politics
-
Vote Did You Say?
I am finally beginning my promised series of posts arguing that we do not have a moral duty to vote. In this post, I address arguments in favour of such a duty based on the idea that elections are an information-gathering mechanism. When the information collected through elections is incomplete because some people did not Continue reading
-
Must We Vote?
There’s exactly one month to go until election day. It’s as good a moment as any to announce a series of blog posts that I will publish over the next few weeks, to argue that, contrary to what is often said, there is no moral duty to vote or, in other words, that it is Continue reading
-
Continuing the Conventions Conversation
Yesterday, I suggested that we may be in the midst of a change in the conventions pertaining to the formation of government after an election that results in what the British call a “hung Parliament” ― one in which no party has a majority of seats. Traditional convention allows the incumbent government to remain in office Continue reading
-
Constitutional Metamorphosis
The major party leaders have made some curious statements regarding the formation of a government in the aftermath of an election where no party claims the majority of seats. First Thomas Mulcair, then Stephen Harper, and then Justin Trudeau as well, have asserted that whichever party wins more seats than the others should be called on by the Continue reading
-
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
-
Show ‘Em
Earlier this week, an American court issued a decision on a topic that is all but certain to come up for discussion in the weeks after October 19: the ballot selfie, and the attempts ban it. Judge Barbadoro of the U.S. District Court in New Hampshire declared unconstitutional that state’s law that made it an offence to Continue reading
-
Dismiss Him
The Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, has announced that he will no longer be making any Senate appointments. Not that he had been making any recently ― in the last couple of years in fact. However, just last month, for the purposes of contesting Aniz Alani’s court challenge to the apparent policy of non-appointment, the federal government’s Continue reading
-
Debts of Gratitude
Over at the CBA National Magazine, Rebecca Bromwich has an interesting article reminding us of our debt of gratitude to the campaigners for women’s suffrage, and arguing that we owe it to their memory to vote it in the upcoming election. The first point is important and well-taken. The second, in my view, does not follow. Continue reading
-
Plus ça change…
This is the fourth and last post in the series about my most recent article, “‘Third Parties’ and Democracy 2.0″, (2015) 60:2 McGill LJ 253. On Monday, I introduced the paper, which deals with the repercussions of political and technological changes on our framework for regulating the participation of persons other than parties and candidates in pre-electoral Continue reading
Double Aspect 