judicial power – Double Aspect

Case Not Made

Unconvincing arguments against judicial enforcement of rights under the UK’s Human Rights Act 1998

Policy Exchange has recently posted a paper by Richard Ekins and John Larkin QC on “How and Why to Amend the Human Rights Act 1998“. Lord Sumption has written the foreword, picking up on themes explored in his Reith Lectures, which I have summarised and commented on here. There is much to disagree with in the paper, as well as some interesting ideas. Time permitting I might do a short series of posts on it. For now, I want to focus on one idea raised by Lord Sumption and addressed in a rather different way in the paper. The idea in question is that the UK’s Human Rights Act 1998, and so presumably any constitutional or statutory enactment that grants judges the authority to verify whether legislation and administrative decision-making complies with a set of enumerated individual rights, results in judges making decisions that are political rather than properly judicial.

Lord Sumption writes that the Act “treats broad areas of public policy as questions of law, and not as proper matters for political debate or democratic input”. (5) One example that seems to exercise him ― and that has exercised the UK’s political leaders for years ― is that of the franchise. He denounces the European Court of Human Rights for having rejected prisoner disenfranchisement despite its approbation by legislatures on the basis that “it was a question of law and not a matter for Parliament or any other forum for democratic input”. (5) For Lord Sumption, “the suggestion that the electoral franchise is not a matter in which the representatives of the general body of citizens have any say, seems startling”. (5)

But, more broadly, Lord Sumption argues that cases involving balancing between public policy objectives and individual rights ― which is a great many under the European Convention on Human Rights and the Human Rights Act and, in theory, all of them under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms ― are not fit for judicial resolution. Since policy-making means “a choice between competing considerations, and sometimes compromise between them … [i]t is necessarily a political question.” (6) Treating such choice “as a question of legal proportionality, requiring judges rather than elected representatives to assess the relative importance of the various values engaged before deciding which should prevail” (6) is, in his view, a fatal mistake.

As I have previously argued here in response to another distinguished, if less famous, judge, this argument is misconceived. Similarly to Lord Sumption, Chief Justice Joyal of the Manitoba Court of Queen’s Bench has expressed the worry that

judicial incursion into subject areas and issues of profound political, moral and social complexity[] has the potential effect of removing these issues from the civic and political realms where ongoing and evolving debate and discussion may have taken place.

In response, I pointed out that, taken all the way, this leads one to Jeremy Waldron’s rejection of judicial review of legislation. Chief Justice Joyal did not, ostensibly, want to go all the way. Lord Sumption might ― indeed, he may well want to go beyond Professor Waldron, who specifically objects to strong-form judicial review, where courts can actually refuse to apply legislation, not so much the weak-form arrangement that the Human Rights Act 1998 put in place. But strongly argued though it is, this position is not all that compelling. As I wrote in response to Chief Justice Joyal,

The frontiers between law’s empire and that of politics are not immutable. There is no reason to believe that the position that every social issue is by default subject to politics is entitled to be treated as a baseline against which a polity’s constitutional arrangements ought to be measured, and any departure from it justified and limited. It is the position of some political cultures … But these political cultures have no automatic claim to superiority or to permanence. They are liable to be supplanted, just as they supplanted their predecessors.

Issues cannot be declared political ― or non-political, for that matter ― by stipulation. For instance, the extent of the franchise can meaningfully be addressed in the courts, as it has been under the European Convention and in Canada. It takes more than a bald assertion that this is truly a political matter, or the existence of public controversy, or the involvement of moral considerations, to show that courts should keep out of it or defer to political judgments that are, as often as not, driven by prejudice or self-interest. (As to the point about morality: courts make judgments influenced by morality when applying concepts such as reasonableness, negligence, or unconscionability. One can certainly be sceptical of the resulting jurisprudence, but it’s not plausible to claim that morality is something courts should always stay away from.)

Rather, for any given right that the designers of a constitutional order might consider, they should ask themselves whether, given their respective strengths and weaknesses, a given institution would do a better job of protecting ― better, that is, all things considered, including the downsides of allocating the task to this institution instead of a different one. Institutional considerations have to be front and centre in this analysis. Issues cannot be declared to be political or legal apart from a consideration of actual political and legal institutions that would be dealing with them. Lord Sumption only gestures at institutional factors, claiming that “judges lack the information, experience and democratic legitimacy to make … choices” involved in the proportionality analysis. Even here, the appeal to democratic legitimacy is largely question-begging. It’s not obvious that these choices need to be made democratically, as is evident from the fact that, in the absence of the Human Rights Act, many of them would be made by bureaucrats rather than Parliament.

Professor Ekins and Mr Larkin engage with the institutional issues to a greater extent. To be sure, they too assert that proportionality analysis

requires judges … to answer a series of political questions, about the legitimacy of the legislative objective, the suitability of the means adopted to that objective, and, especially, about the fairness of the balance to be struck between attaining that objective and the claimant’s interest. [33]

But they also say that these “are not questions that a court is well-placed by training or ethos to answer”. [33] They worry, too, “that courts will be drawn into political controversy, with litigation a rational means to enjoin the court to lend its authority to one’s cause”. [34] They also claim that the outcome of rights litigation often depends on the subjective and personal beliefs of the judges hearing the case (and hence on who happens to be on the relevant court and panel).

What should we make of this? To start, it’s important to note that, although Professor Eakins and Mr Larkin have very little to say about Parliament and the executive, deciding which institution should be given the role to uphold rights is necessarily a comparative exercise. It is not enough to point to the shortcomings of the courts, even if these are real enough. It is necessary to show that courts are worse than legislatures, ministers, and bureaucrats, either on a specific dimension where it is possible to compare them directly or on due to some concerns unique to them. With this in mind, I don’t think that Professor Ekins and Mr Larkin make a convincing case at all.

It is of course true that judges lack the “training” that might be helpful to answer the sort of questions that arise in the course of proportionality analysis. But what training have members of Parliament? What about Ministers? Are they trained to weigh up rights when they make policy? They are not, of course. As for ethos: for the high-minded rhetoric of the defenders of legislative articulation of rights, it is very far from obvious to me that politicians care about rights on a regular basis. They do sometimes, of course, especially if the rights of their constituents may be at issue. But their record is patchy at best, and does not suggest an ethos of weighing up rights and social needs in a rigorous fashion.

The most that Professor Ekins and Mr Larkin say on this is that, when it comes to delegated legislation, “Parliamentary scrutiny, including anticipation of political controversy, is an important discipline on ministers, even if secondary legislation is almost never rejected outright”. [48] We are, I suppose, to take this claim on faith. Meanwhile, Professor Ekins and Mr Larkin also note that there are “limits on parliamentary time” which, they say, combine with “scarcity of political capital” to “make[] it relatively difficult … for Parliament to legislate to correct judicial lawmaking” in relation to rights. [40] To their mind, this is a sign that “judicial lawmaking” needs to be curbed. But one can just as easily argue that limits on Parliament’s time and reluctance (or indeed inability) to spend political capital on decisions that will be unpopular even if right are a key reason for wanting judges to make decisions about rights, especially about the rights “discrete and insular minorities”, in the American parlance, and of especially unpopular groups such as criminal suspects and prisoners (a concern that Professor Waldron, for example, has come to acknowledge).

The concern about courts being drawn into politics is legitimate though it is all too often self-fulfilling, in the sense that it is commentators and politicians who share Professor Ekins’s and Mr Larkin’s views who generate much of the controversy. Still, it is fair to worry about the authority of the courts being undermined by their having to make decisions that are bound to be politically controversial. Then again, would the authority of the judiciary not be negatively affected by its having to blindly apply laws that disregard human rights? Besides, occasional flair-ups of criticism notwithstanding, in countries like the United States in Canada, where courts have been given the mandate to make decisions about rights long before the United Kingdom, their standing in the public opinion is much higher than that of legislatures. Indeed, there is an element of self-contradition in the arguments advanced by Professor Ekins and Mr Larkin: if the courts were really suffering from a legitimacy crisis due to all those controversial decisions the Human Rights Act foisted on them, why would Parliament need to expend scarce political capital on disagreeing with them? The authority of the courts, then, may benefit rather than suffer from their having jurisdiction over rights issues.

As for the alleged subjectivity of judicial decisions regarding rights: I think this too may be an issue. It may be more of an issue in the United Kingdom, where the Supreme Court (almost) never sits en banc, than in the United States and in Canada, whose supreme courts do (respectively always and, these days, usually). Then again, if this is acceptable in other cases, which can also divide the bench, sometimes closely, perhaps this is no more concerning where rights are involved. More importantly, though, the criticism of the courts, in the abstract, does not tell us much. In what sense is decision-making by Parliament, by ministers, or by officials not subjective? When it comes to Parliament and ministers, their inclinations and decisions will fluctuate depending on which party is in power. Precedent and legal doctrine constrain judicial decisions based on rights imperfectly. But if constraint and principle are valuable in such decision-making, then courts still do better than the other branches of government.

