opinion. And the critics have a point. But so does the majority. This is a much harder case than some of those who have criticized the decision have allowed.

For my purposes here, the facts are simple. The people of the Ktunaxa Nation have come to believe that allowing the building of any permanent constructions on a large tract of public land “would drive Grizzly Bear Spirit from [that land] and irrevocably impair their religious beliefs and practices” [6] to which the Spirit is central. Meanwhile, a developer wants to build a resort on that land and, after a protracted consultation process, has been granted permission to do so by the provincial government. The question is whether this decision infringes the Ktunaxa’s religious freedom and, if so, whether the infringement is justified under section 1 of the Charter. (There are other important issues in Ktunaxa too, but this post only deals with the religious freedom one.)

The majority concludes that there is no infringement of the freedom of religion. The constitution protects “the freedom to hold religious beliefs and the freedom to manifest those beliefs”. [63] An interference with a person’s or community’s beliefs and manifestation of these beliefs is a prima facie infringement of this guarantee. But there is no such interference here. The Ktunaxa can still believe in the Grizzly Bear Spirit, undertake rituals that manifest this belief, and transmit it to others. However, crucially, “[t]he state’s duty … is not to protect the object of beliefs, such as Grizzly Bear Spirit”. [71] Were it otherwise, “[a]djudicating how exactly a spirit is to be protected would require the state and its courts to assess the content and merits of religious beliefs”. [72]

Justice Moldaver argues that this is too narrow a view of religious practice and, therefore, religious freedom. Religious practice must be, well, religious ― otherwise there is no point to engaging in it. The state must not take away its essential character: “where the spiritual significance of beliefs or practices has been taken away by state action, this interferes with an individual’s ability to act in accordance with his or her religious beliefs or practices”. [126] When religious belief involves a “connection to the physical world”, [127] as is the case for many aboriginal religions, a severing of this connection will infringe religious liberty. This, according to Justice Moldaver, is what happened in this case.

That said, Justice Moldaver ultimately upholds the government’s decision, because in his view it represents a proportionate balancing between the statutory objectives of administering and, when expedient, disposing of public lands, and the Ktunaxa’s religious freedom. Since the Ktunaxa themselves insisted that their claim could not be accommodated ― it had to be accepted or rejected ― to give effect to it would have meant giving them a veto over development on, and thus effectively a form of property rights in, a large parcel of public land. The government was “in a difficult, if not impossible, position”, [154] and its decision to allow development notwithstanding the Ktunaxa’s claim was reasonable.

Critics of the majority opinion agree with Justice Moldaver that the majority does not understand religious experience or the variety of religious practice. Avnish Nanda, in a thoughtful Twitter thread, blamed this failure on the lack of diversity on the Supreme Court. He pointed out that “[t]wo of the five pillars of Islam are intrinsically tied to” the Kaaba, and that, therefore, “[i]f the Kaaba were deprived of its spiritual significance, these religious practices core to Islam would be deprived of value”. But I’m not sure that diversity is the key issue here. After all, some forms Christian theology also accords great significance to sacred places and objects ― and one need not even be particularly familiar with this theology to be aware of its traces in the English (or French) language ― in words like “crusade” or “iconoclast”.

Whatever the reason for the majority’s narrow approach to religion, as I said at the outset, I think that its critics raise an important concern. Courts are prone to taking what is arguably too narrow a view of religious concerns, whether with respect to common or more exotic forms of faith. In a somewhat different but related context, Douglas Laycock once cautioned against “assum[ing] that religions lay down certain binding rules, and that the exercise of religion consists only of obeying the rules … as though all of religious experience were reduced to the Book of Leviticus”. (“The Remnants of Free Exercise”, 1990 Sup Ct Rev 1 at 24) Beliefs, obligations, and rituals are not all there is to freedom of religion. Community (the specific focus of Prof. Laycock’s concern) is important too, and so is attachment ― properly religious attachment ― to some aspects of the physical world.

However, as I also said in the beginning, we should not be too quick to condemn the majority opinion. To begin with, its concern about entangling the courts, and thus the ― secular and religiously neutral ― state in determinations of just what the protection of “objects of beliefs” requires is justified. David Laidlaw’s post over at ABlawg underscores this point, albeit unintentionally. Mr. Laidlaw insists that “the result in this case was a failure of imagination to consider the interests of the … Grizzly Bear Spirit”, which should have been recognized through the expedient of the courts granting the Spirit a legal personality and appointing counsel to represent it. For my part, I really don’t think that the Charter allows a court to embrace the interests of a spiritual entity ― thereby recognizing its reality. It is one thing for courts to acknowledge the interests and concerns of believers; in doing so, they do not validate the beliefs themselves ― only the rights of those who hold them. It is quite another to endorse the view that the belief itself is justified. And then, of course, the court would still need to determine whether any submissions made on behalf of the Spirit were well-founded. But even without going to such lengths, it is true that to give effect to the Ktunaxa’s claim, the Supreme Court would have had to hold not only that the Ktunaxa sincerely believed in the existence of and their connection to the Grizzly Bear Spirit, but also that this connection would in fact be ruptured by development on the land at issue. To do so would have meant validating the asserted belief.

There is a related point to make here, which, though it is unstated in the majority opinion, just might have weighed on its authors’ minds. Insisting that the connection between a person’s religious belief and the object of this belief deserves constitutional protection might have far-reaching and troubling consequences. The movement to insist that “defamation of religion” must be forbidden and punished is based on the same idea: things people hold sacred deserve protection, and so the state ought to step in to prevent their being desecrated ― say, by banning cartoons of a Prophet or jailing people for “insulting religious feelings”.

