judicial review
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Don’t Blame the Courts
Critics of judicial review of legislation, such as Jeremy Waldron, argue that judicial invalidation of democratically enacted laws often occurs in the realm of reasonable disagreement. Perhaps we have a moral right to assisted suicide; perhaps not; it’s a difficult question and we can disagree about the answer ― and it’s not obvious that in… Continue reading
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Adequate Alternatives
Last week, the Supreme Court issued an interesting decision which, although apparently only concerned with judicial review (of the administrative law sort) and the respective jurisdiction of the Federal and superior courts, also tells us something about the role of the courts more generally. The case, Strickland v. Canada (Attorney General), 2015 SCC 37, was an… Continue reading
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Is the Charter Really Democratic?
Andrew Coyne had an excellent column in the National Post for the 30th anniversary of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which only came across after he re-shared it this week. (Indeed, I had originally thought it was published this week, but he has corrected me. Apologies!) Mr. Coyne argued that the Charter must be seen as… Continue reading
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Seven and One
I want to come back to Carter v. Canada (Attorney General), 2015 SCC 5, the Supreme Court’s decision striking down an absolute prohibition on assisting a person to commit suicide, to comment on an aspect of the Court’s reasoning that seems, as best I can tell, to have attracted little attention. The Court found that,… Continue reading
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Leaving a Dragon Out
Emmett Macfarlane has a piece in Maclean’s today, in which he replies to both those who accuse the Supreme Court of being activist, and to those, like me, who argue that the accusations are misguided or unhelpful. I have repeatedly, including last week in response to Andrew Coyne, compared judicial activism to the “dragon of constitutional… Continue reading
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Expecting Too Much?
I have recently responded here, in some detail, to Andrew Coyne’s article claiming, in essence, that some of the Supreme Court’s recent decisions were not mere wrong, but altogether unreasonable, and therefore “activist.” Over the Policy Options blog, I briefly take on Gordon’s Gibson’s attack on the Supreme Court’s alleged activism, which I think is… Continue reading
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The Two Halves of the Glass
Much has already been written about the Supreme Court’s ruling in Carter v. Canada (Attorney General), 2015 SCC 5, which holds that, at least in some circumstances, the state cannot prohibit a person from seeking assistance in order to end his or her life. At the CBA National Magazine’s blog, Yves Faguy has up a roundup of some of… Continue reading
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Laboured Thoughts
Over the last few weeks, the Supreme Court re-wrote yet another part of the Constitution ― this time, the Charter’s freedom of association provision. Section 2(d) now means that labour unions have a constitutional right to participate in a “meaningful process of collective bargaining,” created in Mounted Police Association of Ontario v. Canada (Attorney General), 2015 SCC… Continue reading
Double Aspect 