So neither Lord Sumption nor Professor Ekins and Mr Larkin have advanced particularly convincing arguments against having judges enforce individual rights. Rights issues are not inherently incapable of judicial enforcement, and the institutional arguments against having the judges deal with them are far from obvious. None of this fully addresses an argument along Waldronian lines, one that is purely about ineradicable disagreement and the fairness of resolving it via democratic procedures. But that argument only goes so far ― and, in particular, as Professor Waldron recognised, I think, it does not obviously apply to prevent courts from overriding decisions by the executive branch, which is what Professor Ekins and Mr Larkin want to do.

The Supreme Court―What Is It Good for?

The Supreme Court is deciding fewer cases; is this a sign of modesty, or boldness?

I’d like to come back to a recent post of Mark’s, the one on the Supreme Court seemingly granting leave to appeal in and hearing ever fewer cases. As Mark notes, “[o]n first blush, the grant of fewer leaves is inconsistent with the role the Supreme Court has given itself over time” ― that of a national institution charged with developing the law, and not merely with correcting the errors that occur in the lower courts. Indeed the idea that the Supreme Court’s role is to develop the law follows logically from the requirement that decide whether to grant leave in a case according to whether it presents questions of “public importance” or “the importance of any issue of law or any issue of mixed law and fact involved”. And this requirement is laid down not by the Court but by Parliament, in s 40(1) of the Supreme Court Act. It might even be an essential characteristic of the Supreme Court and thus a constitutional requirement according to Reference re Supreme Court Act, ss. 5 and 6, 2014 SCC 21, [2014] 1 SCR 433. Who knows.

Be that as it may, Mark argues that, whether or not it is a dereliction of duty, the Supreme Court’s choice to butt out and let the provincial and federal courts of appeal develop the law isn’t all bad:

There is nothing special in the Supreme Court’s decision-making process that makes it any better suited to decide legal questions—apart from the fact that it provides a final resolution. The finality question is important, but we should not kid ourselves: the law can and does settle without the help of the Supreme Court. This suggests that, perhaps, the question is not whether more or fewer leaves are granted. Rather, the question may be whether the Supreme Court is granting leaves to the right cases. (Paragraph break removed)

I have a somewhat different view on this. For one thing, there is at least some reason to think that the Supreme Court’s decision-making process is in fact more suited to the development of the law. For another, and more importantly, the Supreme Court’s choice to take fewer cases is not exactly innocent.

On the process side, the reason panels expand, while the number of cases courts and individual judges hear shrinks, as one goes up the curial hierarchy is that we expect that more judges devoting more time to any one case are more likely to get it right. In particular, the Supreme Court’s nine-judge bench is sure to be more diverse ― geographically, on a number of demographic dimensions, and ideally intellectually too ― than a three- or even five-judge panel of a court of appeal. To be sure, there can be costs associated with larger panels, especially when they try to conjure up unanimous judgments that need to paper over substantial disagreements. But, at least in the long run, this logic seems sound.

The Supreme Court also benefits, if that’s the word, from inputs into its decision-making that should, in theory, improve it. There are more interveners at that level (including Attorneys General from provinces other than the one whence a case originated), more clerks, and more academics writing about cases before the Court. Perhaps some or all of these do more harm than good. (See, for example, Justice Stratas’ skepticism about interventions in Canada (Attorney General) v. Kattenburg, 2020 FCA 164.) But, to the extent that any do some good, they underscore the benefits of the Supreme Court’s decision-making. Again, the effects, if there are any, only appear in the long run. There are tons of great decisions made by courts of appeal, as Mark notes, and far too many bad ones made by the Supreme Court. But the latter does seem to have an institutional advantage.

More importantly though, I think that the Supreme Court does not grant leave in fewer cases out of some sort of modesty. The issue isn’t whether Court sees itself as having an important role in developing the law ― it certainly does ―, but how it chooses to play this role. Crudely, there are two possibilities: on the one hand, a court might develop the law incrementally by deciding many cases; on the other, it might decide only a few cases, but make significant changes to the law in every one. Of course, this is something of a caricature: how much a case develops the law is a matter of degree, a point on a spectrum. And even the same court might not take the same approach in every case. But you get the idea. Mark writes that “[i[f the Court is granting fewer leaves, it is deciding fewer cases that could ‘settle the law’ in areas that require it”. But deciding many cases isn’t the only way to settle the law.

Now it might seem that the two approaches ― many incremental cases or few big ones ― amount to much the same thing, in the long run: 10 cases developing the law by one unit each, the next always building on the last, or one case jumping ahead by 10 units end up in the same place. One might even think that the few-big-cases approach is preferable insofar as it saves some litigants the expense of ending up at the Supreme Court. It might also enable the Supreme Court to maximize the institutional advantages I have described above. Canada (Minister of Citizenship and Immigration) v Vavilov, 2019 SCC 65 is an illustration: it attracted all manner of attention from interveners and academics, and the Supreme Court itself appointed amici curiae to assist it.

Despite this, I think that we should be wary of the few-big-cases approach. It sits uneasily with the judicial role ― even the role of a court mandated to develop the law, and not only to do justice between parties in individual cases. Even when developing the law, a court still does so in the process of deciding cases, in response to the gaps or defects revealed by the disputes before it. It can properly seek to fill the gaps or remedy the defects, but it does not hold a roving commission to reform the law on a grand scale. Again, there are degrees of this, and the line between what is and what is not appropriate is blurry. But it should be apparent that, taken to the extreme, the view that a court can reform large areas of the law at once makes its role indistinguishable from that of a legislature.

There is, perhaps, an additional point. The self-perception of a court may matter: does it see itself as primarily engaged in adjudication or in law reform? This is related to but not quite the same as the vexing question of whether courts make or find law. (I discuss an example of the Supreme Court’s puzzlement at this here.) While a court that thinks of the common law as the product of judicial legislation might be inclined to be less modest than one that thinks of it as the product of judicial discovery, it need not necessarily be so; it might see itself as only properly legislating “in the gaps”. Conversely, a court may not be modest despite claiming not to be making law. The Dworkinian conception of judging is like that ― it is not at all modest, despite ostensibly disclaiming judicial law-making. In any case, the court’s self-understanding may shape its decision-making, at least in subtle ways.

And it is easy to point to decisions of the Supreme Court reflect a legislative, ambitious view of its role. Vavilov is one, of course, and very visibly so. Mark compares it to “an academic essay”, but it is at least as much of a legislative act, albeit one less crisp, though more fully reasoned, than a statute. The majority opinion does not even get to the dispute before the court until Part V, paragraph 146. But Vavilov is only an extreme, not the only example. R v Hart, 2014 SCC 52, [2014] 2 SCR 544, where the Court reformed the law on the admissibility of “Mr. Big” confessions, is a favourite of mine. Justice Moldaver, for the majority, explained that he

propose[d] a solution that … strikes the best balance between guarding against the dangers posed by Mr. Big operations, while ensuring the police have the tools they need to investigate serious crime. This solution involves a two-pronged approach that (1) recognizes a new common law rule of evidence, and (2) relies on a more robust conception of the doctrine of abuse of process to deal with the problem of police misconduct. [84]

And then, of course, there are the constitutional cases. There are those where the Supreme Court re-writes the law and gives “benediction” to rights heretofore unknown to our jurisprudence. But others too, like the notorious R v Jordan, 2016 SCC 27, [2016] 1 SCR 631, also have a legislative feel to them.

Mentioning Jordan brings me to an important caveat: I do not mean to suggest that the Supreme Court should never go big. I have defended that decision, which may well have been the only way the right to a trial “within a reasonable time” could have been made more than a dead letter. Hart may have been the only way the considerable injustices plaguing the use of Mr. Big operations were ever going to be addressed, when one considers the resounding silence of Parliament on this issue both before and since. And even a clean-up on the scale of Vavilov may have been inevitable in administrative law. Justice Scalia, in “The Rule of Law as Law of Rules”, famously argued that judges should confidently lay down rules when deciding cases, to achieve equality before the law and predictability, and to bind themselves and their colleagues to a stable legal framework, including in the face of political pressure. There is something to this.

Nonetheless I think the point still stands: the Supreme Court is not necessarily being cautious or taking a laissez-faire approach just because it is deciding fewer cases. It may well be making a choice to develop the law in bold, big steps rather than incrementally. Bold action may have its advantages, and it may sometimes be necessary, but it runs the danger of being less judicial, and thus injudicious. On the whole, I think I would rather that the Supreme Court decided more smaller cases than fewer big ones. But they won’t ask me.

Activism v Constitution

The federal court rightly holds that the judiciary cannot control Canada’s climate policy

In a number of jurisdictions, environmental activists have turned to the courts in an ostensible attempt to force the implementation of policies they deem necessary to deal with climate change. Some of these lawsuits have succeeded to great fanfare, others not. Such litigation challenges not only constantly evolving public policy, but also longstanding principles of separation of powers. In the Federal Court’s decision in La Rose v Canada, 2020 FC 1008, the activists lose ― and separation of powers wins.