Now, perhaps this does not matter. To the extent that the protection of the objects of beliefs is purely “negative”, in the sense that the state itself must not engage in desecration but not need not take action to prevent desecration by others, it need not translate into oppressive restrictions on the freedom of expression (and perhaps of religion) of those whose behaviour some believers would deem to compromise their own faith. But I am not sure that this distinction will always be tenable. If, for instance, a regulatory authority subject to the Charter grants a permit for an activity that a religious group believes to trample on the object of its faith ― say, a demonstration in support of people’s rights to draw cartoons, where such cartoons are going to be displayed ― does it thereby become complicit in the purported blasphemy, and so infringe the Charter? (This argument is not frivolous: it parallels one of those made by those who think that law societies should be free to deny accreditation to Trinity Western’s proposed law school lest they become complicity in its homophobia.)

There is an additional reason why Ktunaxa strikes me as a difficult case ― though perhaps also a less important one than it might seem. Suppose Justice Moldaver’s view of the scope of religious freedom under the Charter is correct, and the state has a prima facie duty not to take away the sacred character of (at least) physical spaces and objects involved in religious belief. As Justice Moldaver himself says, this seems to be tantamount to giving religious believers a form of property interest in the spaces or objects at issue. That might not be a problem if the believers already own these things in a more conventional sense ― though even in such cases a constitutional quasi-proprietary right would be unusual given the Charter‘s lack of protection for ordinary property rights. But, as Ktunaxa shows, in the absence of more conventional interests (whether fee simple ownership or aboriginal title or right), the recognition of such interests can get very problematic, because they amount to giving religious believers control over things that are not actually theirs. And what if the sacred place or object is owned not by the state but by another person? What if more than one religious group lays claim to it? In short, I’m not sure that there will be many, if any, cases where competing considerations would not prevail in a section 1 analysis (whether under the Oakes or, especially, the DorĂ© framework), just as they did in Ktunaxa.

These thoughts, in case that wasn’t clear, are all quite tentative. I’m certainly open to the possibility of being proven wrong. If I am right, however, Ktunaxa really was a very difficult case, and it is not obvious that the majority got it wrong ― though nor is it clear that it got it right. Hard cases, it is often said, make bad law. I’m not sure that this is what happened here ― or that it even matters if it did.

Profession of Power

A critique of Bob Tarantino’s celebration of the legal profession

In a new post over at his blog, bad platitude, Bob Tarantino continues his defence of the Law Society of Upper Canada’s right to exact ideological conformity from its members. His focus is on Jonathan Kay’s National Post op-ed that tied the Law Society’s demands to a belief  in the “myth that lawyers comprise a moral vanguard within society, with sacred duties that extend beyond the daily humdrum of litigating divorces and drafting contracts”. Mr. Tarantino concedes that Mr. Kay “correctly diagnoses … the profession’s seemingly inherent vainglory” ― and proceeds to defend thinking of law as a profession, not “‘just’ an occupation” in a way that demonstrates just how vainglorious this profession can be.

Before getting to the point, I pause to note Mr. Tarantino’s rather remarkable appeal to the forces of the market in an implicit attempt to justify the Law Society’s right to force lawyers to come up with, or at least copy-and-paste, “Statements of Principle” acknowledging a purported obligation to promote equality and diversity. Contra Mr. Kay, Mr. Tarantino observes that some clients ― he mentions Facebook ― want lawyers to take these things seriously. Mr. Tarantino also insists that he has “the right to decide not to spend [his] money at businesses that espouse views [he] find[s] unpalatable, and even to enthusiastically encourage others to avoid spending their money there”. Very well ― though at least some human rights statutes (including those of Quebec and New Zealand) include political opinion among the list of prohibited grounds of discrimination, which suggests that even enlightened individuals like Mr. Tarantino might disagree with some instances or applications of such legislation. But how exactly does Mr. Tarantino justify the coercion of lawyers whose clients are not as enlightened as he or Facebook, or indeed those lawyers who do not have any clients? At best, this is not a free-market argument, but a paternalistic one. The Law Society knows better.

On now to Mr. Tarantino’s main argument, which is that “it is precisely in law’s status as a profession and as a locus of power in society that the importance of collective value-setting arises”.  A profession, says Mr. Tarantino, is distinguished by involving the application of “a body of specialized knowledge and subordination of the practitioner’s interests in favour of three ‘others’: the client, the profession, and the public”. Lawyers, even more than the members of other professions, wield power over “our society and over the affairs of their clients, and if they adopted a self-interested ethic, a sort of syndicalism, they could quickly become a manifest danger to the rest of society”. For this reason, it is essential to make lawyers “virtuous” ― “so that their power is channeled in favour of others”. This is what both the Law Society’s latest demands and the oath lawyers are required to swear upon entering the profession (to which these demands bear a close resemblance, as I have noted here) are supposed to accomplish. Mr. Tarantino adds that it is very important that these exercises in “collective identity-formation” are “voluntary”; that they “do not find their origins in the government [but] arise from lawyers themselves.” He sees the legal profession as “in some ways just a big club … that gets to set its own rules about membership”, and there is nothing “illegitimate” about that, is there?

It is as if the last 250 years of history and political thought had not happened. As if it were possible to believe, after Smith and Madison ― not to mention Robespierre ― that public good is achieved by virtuous agents rather than by competition and ambition counteracting ambition. As if it were possible to claim, regardless of Constant and Berlin, that rules that a majority imposes on a minority not really an imposition and an interference with liberty. As if it were possible to maintain, despite Friedman and public choice theory, that a state-backed monopoly is not self-interested and syndicalist, working to exclude competition and raise prices for its services. Or, if Mr. Tarantino does not actually believe that such things are generally true, he must then suppose that lawyers, of all, people, are uniquely immune to the fallibility of other human beings. This is the sort of presumption, as self-serving as it is vainglorious, that Mr. Kay rightly decried.

