Rule of Law
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Abusus Non Tollit Usum
Should judges refrain from accusing their colleagues of acting illegitimately? Continue reading
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Powerless Law
Timothy Endicott’s challenging views on law and the constraint of public power Continue reading
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Sub Lege
I often criticize judges, on this blog and elsewhere. I think it is very important that people who exercise power over citizens be subject to criticism whenever they exercise it unwisely or, worse, recklessly, and still more when they abuse or overstep the powers given them. While the media can, more or less, be counted… Continue reading
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A Judge Unbound
The Prime Minister has at last named his choice to fill the vacancy left on the Supreme Court by the retirement of Justice Thomas Cromwell. It is Justice Malcolm Rowe, now at the Newfoundland and Labrador Court of Appeal. For all the concern ― of the Prime Minister’s and his government’s own making ― about whether… Continue reading
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Constraint and Candour
The case for a constrained judiciary ― but also candour about adjudication At the website of Advocates for the Rule of Law (ARL), Asher Honickman has posted a reply to my post here on “How to Do Constitutional Adjudication” (which was itself a reply to some of his arguments in a previous ARL essay making “The… Continue reading
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Someone’s Got to Do It
Was the Supreme Court right to change the law on the right to a speedy trial? In my last post, I summarized the Supreme Court’s decision in R. v. Jordan, 2016 SCC 27, in which the Court, by a 5-4 majority and over the vigorous disagreement of the concurrence, held that criminals prosecutions in which a… Continue reading
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How To Do Constitutional Adjudication
Some thoughts on Asher Honickman’s take on the judicial role As I mentioned in my previous post, I would like to respond to a number of points that Asher Honickman makes in a very interesting ― albeit, in my view, misguided ― essay written for CBA Alberta’s Law Matters and published at the website of… Continue reading
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The Chief Justice and the Law
The CBA National Magazine’s blog has just published a blog post of mine that comments on the speech which Chief Justice McLachlin gave at the “Supreme Courts and the Common Law” symposium held at the Université de Montréal’s Faculty of Law last week. I argue that the Chief Justice misunderstands the history of the common… Continue reading
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Extra Time
Assisted suicide and the trouble with giving politicians time to respond to judicial decisions This morning, the Supreme Court heard oral argument in the federal government’s application to extend the suspension of the declaration of invalidity of the Criminal Code‘s provisions that have the effect of prohibiting assisted suicide in any circumstances, which the Court granted… Continue reading
Double Aspect 