The activists challenged Canada’s public policy in relation to greenhouse gas emissions, notably insofar as it does not set sufficiently ambitious emission reduction targets, failed to meet the targets that were set, generally allowed emissions to rise, and “support[ed] the development, expansion and operation of industries and activities involving fossil fuels”. [8] All this, they said, “unjustifiably infringed their rights (and the rights of all children and youth in Canada, present and future, due to an asserted public interest standing) under sections 7 and 15 of the Charter” and amounted to a breach of the government’s “public trust obligations with respect to identified public resources”. [7] They sought a variety of declarations and orders, including “an order requiring the [government] to develop and implement an enforceable climate recovery plan that is consistent with Canada’s fair share of the global carbon budget plan”, [12] and asked that the court retain jurisdiction to supervise the implementation of this order.

The government sought to have the activists’ statement of claim struck on the basis that their demands were not justiciable or had no reasonable prospects of success. Justice Manson agrees. After, concluding that Charter claims, even novel ones, can be disposed of in the context of a motion to strike (an issue addressed in the most recent episode of the Runnymede Radio podcast, in which co-blogger Mark Mancini interviewed Gerard Kennedy), he holds that the Charter claims are not justiciable, while the “public trust” claim, although justiciable, has no reasonable prospect of success.

With respect to justiciability, “[t]he question to be decided is whether the Court has the institutional capacity and legitimacy to adjudicate the matter. Or, more generally, is the issue one that is appropriate for a Court to decide.” [29] The novelty of a claim, by itself, is not relevant, and the fact that a claim has a policy dimension is not a bar to justiciability. However, “[t]o engage the Court’s adjudicative functions, the question must be one that can be resolved by the application of law”. [34] The general direction of policy is a matter for governments and legislatures; “[p]olicy choices must be translated into law or state action in order to be amenable to Charter review and otherwise justiciable”. [38]

Justice Manson finds that the challenge here is impermissibly aimed at a general policy choices, “an overly broad and unquantifiable number of actions and inactions” by the government. [40] Indeed, nothing less than “the entirety of Canada’s policy response to climate change” is targeted, with the result that “assessments of Charter infringement cannot be connected to specific laws or state action”, breaking with the normal purpose of judicial review. [43] In effect, the activists seek to put the court in charge of Canada’s climate change policy. This is not the courts’ role, “no matter how critical climate change is and will be”. [48]

Justice Manson also criticizes the remedies sought by the activists. Declarations alone would amount to ineffective statements about the meaning of the Charter, or pronouncements about the effectiveness of public policy more appropriate to a commission of inquiry than a court. Meanwhile, judicial supervision of public policy is not appropriate, and would not, in any case, in itself redress the alleged breach of the plaintiffs’ Charter rights.

While this is not dispositive, Justice Manson also suggests that the Charter arguments would have no reasonable chance of success even if they were justiciable. In the case of the section 7 claim, this is because no one law or even specific set of laws is said to be rights-infringing. That said, in an obiter to the obiter, Justice Manson muses about the possibility of a positive-rights claim succeeding in a future case. As for the section 15 claim, “[i]t is unclear what impugned law creates the claimed distinction, whether on its face or in its impact”. [79]

As for the “public trust” claim, according to which the government has an obligation, sourced either in the common law or in unwritten constitutional principle, “to preserve and protect the integrity of inherently public resources so that the public is not deprived of the benefits they provide to all”, [81] Justice Manson finds that it is justiciable, but has no reasonable prospect of success. The “public trust” doctrine is not recognized in Canadian law; it is “extensive and without definable limit” [88]; nor can it be supported as a principle essential to the Canadian constitutional order. There is no point in allowing this claim to proceed to trial.

This is the right outcome. As Justice Manson points out, it simply isn’t the role of the courts to dictate policy in areas where choices must be made among a multitude of variables and any number of competing considerations are to be balanced. It is one one thing for the courts to say that public funds must be expended on a specific matter prioritized by the constitution. They have done so in Doucet-Boudreau v Nova Scotia (Minister of Education), 2003 SCC 62, [2003] 3 SCR 3 (which dealt with the construction of schools to which a linguistic minority was entitled under section 23 of the Charter) and Trial Lawyers Association of British Columbia v. British Columbia (Attorney General), 2014 SCC 59, [2014] 3 SCR 31 (where the Supreme Court invalidated a regulation imposing “hearing fees” on litigants who sought to have their day in court, in contravention, the majority said, of s 96 of the Constitution Act, 1867). Even that wasn’t uncontroversial, though I think these outcomes are defensible. But it would be something else entirely for a court to improvise itself the arbiter of policy touching on a matter as all-encompassing as climate change. Perhaps there are shades of grey in this area, matters where it is not quite clear whether the issue is too complex for the courts to intervene, as some critiques of Trial Lawyers suggest. But this isn’t one of them.

What I wrote here after the Court of Appeal for Ontario struck a claim by a coalition of activists that Ontario’s and Canada’s housing policy violated sections 7 and 15 of the Charter in Tanudjaja v Canada (Attorney General), 2014 ONCA 852, 123 OR (3d) 161 (a case to which Justice Manson refers) remains relevant:

[T]here are good reasons for the courts to refuse to adjudicate, if not any and all social and economic rights claims, then at least … vast campaigns intended to reshape entire areas of government policy. There is the issue of competing priorities ― if not all claims on public support can be satisfied, which ones should be favoured? It’s not obvious, to say the least, that the answer to that question ought to be “those who got adjudicated first.” There is the issue of legitimacy of unelected judges having to order Parliament and legislatures to increase taxes. Charles I lost his head for trying to raise taxes without Parliamentary approval, and George III lost an empire for insisting that he had the right to tax without consent. It is, again, not obvious that judges would fare any better. There is the issue of federalism. … The federal government chooses to help the provinces discharge many of their constitutional responsibilities, and the provinces accept the money (and ask for more), but how a court could assign responsibilities between the two level of government ― something that takes sometimes difficult political negotiations ― is really beyond me.

There is, finally, the issue of the law’s inherent conservatism. If a court decides that social programme X is constitutionally required, then programme X cannot be got rid of even to be replaced by a more effective but differently organized programme. … At best, the government would have to turn to the courts and demonstrate that its proposed programme would be enough to discharge its constitutional obligations. But it could not really demonstrate this ― it would have to speculate, and it’s not clear that a court ought to be convinced by such speculation. (Paragraph break added)

All these concerns weigh on the attempts to litigate climate change policy. At least some plausible measures to reduce greenhouse gas outputs are antithetical to the promotion of economic growth, and it a complex question, a matter of economics and morality, but certainly not law ― and hence not for the courts to decide ― how these priorities are to be balanced. Carbon taxes (or cap-and-trade systems that amount to indirect taxation) are a key policy tool aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and it is not the courts’ place to impose such taxes without an electoral mandate. Federalism is, if anything, even more of a concern here than it was in Tanudjaja, because provincial governments ― which have an important part of policy responsibility in relation to both the environment and to the economy ― were not even before the court. Finally, climate change policy must necessarily be adjusted to the evolution of both the available science and the existing technologies. (Climate policy in a world of cheap solar electricity or, perhaps, fusion power, probably looks quite different from that of today.) Freezing a particular policy response developed in, say, 2021 in constitutional law sounds like a profoundly bad idea, as well one that is inconsistent with the judicial role.

Just to be clear: I’m not saying that these policies are bad. (I’m also not saying that they’re good.) The point is that the courts neither can nor would be justified in passing on their wisdom or even necessity. As Justice Manson says, the function of judicial review of legislation is to assess specific laws or government decisions against the legal rules and standards set out in the constitution. The task of supervising ongoing policy choices that the plaintiffs here were expecting the Federal Court to undertake is radically different.

It is a relief, then, Justice Manson avoids the temptation to “do something” just because “something must be done”, and accepts that the resolution of an important social issue is outside the scope of his office. That’s not to say that courts should avoid resolving important social issues just because they are important social issues. But nor should they assume that they, and the constitution which they enforce, must have something to say on such matters.

As Dwight Newman has written in a related if slightly different context,

[w]hile climate change policy is an immensely important area for governments, that context does not change the Constitution. Some might wish that it did … But the very nature of a constitution is that it must endure across various policy challenges of the day and not be bent to particular policy choices.

And recall, of course, Lord Atkin’s admonition in the Labour Conventions Reference: “While the ship of state now sails on larger ventures and into foreign waters she still retains the water-tight compartments which are an essential part of her original structure.” (684) Professor Newman and Lord Atkin were both addressing the federal division of powers between the Dominion and the provinces, but their point is no less applicable to the separation of powers among the various branches of government ― here, between the Federal Court and Parliament. We probably do not think enough about separation of powers in Canada, and when we do we too often reduce it to judicial independence. But the separation between the judiciary and the “political branches” must be water-tight both ways. There are ways in which Parliament and the executive cannot interfere with the courts. But there are also ways in which the courts must not interfere with Parliament and the executive. This principle holds no less true in waters warmed up and troubled by climate change.

The Canadian Legal Mandarinate

Why we ran the 12 Days of Christmas symposium

On behalf of Leonid and I, I’d like to thank all of our readers for their interest in our recent 12 Days of Christmas symposium, which featured contributions from scholars on their five least favourite Supreme Court cases of the last fifty years. What started as a festive and fun holiday feature has made, I think, a much broader point: rather than glowing coverage of what the Supreme Court does, there is an audience and a need for more biting, critical commentary in Canadian law.