Moreover, Mr. Tarantino’s argument involves a rhetorical sleight of hand. The lawyers’ power, of which he makes so much, is mostly not collective, as he suggests, but individual. It is not the legal profession acting as a united whole that drafts statutes, prosecutes alleged criminals, adjudicates disputes in administrative tribunals, or handles the personal and financial affairs of vulnerable clients. It is individual lawyers or, at most, firms. In any litigation, there are two sides ― normally, though admittedly not always, each with its own lawyer. When lawyers draft or apply rules that bind citizens, other lawyers are ready to challenge these rules or their application. If a lawyer mishandles a client’s case, another can be retained ― including to sue the first. (This is not to make light of the possibility and cost of mistakes or incompetence, of course. Still, the point is that a mistaken or even incompetent lawyer does not represent the profession as a whole.) The one circumstance when lawyers do act collectively is when they act through the Law Society. When the Law Society exacts compliance with its demands, that is the profession exercising power ― backed up by the armed force of the state. That is where we really ought to worry about power being exercised unethically. And in my view ― though perhaps not in Mr. Tarantino’s ― the exercise of power to impose ideological conformity on those subject to it is unethical and indeed oppressive.

Unlike many other defenders of the Law Society, Mr. Tarantino has the merit of not trying to minimize the seriousness of what is going on. His first post contained a forthright admission that the Law Society’s demands amount to a values test for membership in the legal profession. His latest doubles down on this admission, and makes clear that it the Law Society’s actions rest on a conception of public power that is paternalistic, confident both of its own moral superiority and of its ability to make others virtuous, and takes no notice of disagreement or dissent. Those who do not like how this power is exercised can simply get out and leave the legal profession ― and find some other way of making a living. Many of those who support the Law Society seem to be surprised by the force of the opposition which its latest demands have provoked. Perhaps, thanks to Mr. Tarantino’s posts, they can understand better.

One’s Own Self, Like Water

The Law Society’s demand for a “Statement of Principles” is a totalitarian values test

In my last post, I outlined the scope of the Law Society of Upper Canada’s demands that all lawyers subject to its regulation, including those who are retired or working outside Ontario, produce a “Statement of Principles that acknowledges” a purported “obligation to promote equality, diversity and inclusion” ― not only in the practice of law but “generally”. I also explained that no such obligation exists at present, because none is imposed by the Rules of Professional Conduct or other rules applicable to lawyers, as they now stand, and that it is doubtful whether the Law Society could lawfully impose such an obligation under its enabling statute.

I have not seen meaningful responses to these concerns. On the contrary, they have been echoed in an op-ed in the Globe and Mail by Arthur Cockfield. Instead, those who defend the Law Society argue that whatever limitation of our rights the Law Society’s demands produce, the limitation is justified if analysed under the proportionality framework of s 1 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. They also point to the fact that lawyers are already required, by s 21(1) of Law’s Society’s By-Law 4, to swear an oath upon entry into the profession.

I agree with the Law Society’s defenders that the “Statement of Principles” that it wants us to produce is indeed similar to an oath, and in particular to the oath required by s 21(1), which I will refer to as “the lawyers’ oath”. They are similar in nature, in purpose ― and in their uselessness and questionable constitutionality. I will discuss these points below, drawing heavily on the criticisms of the Canadian citizenship oath (and, specifically, of its reference to the Queen) that I have developed over the course of four years of blogging on this topic, and especially in an article on this issue published in the National Journal of Constitutional Law. (Indeed, though it was not the focus of my argument, I briefly discussed the lawyers’ oath in the article.) Some of those who defend the Law Society have sought to accuse its critics of hypocrisy over our purported failure to object to oaths, and especially to oaths of allegiance to the Queen. Whatever the rhetorical value of such accusations ― and I think that it is nil, since they do not refute our substantive objections ― this topic is not new to me.

Start, then, with the nature of the oath or “Statement of Principles”. Both are forced expressions of commitment to acting in certain ways. Though a “Statement of Principles” might, depending on the way in which it is formulated, ostensibly stop just short of being a promise, I think that any distinction between acknowledging an obligation and promising to fulfill an obligation is one without a difference in this context. In his National Post op-ed criticizing the Law Society’s demands, Bruce Pardy treated the “Statement of Principles” as a forced expression of support of support for the Law Society’s policies, which I think is quite right. As Prof. Pardy pointed out, in National Bank of Canada v Retail Clerks’ International Union, [1984] 1 SCR 269, the Supreme Court has condemned such demands as “totalitarian and as such alien to the tradition of free nations like Canada”. (296) Although in Slaight Communications Inc v Davidson, [1989] 1 SCR 1038 the Court made it clear that this holding did not apply to compelled statements of fact, this (wrongheaded, in my view) narrowing of the National Bank holding is not relevant here. But, as I have argued in my blog posts and article, coerced commitments are more than expressions of opinion. They are impositions not only on the freedom of speech of those who must make them, but also on their freedom of conscience. Oaths, as the Supreme Court explained in R v Khan, [1990] 2 SCR 531 work by “getting a hold on [the] conscience” of those who take them, notably ― but not only, as I shall presently explain ― by making the thing sworn to a matter of moral, and not merely legal, obligation. The  “Statement of Principles” is similar, in that it is an attempt to make every lawyer embrace, as a matter of his or her personal morality, and thus conscience, the principles set out in that statement.

