judges
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Portalis versus Bentham (Part I)
A couple of years ago, I wrote about Jeremy Bentham’s pamphlet “Law as It Is, And as It Is Said to Be,” also (or better) known as “Truth versus Ashurst” (available here, at p. 145), most famous ― or infamous ― for its “dog law” diatribe against the common law. In the last part of the Continue reading
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What the Judge Googled for Breakfast
A recent decision of an American appellate court provides a vivid illustration of the complexity of the issues surrounding the courts’ treatment of scientific information that I have been blogging about here. The case is a prisoner’s suit against the medical staff at his prison, alleging that their refusal to let him take medication against reflux oesophagitis prior to Continue reading
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False Friends
The elevation of Justice Brown to the Supreme Court has provoked an outpouring of anguish and anger about the system of judicial appointments in Canada. The critics of the current arrangements, whereby judges of superior, federal, and appellate courts are in effect appointed by the federal government, with relatively little ex-ante and no ex-post control by Continue reading
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Living with Imperfect Judges
The arguments about limiting appointments to the Supreme Court to bilingual candidates are rather tired, not to mention more or less moot. But they keep coming back, over and over again. I actually wrote about the topic a while ago, but since it is in the news again, following the appointment of (the apparently bilingual) Continue reading
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Who Are These People?
I wrote yesterday that the “conservative judicial appointments” narrative that the Globe and Mail’s Sean Fine has spent the last several months developing was essentially unsupported by the evidence. A few hours after I published my post, there was a new judicial appointment ― that of Justice Russell Brown to the Supreme Court ― and Mr. Continue reading
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What’s the Big Deal?
The Globe and Mail’s Sean Fine has for months been pushing a “conservative judicial appointments” narrative, and he was back at it this weekend, with a lengthy piece on “Stephen Harper’s Courts.” We are, I take it, supposed to be worried about a “judiciary [that] has been remade” by ideologically shaped appointments. Mr. Fine quotes quite a Continue reading
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Farewell, Hercules and the Umpire!
I blogged about Richard G. Kopf’s Hercules and the Umpire, a couple of years ago, when I first discovered it. Its author is a senior (in Canada, we would say “supernumerary” ― but I think “senior” sounds better) federal district judge in the District of Nebraska. I wrote, at the time, that Judge Kopf “is Continue reading
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In Defence of Judicial Majorities
First of all, apologies for my silence of late. Partly, I just couldn’t find anything interesting to write about. Partly, I have been much more diligent about my dissertation-writing, and that hasn’t helped with the blogging. Actually, as I’m trying to finish a draft over the next couple of months, I’ll compensate by occasionally posting Continue reading
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Politicians in Robes?
I have a new post up at the CBA National Magazine’s blog, in which I summarize and discuss a most fascinating study by Dan Kahan and his colleagues at Yale’s Cultural Cognition Project. The study tried to establish, empirically, whether judges, lawyers, law students, and members of the general public would be influenced in the Continue reading
Double Aspect 