I say this because a not-infrequent response to our symposium asked why we needed to be so pessimistic. Why not ask people for their favourite Supreme Court cases? Doesn’t the world need more positivity?

Maybe it does, but I’m not sure there is a lack of it towards the Supreme Court in Canadian law. Of course, I don’t have empirical evidence to show that Canadian scholars are too deferential towards the Supreme Court and its judges. But it is interesting why our symposium struck a chord in the first place. Over on profsblawg, Paul Horwitz explains why this might be. Horwitz received his law degree in Canada (University of Toronto), and notes that he practiced and published there as well. It’s worth reproducing a large part of what he said about his impressions of Canadian legal academic culture. It isn’t good:

I left Canada, where I received some of my legal education and practiced and published a little, long enough ago now that I am hopelessly out of date, despite following cases in some areas of law. But when I was there, the norms of the profession or society, the degree of consensus among a fairly small legal elite or Canadian mandarin class, and/or some other set of factors were such that there was little serious criticism of the Supreme Court of Canada and its decisions, and the criticism that did exist was treated more or less as coming from outliers.

[…]

I find the series educational and refreshing, and very different from anything I could have imagined reading in the period in which I studied and practiced in Canada. (Indeed, I remember publishing an article some years ago in a Canadian law journal–faculty-run and peer-reviewed, as most of them are–and being asked by the faculty editor of that journal to add some kinder and more complimentary text to balance my criticisms of a recent Supreme Court of Canada judgment.) That change is for the better. Although it might not be thought of in those terms by some of the existing and remaining legal and socio-cultural mandarinate in my native country, it enhances not only the ideological and philosophical diversity of the country and its legal profession, but also its regional and cultural diversity.

[…]

If strong criticisms of judicial opinions are acceptable, and I think Canadians, however politely, would agree that they are, then surely there must be room to criticize the words of individual justices who make extrajudicial statements about their rather grandiose role as the first and last word on their country’s “national values.”

This a powerful anecdotal account of how Canadians tend to react to those in judicial authority, and in response to those who do engage in critical analysis. Speaking for myself, I am unsurprised by Horwitz’s comments after writing this post on the reaction to Justice Abella’s comments about the role of the Supreme Court as the definitive font of authority on “Canadian values.” Many argued that Leonid and I went too far by drawing particular attention to Justice Abella’s specific comments. Others suggested that we should always tread carefully when criticizing judges, that we should always presume good-faith, and that we should speak about decisions and institutions rather than personalities.

As I’ve said before, if judges are going to assume the mantle of constitutional guardians, we all have the right (and the duty) to monitor their decisions. Given the heightened role that court has arrogated to itself, I see no quarrel with concerning ourselves with what the judges think and say, as well. But this isn’t strictly the point. Instead, it is enough to say that we already do a lot of celebrating of judges and judicial decisions in Canada. There was, of course, the rather drawn-out farewell tour for Chief Justice McLachlin, with growing tributes and nary a peep about her judicial missteps. Academic articles were written celebrating her as the “expositor of our constitutional values.” Justice Abella has also received her fair share of celebration, among academics and the bar alike. I think there is probably an interesting correlation between this judicial idolatry and the rather depressing statistics on ideological uniformity in law schools, but I need not explore that connection here.

I view the 12 Days Symposium as a product of supply and demand principles. If we take Horwitz seriously, and my own experience is consistent with his, then we have an abundant supply of “positive,” more deferential legal commentary in Canada. What is missing, and what our 12 Days contributors arguably provided, was a breaking point from the consensus. And judging from our readership and the spirit of the contributions, I think there is a real demand for this sort of work in Canadian legal academic circles. Of course, I think this is broadly consistent with the entire premise of Double Aspect to begin with.

To be fair, a lot legal scholarship can’t and shouldn’t be put into the “positive” or “negative” column. Some work is empirical, and that work is in low supply in Canada, at least when it comes to public law. Robert Danay has done us a great service, in this respect, with his empirical work on Dunsmuir. But there is a decidedly normative bent to Canadian legal scholarship, and to that extent, there is such a thing as critical work. Though I cannot purport to speak from great experience (and so I qualify my statements to a large degree), I view legal scholarship is something like calling balls and strikes. Sometimes, the Court gets it right, and we try to highlight that on Double Aspect when we can. Others do so too. But there is a distinct lack of critical commentary, and our contributors supplied the demand.

This answers the question of why we chose not to run a symposium focusing on the Supreme Court’s best cases—this is already out there if you look hard enough. And it’s also the reason why, speaking for myself, there is no need for an endless veneer of deference towards the judiciary. I can’t speak from experience to definitively conclude that there is a Canadian legal mandarinate. But I can say that there appears to be reticence about criticizing decisions and judges.

Delusions of Grandeur

Justice Abella sets out a vision of the Supreme Court as arbiter of national values

I didn’t realize that writing op-eds for the media was part of the judicial job description, but apparently it is. There was of course Brett Kavanaugh’s instantly-notorious op-ed in the Wall Street Journal. And, ten days ago, Justice Abella followed in now-Justice Kavanaugh’s footsteps, with an op-ed of her own, in the Globe and Mail. The op-ed is an adaptation from a speech given on the occasion of the 70th anniversary of the Supreme Court of Israel; but Justice Abella, presumably, thinks that it deserves a Canadian audience as well as an Israeli one.

Why that ought to be the case, I am not quite sure. Part of the op-ed is meaningless twaddle: we have, Justice Abella tells us, a “national justice context” that is “democratically vibrant and principled”. Part is rank hypocrisy: the Supreme Court’s “only mandate is to protect the rule of law”, says the person who has devoted many a talk to criticizing the very idea of the Rule of Law and arguing that it had to be replaced by something called the rule of justice. Part is rotten grammar: “human rights is [sic] essential to the health of the whole political spectrum” (emphasis removed). But all of it is a self-assured presentation of a role for the judiciary that has nothing to do with the Rule of Law, and this bears commenting on.

Justice Abella begins by proclaiming that the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms sets out “a uniquely Canadian justice vision, a vision that took the status quo as the beginning of the conversation, not the answer”. One might be tempted to think that this is a reference to section 33 of the Charter (which, for all its flaws, is indeed “uniquely Canadian”), or at least to some version of the “dialogue theory”, according to which courts and legislatures both participate in the elaboration of constitutional rights. But this would be a mistake. Justice Abella likes her judges “bold”, and her legislatures obedient. The “conversation” to which she refers only involves the members of the Supreme Court.

And while she begins by seemingly conceding that “[t]he Charter both represented and created shared and unifying national values”, Justice Abella then argues that it is the Supreme Court that has developed “a robust new justice consensus for Canada”. It is the Supreme Court that serves as “the final adjudicator of which contested values in a society should triumph”. (Wait… didn’t the Charter already represent and create shared values? How come these values are, after all, contested?) Fortunately, says Justice Abella, the Canadian public and its elected representatives have fallen into line and followed the Supreme Court’s moral leadership: “[c]riticisms and questions were of course raised, but usually with civility.” If Canada is committed to “pluralism and diversity”, rather than “obliteration of the identities that define us”, that’s because “[a]ll this came from the Supreme Court”, and its teachings were accepted by both “the public” and “the legislatures”.

Hence the empowerment of the Supreme Court, coupled with its independence, is all to the good. “[D]emocracy, Justice Abella insists, “is strengthened in direct proportion to the strength of rights protection and an independent judiciary”. Indeed, the very “humanity” of a country would be imperiled by attacks on judicial power. Hence Justice Abella’s plea in defence of the Supreme Court of Israel, delivered, she says, in her capacity not only “as a judge”, but also “as a citizen of the world”. (I assume Justice Abella has not been shy about criticizing the feebleness of the judiciary in countries like Russia and China, too, though I don’t think she has published op-eds about them. Perhaps she has even criticized the backward ways of the United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand, which haven’t seen it fit to remit the adjudication of contested values in their societies to the courts, though I can recall no op-eds on that subject either.)

I have no firm views about whether Canadian judges should go around the world lecturing other countries about how to organize their constitutional arrangements, whether in their capacities as citizens of the world or as public officials. (How many ordinary citizens of the world are, after all, invited to give pompous speeches, and allowed 1200 words of op-ed space in a national newspaper to bring them to hoi polloi?) I do, however, have some thoughts on the substance of Justice Abella’s views regarding the role of the Supreme Court in Canada’s constitutional structure. Co-blogger Mark Mancini has already presented his, but my take is somewhat different, so I hope the readers will forgive a measure of repetition.

Mark stresses the fact that, if the Supreme Court is to be the arbiter of national values, it is not at all clear why it should be staffed by judges—that is to say, by former lawyers, who are not trained for or especially good at this task. Why not economists and philosophers instead? Mark writes that

if courts make abstract, political, and resource-intensive value judgments for the society on the whole…—if we have sold the legislature down the river—then they should at least be good at it.

And if the courts are not, after all, to be replaced by philosophical-economic colloquia, that’s probably because what we really want is for judges to stick to law.