The other way in which oaths typically impinge on conscience, and also a point of similarity between the lawyers’ oath and the “Statement of Principles” is that, because they typically impose vague obligations that go well beyond the requirements of any positive law, they demand frequent if not constant exercise of moral judgment about the precise scope of the duties being sworn to. As I wrote in my article, the lawyers’ oath

requires lawyers, among other things, to “protect and defend the rights of interests” of their clients; to “conduct all cases faithfully”; not to “refuse causes of complaint reasonably founded, nor [to] promote suits upon frivolous pretences”; to “seek to ensure access to justice”; and to “champion the rule of law and safeguard the rights and freedoms of all persons.” These (and the other requirements of the oath) are not straightforward obligations. Discharging them requires lawyers to think about just what their duties are. … [T]o a considerable degree, the judgment required is a moral one. In some cases, that is because the lawyers’ duties are couched in moral terms (like “faithfulness” …). In other cases, the degree to which one can and ought to fulfill these duties must necessarily be left to individual conscience. (How far must one go to “ensure access to justice”: does it require one to limit one’s fees? How much pro bono work need one do? Can one “ensure access to justice” while being a member of a state-enforced cartel devoted to raising the cost of legal services?) In other cases still, it is because the lawyers’ duties can conflict (for instance, when the defence of a client’s interests might suggest launching a “suit upon frivolous pretences”), requiring moral judgment about which is to prevail. In short, a lawyer must constantly, or at least frequently, rely on his or her conscience to determine just what it is that his or her oath requires. (152)

The “Statement of Principles” would be meant to do the same thing, requiring lawyers (those, at least, who take it seriously) to be constantly asking themselves what their general “obligation to promote equality, diversity and inclusion” requires. It is no answer that the requirement is merely to comply with relevant human rights legislation. Not only is no “Statement of Principles” necessary to achieve that, but this legislation does not actually apply to many lawyers, such as those who are retired and not engaged in the sorts of relationships or activities which such legislation covers. The whole point of a “Statement of Principles” is to go beyond the positive law.

These impositions on freedom of conscience ― and, of course, the compelled expression  of opinion that the lawyers’ oath and “Statement of Principles” also are ― require justification. I do not think that any exists. In my article, I take the Canadian citizenship oath through the Oakes proportionality analysis, and find that it fails at every step. (Interestingly, as I also note in the article, the Law Society itself dropped the mandatory oath to the Queen due to constitutional concerns.) Of course, the issues with the lawyers’ oath and the “Statement of Principles” are not the exactly same. Yet there are also some common points.

In particular, both supposedly serve the sort of “[v]ague and symbolic objectives” of which the Supreme Court told us to be wary in SauvĂ© v. Canada (Chief Electoral Officer), 2002 SCC 68, [2002] 3 SCR 519 while having a tenuous relationship to these objectives. The lawyers’ oath is unlikely to make many lawyers more ethical, or more committed to the Rule of Law. One is ethical, or a “champion of the Rule of Law”, because one believes in these things ― not because one was made to swear to them. Similarly, even the Law Society’s defenders tend to acknowledge that requiring us to produce a the Statement of Principles is not going to do much to make the legal profession more diverse or inclusive. A symbolic expression of commitment to a set of values, no matter how attractive, is no more necessary than a symbolic expression of commitment to one’s country, no matter how great ― which, I explain in the article on  the citizenship oath, and as Liav Orgad explained in more detail in his study of loyalty oaths, is to say not necessary at all.

This is all the more so since the Law Society explicitly states that the requirement to produce a “Statement of Principles” can be satisfied by the simple expedient of “adopting” one of the sample “Statements” supplied by the Law Society itself. Indeed, the Law Society’s defenders suggest that since we could easily “adopt” one of those sample statements, regardless of whether we believe in them, or some other “Statement” so vague and bland that, as Annamaria Enenajor put it to me on Twitter,  “a closet [sic] neo-nazi lawyer could get down with” it, the whole thing is really no big deal. This again is similar to the lawyers’ oath. I have no doubt that if Justice Abella chooses to re-join the bar after her retirement from the Supreme Court, she will feel no compunctions about promising to “champion the rule of law” ― even though it is a matter of public record that “[t]he ubiquitous phrase ‘rule of law’ annoys her“, and that she prefers something called “the rule of justice”. But to the extent that the Law Soceity’s fellow-travellers are right, it is difficult to see how the “Statement of Principles” is meaningfully addressing a pressing and substantial concern, and it must fail the proportionality test for that reason.

There is, however, another possibility. As with the citizenship oath and the lawyers’ oath, while most people may be content to make a pretended commitment to ideas or principles they do not understand or indeed secretly despise, some are not. They take a thing of that nature, whether called an oath or a Statement of Principles, seriously. They agree with Robert Bolt’s Thomas More that “[w]hen a man takes an oath … he’s holding his own self in his own hands. Like water. And if he opens his fingers then—he needn’t hope to find himself again”. And, just like More refused to falsely swear an oath to regard Henry VIII as head of the Church, they will not tick off box on the Law Society’s form to acknowledge an obligation to promote ideals the Law Societey’s interpretation of which  they do not share, or indeed the Law Society’s authority to impose which they reject. As to such people ― as to those who refuse to live in the closet ― the Law Society’s demand is not a trivial, if useless, imposition. As prof. Pardy argues, and as the Supreme Court has long accepted, forcing people to endorse opinions that they do not share is totalitarian ― or at any rate no less oppressive than the government of Henry VIII. As to such people, the Law Society’s demands will, at all events, fail the “proportionality strictu sensu” test, because totalitarian demands for ideological compliance always impose a greater cost than whatever benefit the state (or, in this case, the Law Society) can hope to obtain by imposing them.