I largely agree with this, but there is an additional move in Justice Abella’s argument that Mark does not address: the claim that adjudication by the independent Supreme Court is somehow democratic and that, indeed, democracy is strengthened the more powerful the court is. I think it is a crucial argument. After all, legislatures, which Mark doesn’t want to “sell down the river”, are also staffed by people who tend to have no particular expertise in either economics or philosophy, and who are subject to all manner of perverse incentives to boot. Why should they be making value judgments for society? The generally accepted (which isn’t necessarily to say correct) answer is, because they are democratic institutions. That’s why Justice Abella wants to claim the democratic mantle for the institution that she extols (as do others who make similar arguments).

How successful is the claim? In my view, not very successful at all. It starts from the premise that there is more to democracy than elections. Let us grant that. Still, there are important questions that need answering. What is this “more” that a polity ought to have, beyond periodic elections, to be counted as democratic? Jeremy Waldron would mention things like separation of powers, meaningful bicameralism, and “legislative due process”, rather than judicial review of legislation. Justice Abella doesn’t even consider these possibilities, and thus does not explain why they are not sufficient. She thus does little to justify judicial review of legislation at all, let alone the robust, value-defining version that she favours. Others would add federalism and federalism-based judicial review, but not necessarily the rights-enforcing variety. And even granting the insufficiency of structural devices to foster and protect genuine democracy, one can doubt whether it is this form of judicial review that we should favour. Aren’t more limited versions, along the lines of John Hart Ely’s “representation reinforcement” or the Carolene Products footnote 4‘s special protection for “discrete and insular minorities”) sufficient? Justice Abella has no answer to this objection either.

Instead, Justice Abella is content to assert that more judicial power is better, including for democracy. Surely, this isn’t necessarily so. Justice Abella herself, and most Canadian lawyers, would likely be horrified at the idea of judicial review enforcing property rights and freedom of contract against democratic majorities. They would insist, as Justice Holmes did in his dissent in Lochner v New York, 198 US 45 (1905), that “a constitution is not intended to embody a particular economic theory … It is made for people of fundamentally differing views”. (75-76) (The only exception to this, of course, concerns labour unions; fundamentally different views regarding their role in the economy have been read out of the Canadian constitution by the Supreme Court, led by Justice Abella.) On reflection, everyone—including Justice Abella—would agree that the protection of rights by an independent judiciary is not, in fact, always good. At the very least, it matters which rights are protected—and if it is the judiciary that effectively decides this, then it matters how it uses its power to do so.

This brings me to Justice Abella’s most remarkable claim—that it is indeed the Supreme Court that defines not just our constitutional rights, but Canadian values more generally. Mark characterizes this is “judicial supremacy”, but I prefer using this term to mean unyielding judicial control over constitutional meaning (the way Professor Waldron does here, for example). Justice Abella’s ambition is not so limited; she is not content to decide what our supreme law means; she wants to be the ultimate authority on what Canadians believe in. This is shocking stuff. In a free society, there can be no such authority, whether in the Supreme Court or elsewhere. In a free society, one cannot point to the constitution and say, Thatcher-style, “this is what we believe”. Citizens in a free society disagree, including about fundamental values. A constitution is only a judgment, albeit one reached by a super-majority—not, mind you, an actual consensus—about which of these values will be translated into legal constraints that will be imposed on the government until the constitution is amended. The courts’ job is to interpret these legal constraints, as they interpret other law; it is not to dictate “which contested values in a society should triumph”.

Justice Abella thinks that she is some sort of great and wise philosopher, and as such is qualified to dispense advice, both judicially and extra-judicially, on how people should organize their affairs and even what they should believe in. Her ladyship is labouring under a sad misapprehension in this regard. She is no great thinker. She has no answer to obvious questions that her arguments raise, and no justification for her extravagant assertions of authority. It is unfortunate that a person so utterly misguided holds an office with as much power and prestige as that of a Supreme Court judge. Still, as important as this office is, it is less significant than Justice Abella imagines. We remain free to reject the values the Supreme Court would have us subscribe to. When these values amount to uncritical polite deference to philosopher-kings in ermine-collared robes, we have very good reason to do so.

Judicial Supremacy Defrocked

Justice Abella’s recent speech should remind us that courts are fallible.

In a recent speech reprinted in the Globe and Mail, Justice Abella of the Supreme Court again offered a robust defense of the judicial role and the profoundly benevolent impact of the Supreme Court in Canadian constitutional history:

Integration based on difference, equality based on inclusion despite difference and compassion based on respect and fairness: These are the principles that now form the moral core of Canadian national values…the values that make our national justice context democratically vibrant and principled…[a]ll this came from the Supreme Court.

She goes further:

A Supreme Court must be independent because it is the final adjudicator of which contested values in a society should triumph. In a polarized society, it is especially crucial to have an institution whose only mandate is to protect the rule of law.

On one hand, it is good to see that Justice Abella no longer finds the Rule of Law annoying. But on the other hand, her comments should give us pause. She presents a vision of a Supreme Court that decides what Canadian values are, and then imposes them on the society generally. We should first call this for what it is: judicial supremacy, in which rights are not recognized as much as they are created out of whole cloth at the discretion of the Supreme Court. Abella J seems to accept this in Saskatchewan Federation of Labour, where she “gives benediction” to a right to strike. “Benediction” is defined as “the utterance or bestowing of a blessing, especially at the end of a religious service.” True to form, the Supreme Court is the high priest, bestowing us with rights as only a supreme institution can.

Glibness aside, I do not mean to use the term “judicial supremacy” in a bombastic way, but rather in a technical legal sense. I mean it in the sense that Justice Abella clearly views the role of the Supreme Court as having the last word on constitutional matters. But her view goes even further: she thinks that the Supreme Court is a freestanding arbiter that is institutionally capable of rending final judgments on contests between values for the society on the whole.

I’m not sure this is normatively justifiable or whether it’s even a structural or textual feature of the Canadian Constitution. The legislature still has an important role to play in vetting laws for their constitutionality and making important value judgments that may impact constitutional rights—in most cases, the legislatures are probably better at this than courts. But this is a bigger fish to fry. Assuming for my purposes that Justice Abella’s description of what courts do and should do is accurate, maybe this state of affairs could be justifiable on the basis that courts are comparatively better at making the sorts of value judgments that arise in constitutional matters. If Justice Abella’s framing is true, so the argument goes, the essence of constitutional adjudication is value judgment; courts adjudicate constitutions, and therefore courts, over time, will be expert in value judgments.

But no one has ever presented evidence that this is empirically true, and I am not sure anyone ever could. Justice Abella herself recognized this in Doré, when she developed a doctrine of deference premised on the concept that courts are worse at constitutional decision-making than administrative decision-makers. In fact, courts are not institutionally suited to balance the sort of polycentric considerations that go into difficult and resource-laden value judgments. And judges are trained in the law, which on many modern accounts, is not even the purpose of law school. There are good reasons to doubt the ability of the courts to even begin to understand the weight of the task at hand.

If we are to have judicial supremacy, and judicial supremacy is fundamentally about final value judgments, I am not sure why we solely appoint legal practitioners to the Supreme Court. I only half-joke when I say that we could populate the court with people trained in the different perspectives through which value judgments could and should be made. Economic reasoning, for example, could be extremely helpful here. As Lon Fuller said, there is a point at which we could trade-off certain values in favour of others. We should attempt to develop theories by which we can anticipate and calculate the costs of adopting one right over another; or the reliance interests associated with this precedent over that one. What’s more, philosophy could be helpful. Moral and normative reasoning about how people should live is clearly within the interest of Justice Abella when she judges cases.

I think that the Justice Abellas of the world who argue that law is simply about “balancing values” are caught between a rock and a hard place. On one hand, if they make that argument, they should accept that law has no claim to empire over adjudication. Adjudication is not what is taught in training for lawyers; and there are people who are better qualified to assess the different tradeoffs of values and the practical impact those changes have. But if they reject this proposition, then they must accept that there is a locus of “law” somewhere to be found in adjudication. It follows that we should train lawyers and judges to first, do no harm; determine the meaning of constitutional terms according to objective standards. Values may be instantiated in the law, but one must first interpret that law to determine those values. It shouldn’t be the case that judges enter legal inquiries with an idea of the values they seek to advance.

The task of judging was supposed to be defined by “passive virtues,” with courts possessing neither force, nor will—only judgment (The Federalist, No. 81). Justice Abella evidently believes in a vision of courts that are not only supreme but confidently so. Judgment has turned into arrogant finality that decides not only the narrow constitutional issue before the court, but the larger value judgment which is settled for all time. There is no democratic recourse to the ever-expanding domain of constitutional empire if courts make abstract, political, and resource-intensive value judgments for the society on the whole. If courts are going to do this—if we have sold the legislature down the river—then they should at least be good at it.

Dealing with Delegation

Thoughts on a proposal for a judicial crackdown on the delegation of law-making powers to the executive

The explosive growth of legislation made by various government departments, boards, and other entities ― rather than enacted by Parliament, as legislation ought to be on the orthodox understanding of separation of powers ― is quite likely the most understudied aspect of contemporary constitutions, in Canada and elsewhere. In “Reassessing the Constitutional Foundation of Delegated Legislation in Canada“, an article that will be published in the Dalhousie Law Journal and is now available on SSRN, Lorne Neudorf sets out to shed light on and proposes means of reining in delegated legislation ― that is, rules made by the executive branch of government pursuant to a legislative authorization, often a very vague one. It is a worthwhile endeavour from which we have much to learn, even though Professor Neudorf’s arguments, and some of his recommendations, strike me as just as problematic, in their own way, as the phenomenon he criticizes.