Beyond the dry terminology of proportionality analysis, it is important to understand that what is at stake here is neither more nor less than a values test for the practice of law. While some have resisted this implication (going so far as to argue that a requirement to produce a “Statement of Principles” is not a values test even though a requirement to provide it to the Law Society would be one!), others among the Law Society’s fellow travellers are quite comfortable with it. In their view, there is nothing wrong with a legal profession in which only people who hold the right values ― and those who are sufficiently unprincipled to dissemble about theirs ― are welcome to remain, while those who are deemed to be wrong, and who refuse to hide in the closet in response, are shown the door. The undesirables are not yet pushed out ― it may be that the Law Society’s policy is nothing more than a paper tiger, a “demand” that will not be meaningfully enforced. But it could also be a warning, and a test. Even if the Law Society does not try coercion now, acquiescence to its demands it will embolden it do so in the future. As others have argued, it will also show that the legal profession is supine enough to comply with the authorities’ attempts to impose orthodoxy on it. And this leads me to a final question for those who support the Law Society. Are you really so confident of always being among those whose orthodoxy will be imposed on others? Thomas More ― the historical one, the one who confiscated books and rejoiced in the burning of heretics ― was so confident. May you fare better than he did.

Lawless Society of Upper Canada

The LSUC’s attempt to make lawyers “promote diversity and inclusion” is lawless and incompatible with a free society

The Law Society of Upper Canada (soon to be renamed something less historic), prepares to require its members ― of whom I am one ― to supply it with

individual Statement[s] of Principles that acknowledge[] [our] obligation to promote equality, diversity and inclusion generally, and in [our] behaviour towards colleagues, employees, clients and the public.

Bruce Pardy has written an excellent op-ed in the National Post to denounce this imposition as an essentially totalitarian attempt at thought control by the legal profession’s governing body. (He and Jared Brown also discussed the issue with Jordan Peterson; I am not fully on board with some of the things said in that conversation, but it is worth listening to.) While prof. Pardy’s op-ed makes the essential points, I will canvass a couple of further issues on this blog. In this post I will discuss the scope of the Law Society’s demand and what seems to me be the lack of legal justification behind it. I will have at least one other post to address the freedom of expression and freedom of conscience issues the demand raises, and probably another one about some broader concerns regarding the regulation of the legal profession.

The first point I want to make here is that it is important to be clear about just how far the purported obligation that the Law Society wants us to acknowledge extends. (I say “purported” because, as I shall presently explain, the obligation is, for the moment, a fictional one.) It is not merely a requirement that we act consistently with the values of equality, diversity, and inclusion insofar as they are embodied in legislation in force for the time being. No “statement of principles” would be necessary to accomplish that. The idea is to make us go beyond what the law actually requires. Yet in a free society people cannot be forced to do things that the law does not require, still less to hold or uphold beliefs.

People in free societies disagree ― including about the value and, even more so, about the scope and implication, of things like equality and inclusion. (Just compare human rights legislation in different jurisdictions. The differences between these laws are testimony to disagreements that can arise even among those who accept the general principle of such laws.) These disagreements are resolved for the time being by the enactment of legislation, and it is antithetical to the Rule of Law to demand that people who might not share the values, or the version of the values, that underpin the legislation in force for the time being act on those values beyond what the legislation actually requires.

Worse yet, the purported obligation is said to exist not only in the course of our practice of law (and any “behaviour towards colleagues, employees, clients and the public” that we engage in qua lawyers), but also “generally”. The fact that, as the Law Society’s “FAQ” repeatedly state, the obligation is said to fall not only on those engaged in legal practice but on all licensed lawyers, including, for instance, those who are retired, reinforces the natural reading of the obligation as covering aspects of our lives that go beyond the practice (and business) of law ― perhaps our every waking moment. This, once again, is utterly at odds with the idea that the demands that a free society makes on its members are limited, and typically do not extend into a certain private sphere, except of course to restrain actions that would actually violate the rights of others.

In concrete terms, I take it that, according to the Law Society, I have a duty to devote my scholarship to the promotion of equality, diversity, and inclusion. Certainly any topics or argument deemed, by the Law Society, to be antithetical to these ideas, would be verboten. Perhaps I must devote my personal life, and not only my professional activity, to the promotion of the Law Society’s preferred ideals. There is, after all, no natural limit to the generality of the word “generally”. Will the Law Society police my Twitter and Facebook accounts to see if they are sufficiently egalitarian, diverse, and inclusive?

The second point I want to make here is that it is not clear what the source of the Ontario lawyers’ purported “obligation to promote equality, diversity, and inclusion” even is. So far as I can tell, neither the By-Laws of the Law Society nor the Rules of Professional Conduct impose one. The closest they come to doing so is in commentary to Rule 2.1-1, which provides that “[a] lawyer has a duty to carry on the practice of law and discharge all responsibilities to clients, tribunals, the public and other members of the profession honourably and with integrity”. The commentary states that

[a] lawyer has special responsibilities by virtue of the privileges afforded the legal profession and the important role it plays in a free and democratic society and in the administration of justice, including a special responsibility to recognize the diversity of the Ontario community, to protect the dignity of individuals, and to respect human rights laws in force in Ontario.

Of course, the Commentary is not the Rule. But, in any case, “recognizing diversity”, “protecting human dignity”, and respecting the law ― all in the course of practice of law ― are much lesser obligations than promoting diversity and inclusion, and not only in one’s practice but generally.

Now, the “five strategies to break down barriers faced by racialized lawyers and paralegals” adopted by the Law Society from one of which the demand for a “Statement of Principles” derives, also say that

The Law Society will review and amend, where appropriate, the Rules of Professional Conduct … and Commentaries to reinforce the professional obligations of all licensees to recognize, acknowledge and promote principles of equality, diversity and inclusion consistent with the requirements under human rights legislation and the special responsibilities of licensees in the legal … profession[].