* * *

This phenomenon’s importance is out of all proportion to the attention it receives. Professor Neudorf notes that “[b]y volume, delegated legislation is made at a rate of nearly 5-to-1 as compared to primary legislation”. (3) Yet the text of the constitution seems to say nothing at all about the executive being able to make law. On the contrary, the Constitution Act, 1867, endows Parliament and provincial legislatures with “exclusive” law-making powers. Still, the courts have recognized that the legislative bodies are able to mandate the executive to make rules having the force of law, and indeed even rules that override the provisions of laws enacted by legislatures. This, Professor Neudorf argues, is a mistake that needs to be reversed.

Professor Neudorf traces the mistake to a misguided introduction into Canadian constitutional law of orthodox, Diceyan, notions of Parliamentary sovereignty. The notion that “Parliament can make or unmake any law whatever” has always been out of place in a federation, where the Dominion Parliament and provincial legislatures were always subject to limits on their powers. In any event, the enactment of “[t]he Charter” in 1982 “cemented the location of Canadian sovereignty in the Constitution as opposed to a single lawmaking institution”. (9) Judicial decisions emphasizing the plenitude of legislative powers (subject to the constraints imposed by the Constitution Act, 1867)

should be understood as less about transplanting a robust vision of parliamentary sovereignty into Canada and more about the courts prodding along and encouraging the development of new country with a distinct identity. (9)

Yet the leading precedents on the scope of Canadian legislatures’ ability to delegate its legislative powers to the executive, notably In Re Gray, (1918) 57 SCR 150, recognize no obvious limits on delegation. In Gray, Chief Justice Fitzpatrick held that, since no limitation on delegation was expressed in the Constitution Act, 1867, “within reasonable limits at any rate [Parliament] can delegate its powers to the executive government” (157) ― provided that it be able to terminate and resume the powers it temporarily cedes. Professor Neudorf argues that sweeping delegation of the kind at issue in Gray “might not be viewed as reasonable outside the context of an exceptional national security threat”, (16) but the subsequent cases did not elaborate on the constraints that this reasonableness requirement might impose.

Professor Neudorf insists that Gray rests on a “narrow and technical interpretation of the Constitution”, an “outmoded interpretive approach”, (18) long superseded by “living tree” constitutional interpretation. Applying this approach, the courts ought to

engage with how the Constitution sees Parliament: as a key part of the basic constitutional architecture: possessing democratic, representative and accountable qualities, and the key player in bringing together different constituencies to formulate national policy and resolve pressing questions facing the country as a whole. (23)

Delegation imperils Parliament’s position, envisioned by John A. Macdonald, as the constitutional cornerstone. It hands law-making over to persons and bodies that are not representative and often operate behind the thick veil of cabinet secrecy. Delegation also undermines the Rule of Law (which provides additional reasons to favour transparent lawmaking) and the separation of powers.

Therefore, Professor Neudorf proposes a number of ways of curtailing the use of delegation. To begin with,

courts should adopt a stricter interpretation of statutory provisions that delegate lawmaking power and strengthen the rigour of the vires review of regulations to overcome the current weaknesses that allow for the delegation of broad powers through generic words and exceptionally wide latitude for the exercise of delegated power. (30)

If Parliament wants to delegate broad legislative powers, courts ought to make it say so very clearly ― especially if these powers are meant to be exercised retroactively, punitively, or in a manner that is at odds with the Charter. Courts should also drop their deference to the executive’s interpretation of its authority to enact delegated legislation. Nothing less than constitutional principle compels this change of approach, which “will better safeguard Parliament’s constitutional role and give effect to the principle of legality and the rule of law”. (32) But sometimes, the courts should go further still:

when generic words are used in enabling legislation, which are incapable of intelligent qualification by the text, context or purpose of the statute, the court should hold the grant of authority invalid on the basis that it is impermissibly vague. (33)

Indeed, the grant of authority ought to be “narrower than the general purposes of the legislation, with some specificity for the kinds of regulations contemplated”. (33)

Professor Neudorf’s other set of proposals concerns the process by which regulations are reviewed in Parliament. He calls on Parliament to take its inspiration from the review systems that exist in the United Kingdom (which Professor Neudorf describes in some detail), and look into both the delegation provisions of bills as they are enacted, and the already existing regulations that may be flawed or ineffective. But here too, Professor Neudorf envisions a role for the judiciary:

If needed, a court may issue a declaration of the constitutional obligation as the impetus for Parliament to take the necessary action. In an extreme case where the scrutiny system is totally ineffective, the court may seek to enforce this constitutional obligation by holding inadequately scrutinized regulations as legally ineffective. (40)

Professor Neudorf concludes that, while the delegation of some legislative powers is desirable and necessary, and particular bodies (such as the legislatures of territories) can be quite different from the ordinary executive delegates, reform ― and judicial intervention to implement it ― is constitutionally justified and necessary.

* * *

I have mixed feelings about Professor Neudorf’s article. It addresses a real problem that deserves much more attention than it usually receives. I agree to a large extent both with the values underlying Professor Neudorf argument (notably, the empowerment of legislative institutions and the limitation of the power of the unaccountable executive) and with his specific proposals, as I shall explain. But, as noted at the outset, I think that the way in which Professor Neudorf makes his case, and indeed some aspects of his proposals, which follow from his approach to constitutional law, are deeply problematic.

Let me begin with the bad, to finish on a more positive note. Professor Neudorf’s general approach is an excellent illustration of what I recently described as “constitutionalism from the cave“:

On this view, the Canadian constitution … is not so much a law that courts must apply as a sort of shadow in Plato’s cave, a vague reflection of true constitutional ideals that the judges must discover and explain to us cavemen. The constitution’s text is not in any meaningful way binding on the courts; it is only an inadequate approximation, one whose imperfections judges can and ought to circumvent in an unceasing quest to get a clearer view of the ideal constitution.

Professor Neudorf refuses to attach any real consequence to the constitutional text’s apparent silence on the question of delegation; on the contrary, he chides the Gray court for having done so, declaring this an “outmoded” way of doing constitutional law. Professor Neudorf argues that, regardless of what the text says or doesn’t say, the courts should implement the ideal conception of Parliament and of its place in a democratically accountable system of government. As I explained, this amounts to a license for the courts to re-write the constitution, in defiance of its own provisions, which quite clearly do not contemplate its amendment by the judiciary.

The fact that I am sympathetic to the policy objectives that this re-writing would be designed to achieve is irrelevant; it’s illegitimate all the same. Professor Neudorf’s appeal to the so-called “Persons Case”, Edwards v. Attorney-General for Canada, [1930] AC 124, [1930] 1 DLR 98 (PC), to prove otherwise ― to show that good courts re-write constitutions to suit their policy preferences ― fails resoundingly. He faults the Supreme Court in that case for having been uninterested “in the question of the desirability of women Senators” (18) and believing that “giving meaning to the Constitution was a simple and neutral exercise in statutory interpretation”. (19) Yet Lord Sankey, whose opinion for the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council Professor Neudorf extols, similarly insisted the case did not involve “any question as to the rights of women”. (DLR 107) Lord Sankey’s opinion, as, for example, I have argued here, is a master class in statutory interpretation techniques ― not a policy judgment about the desirability of women Senators. And Professor Neudorf’s invocation of the wishes of John A. Macdonald ― odd in an article otherwise extolling living constitutionalism, but of a piece with the strategic (mis)use of original intent originalism by Canadian legal academics that co-blogger Mark Mancini described here ― is no more convincing. Macdonald was interested in the federal division of powers, not the question of delegation.

In short, I don’t think that Professor Neudorf succeeds in justifying the role he sees for the judiciary in implementing his more far-reaching proposals. A more robust judicial review of the vires of delegated legislation, including by the application of the principle of legality (which prevents the executive from trespassing on constitutional and common law rights without clear authorization by the legislature) only requires the courts to abandon their absurdly deferential, pro-regulatory posture. But it is much more difficult to make the case for the courts’ power to nullify vague delegations. (I don’t know whether this is impossible, but that’s a discussion for another time.) Professor Neudorf appeals to the doctrine developed under the Charter for determining whether a limitation of a constitutional right is “prescribed by law”. This is not satisfactory, because the courts have tended to treat even vague laws as sufficiently clear, and even more so because the Charter‘s requirements simply do not apply unless one of the rights it protects is at stake. And as for the idea that courts can order Parliament how to structure its review of regulations ― suffice it to say that it creates much greater separation of powers problems than it is likely to solve, and undermines the very autonomy and authority of Parliament as a democratic decision-making body that Professor Neudorf seeks to restore.

Behind the embrace of constitutionalism from the cave is a belief, which I think is not only misguided but also counterproductive, that supreme constitutional law must have an answer to any and all constitutional concerns. Professor Neudorf is quite right to characterize the rise of delegated legislation as a constitutional issue. But it simply does not follow that it is an issue that the courts must be able to fully address. As the experience of polities such as the United Kingdom (which Professor Neudorf cites as a model!) and New Zealand reminds us, it is possible to think intelligently about the constitution that is not supreme law at all. Indeed, these polities often pay much closer attention to the governance aspects of their constitutions than does Canada. Instead of calling on the courts to twist and stretch our supreme constitutional law, undermining their own commitment to the Rule of Law and indeed their credibility as impartial constitutional arbiters in the process, we should emulate these polities’ commitment to getting the constitution right as a matter of ordinary law and political process.

Professor Neudorf’s recommendations will, mostly, be very helpful in this regard. Greater judicial vigilance in reviewing the legality of the executive’s exercise of its delegated legislative powers is essential ― and it need not rest on dubious appeals to living tree interpretation. The principle of the Rule of Law, as developed by Canadian courts at least as far back as in Roncarelli v Duplessis, [1959] SCR 121, means that the executive’s authority, even if delegated by the legislature in ostensibly, indeed ostentatiously, broad terms, cannot be unlimited, and that the courts are not only authorized, but required to ensure that the executive doesn’t overstep the bounds of this delegation. Professor Neudorf is right to be concerned that Canadian courts are in serious danger of abdicating this responsibility. Recent decisions which he does not mention, notably West Fraser Mills Ltd v British Columbia (Workers’ Compensation Appeal Tribunal), 2018 SCC 22, and Law Society of British Columbia v Trinity Western University, 2018 SCC 32, provide further demonstration of this point, as I argued here and here. The Supreme Court appears to see no issue what it described in West Fraser as “broad and unrestricted delegation of power”. This needs to change.

Professor Neudorf is also right to call for the development of Parliamentary procedures for the review of regulations. I wonder if the smaller number of parliamentarians in Canada in comparison with the UK might be an obstacle to copying the British system of three Select Committees devoted to the study of subordinate legislation (and the problem would, of course, be even more pressing in much smaller and unicameral provincial legislatures), but even if the UK system cannot be perfectly emulated in Canada, it seems to offer a source of inspiration if not a model for imitation.

* * *

To repeat, it is a mistake to think that judicially enforceable supreme law must have a solution to every constitutional problem. Yet the problem Professor Neudorf identifies is real. Precisely because supreme law may be unable to help us, it is important to get ordinary law and legislative process right. Judicial review and parliamentary procedure might be less glamorous than what Canadians usually think of as constitutional law. Yet Professor Neudorf’s article should be taken as a reminder that these are properly constitutional preoccupations, and that Canadian constitutional lawyers ought to devote more of their energies to them than to the development of exotic theories about what the ideal Canadian constitution would look like.

The Joke’s On Us

Canadians ought to care about who gets on the Supreme Court

Over the Thanksgiving weekend, the Beaverton ― Canada’s version of the Borowitz report ― ran a piece called “Canadians thankful they can’t name single Canadian Supreme Court Justice“. Remarkably enough, a number of lawyers in my social media feeds shared it ― with apparent approval. And of course a more reputable outlet published a rather similar story in all seriousness just a few months ago. I suppose one ought to be grateful that Canada has so far avoided the sordid spectacle of American “confirmation battles” generally, and that over the appointment of Brett Kavanaugh in particular. The ability of the Canadian governments to simply get their preferred candidates on the bench is, on the whole, a good thing. But it doesn’t follow that it is of no consequence who the judges of the Supreme Court are.

The Beaverton, parroting the national myth (aren’t they, like, supposed to make fun of things?), claims that “many Canadians were happy their court was quietly and deliberately applying the constitution”. This is, to use a technical term, bollocks. Just this year, the Supreme Court read the guarantee of free trade out of the constitution in R v Comeau, 2018 SCC 15; proclaimed, in defiance of fundamental principle, that administrative agencies can enjoy “plenary”, “unrestricted powers” in West Fraser Mills Ltd v British Columbia (Workers’ Compensation Appeal Tribunal), 2018 SCC 22 (at [10] and [11]); and gutted religious freedom in Law Society of British Columbia v Trinity Western University, 2018 SCC 32. This is not a court “quietly applying the constitution”; this is a court re-writing the constitution as its suits its fancy. Nor is this some sort of new development. Back in 2015, Grégoire Webber wrote that

Over the past year, the people of Canada have undertaken an important remaking of our constitution. We have given constitutional status to the Supreme Court, created a constitutional right to strike, and created a constitutional right to assisted death, among other changes. …

How have we done so? … We have … appealed to that straightforward constitutional amendment process called the Supreme Court of Canada.

Now, both in West Fraser and Trinity Western, and in some of the cases to which Professor Webber refers ― notably Saskatchewan Federation of Labour v Saskatchewan, 2015 SCC 4, [2015] 1 SCR 245, which “gave benediction” to the right to strike ― the Supreme Court was not unanimous in its rewriting or shredding of the constitution. There were fierce, and compelling, dissents. While no Supreme Court judge has taken a very consistent position in opposition to the Court’s majority view of its powers of constitutional amendment ― the Court was unanimous in Comeau, for instance ― some have been more forceful than others in resisting the trend. Justice Côté, in particular, has been a strong voice in favour of upholding the Rule of Law by opposing the empowerment of lawless administrative decision-makers.

And so it matters that there is only one Justice Côté on the Supreme Court; and that even with Justices Rowe and, especially, Brown, who sometimes join her in whole or in part, she is far from commanding a majority of the Court. It matters whether or not you agree with me that Justice Côté tends to be right (she isn’t always) and that most of her colleagues tend to be wrong. If you think that the majority of the Court is generally correct, and that Justice Côté and others who resist its assertions of judicial and administrative power are wrong, it also matters that there not be more Justices Côté, or even Justices Brown or Rowe. Indeed, the enthusiasts of judicial power in Canada understand this very well, which is why some were sufficiently upset when Justice Brown was appointed to the Supreme Court to demand that the Court prevent politicians from choosing judges in the future.

Smug self-satisfaction is, of course, Canada’ national disease, and self-congratulation at not being Americans is a widespread complication. Canadian lawyers are as susceptible to these things as their other compatriots. But we should know better. We should realize that Canadian judges are no more oracles than their American colleagues ― indeed, unlike some American judges, they don’t even pretend otherwise: witness Justice Abella’s repeated rejections of the Rule of Law as even an ideal to aspire to. We should understand that the Supreme Court’s relative anonymity, which it is only too happy to foster with “by the court opinions”, is part of what allows it to exercise powers with which, as even the Beaverton inadvertently suggests, many Canadians would not, in fact, be especially comfortable. If we cannot figure this out, the joke really is on us.

Quis Custodiet?

If judges are the guardians of our constitutional values, they need to be guarded too, as Chief Justice McLachlin’s example shows

There has been no shortage of panegyrics on the occasion of Beverley McLachlin’s retirement. Richard Albert‘s is particularly interesting to me, though, because it is largely based on the former Chief Justice’s extra-judicial output, mostly speeches, and I once toyed with the idea of writing a piece based on such materials myself. (Disclosure: Professor Albert and I are working on an edited collection project together.) Indeed, I have critiqued individual speeches that Chief Justice McLachlin has given on a couple of occasions (here and here).

These explanations of how the former Chief Justice saw her role are significant ― if not always informative, as I will also suggest below ― yet bound to attract less interest, and less critical attention, than her judgments. Professor Albert’s paper is thus a useful contribution to our understanding of the former Chief Justice ― even if we dissent from its tone and disagree with its assessment of its subject, as I do. This is all the more so since the papers on which Professor Albert draws are not as easily accessible as one might wish. The Supreme Court’s website offers only a selection of the former Chief Justice’s speeches (which includes neither of those I have commented on, for instance), and virtually nothing from any for her colleagues, or even her successor.

According to Professor Albert, the former Chief Justice has been a towering figure in early 21st-century Canada. Prime Ministers and Governors General came and went, but the Chief Justice remained, rising almost to the stature “of Conscience-in-Chief
that Americans have sometimes seen fulfilled by their presidents”. (7) You might think it’s a bit too much for a person who writes thrillers, not treatises, in her spare time, but Professor Albert is unrelenting in his praise:

Chief Justice McLachlin … has made Canada a better, fairer and more equal place, and our Constitution the envy of the world. She leaves an equally important legacy as an expositor and guardian of our constitutional values. (1)

As mentioned above, Professor Albert draws on the for Chief Justice’s extra-judicial pronouncements to make his case. In my view, however, the light he shines on her exposes a rather unflattering image.

The earliest speech Professor Albert describes concerned “The Role of Judges in Modern Society“. It is part of that role, the former Chief Justice said, to “be sensitive to a broad range of social concerns” and to “be in touch with the society in which [judges] work, understanding its values and its tensions” ― while at the same time “attain[ing] a level of detachment” from their personal views “which enables [them] to make decisions which are in the broader interests of society”. In another speech discussed by Professor Albert, this one on “Defining Moments: The Canadian Constitution“, Chief Justice McLachlin added that “as a nation’s values and expectations change over time, so its constitution is applied in a way that reflects those changes”.