But even if the Law Society “will review and amend” the relevant rules, it does not seem to have done so yet. Thus, quite apart from any substantive issues with the Law Society’s demands, the fact is that the governing body of Ontario’s legal profession is demanding that lawyers “acknowledge” obligations that do not yet exist in law. Since the Law Society is now considering its rebranding options, may I suggest the Franz Kafka Appreciation Society?

But there is more. Even if, or when, the Law Society wants to amend its Rules of Professional Conduct to actually impose an generalized obligation to “promote principles of equality, diversity and inclusion”, it is not clear that will have the authority to do so. The Law Society Act, as it now stands, provides that

[i]t is a function of the Society to ensure that all persons who practise law in Ontario or provide legal services in Ontario meet standards of learning, professional competence and professional conduct that are appropriate for the legal services they provide. (Section 4.1(a))

It adds that

[s]tandards of learning, professional competence and professional conduct for licensees and restrictions on who may provide particular legal services should be proportionate to the significance of the regulatory objectives sought to be realized. (Section 4.2.5)

It is not clear to me that the imposition of an obligation to promote certain values, be they ever so laudable, and especially of an obligation that extends beyond the practice of law or the provision of legal services are within the Law Society’s lawful powers under this legislation. The standards of professional conduct that the Law Society is authorized to impose have to be “appropriate” for the provision of legal services (and “should be proportionate” to the objective of regulating the provision of legal services). Admittedly, “appropriate” is a capacious word, and the deferential approach of Canadian courts to reviewing administrative decision-making means that it might take a lot of persuasion to get a court to hold that policing a lawyer’s beliefs and actions unrelated to the actual practice of law is not an “appropriate” way of regulating the provision of legal services. Still, I for one have a hard time seeing how it is appropriate for a professional regulatory body to transform itself into a committee for the promotion of virtue and the prevention of vice and, should it eventually come to litigation, it might be worth trying to raise this argument, in addition to those based on the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which I will discuss in the next post.

In any case, quite apart from what the courts may or may not do, the Law Society, if anyone, shouldn’t be trying to strain the limits of its statutory powers. The Law Society Act provides that it “has a duty to maintain and advance … the rule of law” (s 4.2.1), which among other things requires public authorities to act within their lawful powers ― not to test their boundaries. The Rule of Law also prevents public authorities from imposing on those subject to their coercive powers obligations that do not exist in law. On many views, at least, the point of these strictures is to preserve a sphere of autonomy within which individuals can act without being supervised or hassled by the authorities. The Law Society’s attempt to make those subject to its regulations into the torchbearers for its favoured values is at odds with these commitments, which one would hope most lawyers would adhere to even apart from their statutory recognition. One can only hope that the profession will resist its regulators, who have sacrificed their longstanding principles in a quest to make everyone embrace newer and supposedly more progressive ones.

UPDATE: Annamaria Enenajor insists that I was wrong to claim that the Law Society is  demanding that we “supply it” with copies of the “Statement of Principles” that it wants us to produce. I take the point that the Law Society’s explanation does not actually say that we must supply it with our statements. I find the idea that we merely need to tell the Law Society that we have created the statements it demands, without proving that this is so, more than a little odd, which is why it hadn’t occurred to me originally, but it could well be correct. That said, I do not think that whether or not the Law Society wants to see our statements changes anything to the analysis.

Smoke and Mirrors

The new process for appointing judges to the Supreme Court is nothing to be happy about

Last week, the Prime Minister announced a new(-ish) appointments process for judges of the Supreme Court of Canada. The announcement was met with praise by many, and criticism by some. For my part, I am with the critics. Far from being a triumph of transparency and depoliticization, this new process is an elaborate mechanism of smoke and mirrors set up by a government that wants to look like it is committed to improving the state of the Rule of Law and of Canada’s judicial institutions ― and to act like it is not.

The new process starts with a seven-member “Advisory Board” appointed by the government, which will receive applications from lawyers and judges who put themselves forward for an appointment, and is also asked “to actively seek out qualified candidates and encourage them to apply.” After consulting “with the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada and other key stakeholders the Board considers appropriate,” the Board will put together a list of three to five candidates and provide an assessment of how they meet the criteria for an appointment ― both the baseline laid out by the Supreme Court Act and the government’s wish list for a perfect judge. After a further round of consultations ― including, once again, with the Chief Justice ― “the Minister of Justice will present recommendations to the Prime Minister who will then choose the nominee.” Finally, the Chairperson of the Advisory Board, the Minister of Justice, and the chosen candidate (whom the government documents refer to as the “nominee” even though his or her appointment at that point, is a fait accompli or at least a foregone conclusion), will meet with Members of Parliament, the latter in a “question and answer session” moderated by a law professor.

Is this really a victory for transparency? In an excellent round table published by Maclean’s, Dennis Baker ― who, as we’ll see, is in many ways skeptical of the new appoitnment process, says that the “Government deserves credit for making the process more transparent and open.” Paul Daly is delighted that judges will no longer “actively lobby behind the scenes for elevation to the Court.” I am not so sure. There is simply no objective way to weigh the sixteen ― yes, sixteen ― criteria on the government’s wish list, and to classify the indefinite number of candidates whom the Advisory Board will consider according to these criteria. The same goes for the Prime Minister’s ultimate choice between as many as five candidates. Whatever reasons the Board and the government may give for their choices will be no more than exercises in ex-post self-justification, which does not count as transparency in my book, though the illusion of transparency the process creates may if anything be even worse than the current clearly opaque process. As for judges lobbying the Advisory Board or the Justice Minister behind the scenes, I see nothing in the government’s announcement preventing that from happening.   

In some ways, to be sure, the new process will be more transparent than those that were used before. In particular, it is pretty clear (although not explicit) that the Advisory Board’s shortlist will be public, which past shortlists were not (until leaked, or dug out by, the media). For my part, I do not find this change an improvement. I feel for those candidates who will be encouraged by the Board to apply and not shortlisted, and for those shortlisted and ultimately shortchanged. John Pepall asks whether MPs who take part in Parliamentary hearings with the Justice Minister “[w]ill … be told how unsuccessful applicants fell short of the ideal? That should do wonders for the administration of justice,” he says ― sarcastically of course.

The other supposed achievement of the new appointment process is that, in prof. Daly’s exultant words,

[n]o longer will political appointments be made because of party allegiance or ideology rather than legal acumen. … Henceforth, a judge’s ability to ‘do law’ will become the primary criterion for nomination, bringing Canada into line with other countries where appointments are made entirely on merit.

With respect, this strikes me as an unlikely prospect. First, as already noted, the Prime Minister retains substantial discretion under the new process, having reserved for himself the prerogative of choosing from among up to five candidates, and the large number of subjective, imponderable criteria supposed to guide that choice mean that any selection can be retroactively justified in suitably lofty language. Nothing stops this discretion from being used ― or abused ― to appoint the candidate seen as the most ideologically friendly, or indeed the one deemed to best satisfy some set of demographic desiderata having nothing to do with legal acumen. The government’s reported frustration at being unable to find a judge corresponding to such demographic criteria to replace the retiring Justice Cromwell gives little hope that they will not overshadow ability “to ‘do law'” as it goes forward with its Supreme Court appointments.

And second, even if the Prime Minister has no intention of doing this, the fix is already in by the time he receives the Advisory Board’s short list ― and it is his government’s design of the Board that assures that this is the case. In the Maclean’s round table, Troy Riddell says that

The dominance of the legal profession on the [Advisory Board] coupled with the other non-legal members appointed by the government is suggestive of the kind of candidates the government wishes to choose (and those whom they do not want to choose—namely those with more conservative ideology). [The new process] is an improvement over the old system, but “politics” broadly defined will stay play a role.

Lori Hausegger responds by saying that

the representation [on the Advisory Board] of the Canadian Bar, the Canadian Judicial Council and the Federation of Law Societies—not to mention a progressive conservative as chair … —suggests [excluding “someone with a more conservative ideology”] is not the government’s main focus.

However, as prof. Riddell points out,

Organizations representing lawyers and judges tend to see themselves as “guardians” of the constitution—their vision of the constitution and the relationship between courts and Parliament is likely not as liberal as some activists would desire, but it is more liberal than what would be espoused by a conservative-oriented jurist. The overall result could be a lack of ideological diversity on the Supreme Court bench, which I think would be unfortunate.

I think prof. Riddell is right, and indeed I would put the point more strongly. The legal profession and the judiciary already are ideologically homogeneous. This is why Stephen Harper found it so difficult to appoint judges to his liking. An advisory Board dominated by representatives of an ideologically homogeneous profession will be homogeneous itself, and, as any such group, will reproduce and reinforce its members’ preferences in its decisions.

Like prof. Riddell, I think this unfortunate, because I believe that courts benefit from ideological diversity just as much as they benefit from demographic diversity. However, the lack of such diversity as such is not a significant criticism of the new appointments process, because it is every bit as possible for appointments made at the Prime Minister’s unfettered discretion to be just as homogeneous. The reason I belabour this point, rather, is that it shows that the pretense that the new process is somehow de-politicized to be a sham.

There is more to say about the new process, but this post is getting long, so I’ll try to be brief. I will note that I have already explained, in some detail, why I think that bilingualism should not be required of newly-appointed Supreme Court judges. In a nutshell, while I take the point that competency in both official languages is an aspect, and a very important aspect even, of legal competence, judicial appointments inevitable involve tradeoffs, because all potential judges have their strengths and weaknesses, and I would not foreclose the possibility that a candidate’s strengths elsewhere outweigh his or her linguistic shortcomings. The requirement of bilingualism ― and the government’s wish list, which states that it “has committed to only appoint judges who are functionally bilingual,” makes it very clear that it is a requirement and not, as prof. Daly says, merely “a desirable characteristic” ― is a serious mistake.

And then, there is the question of just how heavily demographic considerations, such as gender, background, or disability will weigh in the new process. Although the government has hinted that such factors will matter ― and, other things being equal, a demographically diverse court is better than a homogeneous one ― it is rather encouraging to see that “[e]nsuring that the members of the Supreme Court are reasonably reflective of the diversity of Canadian society” is only one of the sixteen criteria on the government’s wish list, and indeed the very last one. As for the Advisory Board chairperson’s mandate letter, it does not mention this issue at all. Perhaps the government knows that its winks and hints will be enough ― but perhaps its approach really is a little less identity-focused than some of its fans might have hoped for, and its skeptics (yours truly included) feared.

This is ― perhaps ― a silver lining. But otherwise, the news of the shiny new appointment process for Supreme Court judges portends nothing good. The process conceals Prime Ministerial power as much or rather more than it diminishes it, while needlessly exposing unsuccessful candidates ― many of them, no doubt, sitting judges ― to public humiliation. It does not prevent the government from appointing judges on the basis of political or considerations or other factors unrelated to legal ability, and indeed ensures that ideology will continue to play a key role in judicial appointments. And it foolishly elevates bilingualism into a determinative consideration for appointment, reducing the pool of eligible candidates and doubtless depriving the Supreme Court of many fine judges. It is, in short, nothing to be happy about. As for the further question of whether it is also unconstitutional, I hope to return to it later this week.