The idea that judges must maintain a connection of some kind to “their” society is, of course, reminiscent of the discussion of the role of “social values” in l’Affaire Nadon, a.k.a. Reference re Supreme Court Act, ss. 5 and 6, 2014 SCC 21, [2014] 1 SCR 433 ― delivered just five weeks after the “Defining Moments” speech. In his article “Nom de Plume: Who Writes the Supreme Court’s ‘By the Court’ Judgments?”, Peter McCormick suggested that Chief Justice McLachlin likely wrote the majority opinion in that reference, and thanks to Professor Albert’s investigation of her extra-judicial pronouncements we arguably have additional evidence in support of this suggestion. What we lack, either in l’Affaire Nadon or in the “Defining Moments” speech, is an explanation of the mechanisms by which judges are to maintain sensitivity to social concerns or understand social values, let alone make decisions in the broader interests of society.

This is impotant. Never mind the normative question of whether deciding in the broader interests of society is in fact the judges’ job. (It’s not.) Ought implies can, and the suggestion that the judges can do these things is implausible and betrays an arrogance that is quite incompatible with maintaining “an attitude of ‘active humility'” for which Chief Justice McLachlin also called in the same speech. The matter of the “social values” that Québec judges on the Supreme Court of Canada purportedly channel is illustrative. The joint dissent by Justices Lebel, Wagner, and Gascon in the gun registry litigation, Quebec (Attorney General) v Canada (Attorney General), 2015 SCC 14, [2015] 1 SCR 693, referred to an alleged consensus in Québec in favour of the (now-defunct) long-gun registry ― yet as I noted here, polls showed that this consensus only existed among the media and political elite, but not among the general population.

Judicial inability to channel social values not only calls into question particular opinions, such as the majority in l’Affaire Nadon or the gun registry dissent, but undermines the foundations of the Supreme Court’s professed (though not always followed) approach to interpreting the constitution. Professor Albert, referring to the former Chief Justice’s insistence that the Canadian constitution is “applied in a way that reflects … changes” in social values, writes that

[t]his raises a telling contrast with the United States, whose revolutionary traditions have invited dramatic reorientations in law and society. Our evolutionary model would certainly not embrace Thomas Jefferson’s famous suggestion that each American generation should discard the existing constitution, break legal continuity with the prior regime, and author its own new constitution according to the values of the time. (12)

This may be true at a wholesale level ― though of course the Americans have been no more keen on Jefferson’s suggestion for constitutional replacement than Canadians, which suggests that we are not all that different from one another. But of course the idea that the constitution can be applied ― by judges ― to reflect social change even in the absence of actual amendment amounts to a discarding of constitutional provisions in detail. Legal continuity is not shattered all at once, but weakened hairline fracture by hairline fracture, one constitutional benediction at a time.

Professor Albert asks “by what means are judges to determine how and when the country’s values have changed or are in a period of evolution from old to new?” Yet having dismissed constitutional amendment as a guide due to its difficulty, he simply accepts that “[j]udges … must themselves drive the evolution of the Constitution”. (13) Professor Albert suggests that the former Chief Justice thought so too; for her “judges must be guided by society but not directed by it”. (13) Indeed, it is the judges who must help direct society towards greater justice ― and specifically towards the “just society” promised by Pierre Trudeau. Professor Albert notes that Chief Justice McLachlin referred to this slogan in a speech she gave in 2007. She returned to the subject in 2016 (both speeches, coincidentally or not, were given to the same audience, the Empire Club of Canada; I suppose they are big fans of Pierre Trudeau there). Commenting on the latter speech, I wrote that it is “quite inappropriate for a judge to take up what was, for better or for worse, a partisan slogan and try to make it into a constitutional ideal”. I worried that this gave “grist for the mill of those who already think that the Charter, and the courts that enforce it, are essentially Liberal self-entrenchment devices.” My views on this haven’t changed, and my worries are only strengthened now that I realize that theme was not a one-off.

Another theme that Professor Albert highlights is the former Chief Justice’s professed commitment to “diversity” ” in speech, thought, origin and orientation, to name a few” (18-19). In another speech Professor Albert quotes, Chief Justice McLachlin insisted that her Court “focused not on ‘seek[ing] to erase difference, nor [sought] to impose conformity’ but to make it possible for ‘each group … to maintain its distinctions'”. (21) I’m afraid that Chief Justice McLachlin’s belief in diversity of thought and in allowing groups to maintain their distinctions will be news, and not very credible news at that, to Trinity Western University, whose law school the former Chief Justice voted to allow law societies to can, lest accrediting it be seen as a stamp of approval for Trinity Western’s (discriminatory) beliefs. But then, extra-judicially saying one thing and judicially doing another one was something of a theme for the person who joined an opinion disparaging “the amorphous underlying principles of our Constitution” only months before jetting off to New Zealand to deliver a noted lecture encouraging judges to invalidate legislation for inconsistency with such principles, declared for the occasion to be tantamount to natural law. And in yet another lecture to which Professor Albert refers, Chief Justice McLachlin stressed that “the law … requires lawyers to take unpopular stands, judges to make unpopular decisions”. (20) Yet for all that she was willing to take on the Prime Minister when occasion called for it, how willing was the former Chief Justice to take a stand that would have been truly unpopular among the bien-pensant intelligentsia? Her change of heart on hate speech criminalisation ― which she opposed early in her career, but eventually accepted ―, and of course her opinion in Trinity Western, are not exactly evidence in her favour here.

Professor Albert has, it will be obvious, a very high opinion of Chief Justice McLachlin. He writes that “the key ingredient … to the success of Canada’s modern Constitution—and the reason why it is so admired abroad—has been how the Supreme Court has interpreted, elaborated and defended it”. (23) To my mind, though, his paper illustrates and explains not so much the successes as the failures of the Supreme Court and of its departing Chief: their rashness in choosing to deal in values rather than in law alone; their arrogance in disregarding legal constraints; their lack of principle and courage. If this is what other countries admire, let them. Canada deserves better.

If, like Professor Albert, I believed that judges can serve as the guardians of our constitutional values, I would not hold up Chief Justice McLachlin as the epitome of that role. But, for my part, I think we ought to heed Learned Hand’s famous warning:

I often wonder whether we do not rest our hopes too much upon constitutions, upon laws, and upon courts. These are false hopes; believe me, these are false hopes. Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can save it; no constitution, no law, no court can even do much to help it.

The successes, and even the failures, of individual judges in the defence of our constitutional values are, ultimately, less significant than our own. It is our job to uphold these values, including against our public officials ― even the Chief Justice of Canada.

The NZBORA and the Noble Dream

Introducing my new paper on the whether the idea of dialogue about rights between courts and Parliament makes sense in New Zealand

Last year, I posted here about a decision of the New Zealand Court of Appeal, Attorney-General v Taylor, [2017] NZCA 215, which held that when a court found a statutory provision inconsistent with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act 1990, it had the power to make a formal declaration to this effect, in some circumstances anyway. As I noted in that post, the Court of Appeal invoked the idea of constitutional dialogue between courts and Parliament to support its view that courts had an inherent power to make such formal declarations, despite the absence of an explicit authorization in the Bill of Rights Act. I noted, too, that I was skeptical about the usefulness of that idea in New Zealand.

I developed these initial thoughts into an article which the New Zealand Universities Law Review published over the holidays under the title “Constitutional Dialogue: The New Zealand Bill of Rights Act and the Noble Dream“. Here is the abstract:

In its recent decision affirming the courts’ power to issue “declarations of inconsistency” between legislation and the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act 1990, the Court of Appeal embraces the notion of a “constitutional dialogue” between the judiciary and Parliament regarding issues of rights. It suggests that, since both branches of government are engaged in a collaborative process of giving effect to the Bill of Rights Act’s provisions, Parliament can be expected to take the courts’ views on such matters into serious consideration.

This article questions the suitability of the notion of constitutional dialogue to New Zealand’s constitutional arrangements. The idea of dialogue, largely developed as a means to alleviate concerns about the “counter-majoritarian difficulty” that arises in jurisdictions with strong-form judicial review of legislation, cannot be usefully adopted to a system of very weak judicial review, such as the one put in place by the Bill of Rights Act. Dialogue may seem to be an attractive way of addressing what might be termed the “majoritarian malaise” caused by a sovereign Parliament’s sometimes cavalier approach to the rights of individuals and minorities. Yet meaningful dialogue cannot take place if one of the parties is entitled to ignore the other, which has no resources to impress its views upon an unwilling potential interlocutor.

As others have argued in the context of constitutional systems with strong-form judicial review, there is no need to attribute the positive connotations of the dialogue metaphor to a set of institutional interactions that is, in truth, very far from being a conversation, because the participants may neither understand nor be interested in understanding each other. Indeed, there is a danger that the embrace of the notion of dialogue will serve to obscure the reality that, the Bill of Rights Act notwithstanding, New Zealand’s constitutional framework remains one of essentially untrammelled parliamentary sovereignty, which can be, and sometimes is, abused.

Of course, a meditation on New Zealand’s peculiar form of weak judicial review may be of limited interest to most Canadian readers. If it is interest to you, however, I’d be happy to hear what you make of it. And at least my call for transparency about constitutional power dynamics is, I think, relevant beyond the shores on which I now find myself.