A Diversity of Diversities

There has been some rather unpleasant controversy over judicial appointments of late, following the appointment of professors Grant Huscroft and Bradley Miller to the bench in Ontario. The Globe and Mail‘s Sean Fine has been busily pushing the narrative of “conservative” appointments, focusing on the new appointees’ criticism of Canadian courts and laws. On Twitter, La Presse’s Yves Boisvert chimed in, claiming that we are witnessing a “worrying Americanization of judicial appointments by the Harper government.” And in response to some criticism (on which more in a moment), Mr. Fine sarcastically suggested that “Canadians mustn’t use the P-word when discussing judicial appointments” ― the p-word being “politics,” I suppose.

In an excellent op-ed in the Globe, Lorne Sossin and GrĂ©goire Webber have pushed back against the “conservative appointments” narrative. The focus on the new judges’ political inclinations, they say, is in part “the product of the partisan era of judicial politics in which we are living in Canada,” especially in the wake of l’Affaire Nadon, but it is also the product of the media’s “filtering all other stories about the justice system through a partisan lens.” The media, Dean Sossin and prof. Webber suggest, are only interested in the aspects of the new appointees’ public record that might suggest sympathy for the government, while labelling them as “conservative” is misleading insofar as it may suggest partisanship.

At the same time, there is concern about a lack of “diversity” among the Harper government’s judicial appointments ― diversity being understood along the lines of gender and ethnicity. As Dean Sossin and prof. Webber note, only three of the 17 recent appointees in Ontario (among whom were profs. Huscroft and Miller) are women. As Stephen Lautens explained in the Canadian Lawyer back in September, the federal government claims that it appoints relatively few women judges because few women apply ― but it doesn’t release the actual numbers that would back up its claims. In the provinces that do release them, however, women are just under half of the applicants to provincial judgeships, and are appointed in very nearly the same proportion as they apply. The suspicion, then, is that something is rotten in the state of federal judicial appointments.

There are two ways of looking at the problem. From the perspective of the applicants, the issues is, or strongly seems to be (I guess we cannot assert with perfect confidence since we don’t have the numbers), outright discrimination. Whether the reason for it is pure sexism or rather an inclination to treat gender as a proxy for ideology (I personally suspect that the latter is at least a significant part of what is going on), it’s stereotyping, it’s offensive, and just wrong. People are being told to apply for judicial positions, but they are not being told that deck is stacked against them. That’s not how a decent government would behave.

We can also consider the apparent homogeneity of newly-appointed judges from the standpoint of the justice system or of society at large. It is often suggested that the judiciary should be a “reflection” of the community, meaning presumably that it demographic composition should (roughly?) parallel that of society. So, for instance, half of all judges should be women. But this idea of “reflection” is a bit misleading. Nobody really thinks that judges should be a mirror image of the community along every dimension. Judges are necessarily older, for one thing ― as well as more educated, more professionally successful, more judicious while less judgmental, and so on. Even the average judge should be nothing like the average Joe, or the average Jane. In fact, I’m not sure why it would matter that the judiciary look like the community. Some might say it’s a matter of legitimacy, but if we assess the legitimacy of judges by their looks, we are, it seems to me, in a bad way.

What really matters from a systemic or societal perspective, I would argue, is not the diversity of appearance, but diversity of opinion. After all, we pay judges not to look pretty ― in fact we make them wear robes that make them look slightly bizarre but, importantly, all the same, almost ― but to think. Now the views of the judges, as of any other human beings, are in part shaped by personal background and life experiences (as the Supreme Court recognized R. v. S. (R.D.), [1997] 3 S.C.R. 484). It is for that reason, rather than out of a symbolic if not aesthetic concern with the appearance of the judiciary, that it is important that there be a diversity of backgrounds among the judges. But background, at if understood in terms of characteristics such as gender or race is not the only thing that shapes the judges’ views. So do professional experiences, for example ― commercial lawyers, prosecutors, and academics live in somewhat different worlds, with somewhat different habits of thought, which to some extent shape the way they approach adjudication.

And, to come back to where I began this post, ideology is one of the things that shape judicial thinking ― and, because of that it is actually a good thing that there are a judges of different ideological backgrounds. The lessons of Jonathan Haidt and his colleagues’ work on the mischiefs of ideological uniformity, about which I recently wrote over at the National Magazine’s blog, are relevant to courts as well as to the social sciences. Precisely because ideology affects adjudication, more ideologically diverse courts will produce better argued decisions, in the same way, as prof. Haidt et al. show, as an ideologically diverse academy will produce more solid research.

It is also important to keep in mind that individual judges, especially at the appellate level, do not so much decide as argue. A judge whose votes are driven by his ideology alone and who fails to justify them in any sort of persuasive way will have no influence on his colleagues. His presence on the bench will be regrettable, but mostly harmless. (The same goes, of course, for a judge who fails to justify her votes otherwise than by reference to a party’s gender, etc.) “Conservative” academics are in rather short supply in Canada. They won’t just take over the judiciary. If Messrs. Fine and Boisvert are so concerned about them, is it because they worry that they will persuade their colleagues? Actually, that’s not terribly likely to happen. What is more probable, however, is that by scrutinizing their colleagues’ reasoning and calling out unwarranted assumptions and weak arguments adduced to justify generally accepted but actually unsupported views, they will stop some of the excesses of groupthink, and generally make for better law.

It would of course be wrong to assess potential judges only on their background characteristics, whether it is to appoint them or to reject them on that basis. And it is similarly wrong ― one might perhaps even speak of “Americanization” ― to assess them by their ability to pass some ideological litmus test. Judicial diversity is important and desirable ― not only diversity of gender and ethnicity, but also of experience and of thought, a diversity of diversities, if you will. That’s a lesson both the Harper government and for some of its critics.