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Constitutionalism and the Genetic Non-Discrimination Act Reference Shannon Hale* and Dwight Newman, QC**
31 Constitutionalism and the Genetic Non-Discrimination Act Reference Shannon Hale* and Dwight Newman, QC** I. Introduction In the July 10, 2020 decision in Reference re Genetic Non-Discrimination Act (GNDA Reference),1 the Supreme Court of Canada arrived at a complex three-to-two-to-four outcome, with a slim five-justice majority in two separate judgments upholding challenged portions of the fed- eral Genetic Non-Discrimination Act (GNDA)2 as a valid exercise of Parliament’s criminal law power. The legislation, which some thought fundamentally oriented to the goal of preventing genetic discrimination, seemed to have attractive policy objectives, though we will ultimately suggest that the form of the legislation was not entirely in keeping with these aims. While it may have appeared pragmatically attractive to uphold the legislation, we suggest that the majority’s decision to do so comes at great cost to basic federalism principles, to legal predict- ability, and to prospects for well-informed intergovernmental cooperation. We argue that the courts must properly confine the effects of the GNDA Reference in accordance with established principles on the treatment of fragmented judicial opinions. We also argue that the courts must take significant steps to ensure that federalism jurisprudence remains well-grounded in legal principle, without the actual or apparent influence of extra-legal policy considerations. * BA, MSc, JD, Member of the Ontario bar. Research Associate, University of Saskatchewan College of Law (September 2020 to December 2020 term). ** BA, JD, BCL, MPhil, DPhil, Member of the Ontario and Saskatchewan bars. Professor of Law & Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Rights in Constitutional and International Law, University of Saskatchewan College of Law. -
Approach to Constitutional Principles and Environmental Discretion in Canada
Osgoode Hall Law School of York University Osgoode Digital Commons Articles & Book Chapters Faculty Scholarship 2019 Approach to Constitutional Principles and Environmental Discretion in Canada Lynda Collins University of Ottawa, Faculty of Law Lorne Sossin Osgoode Hall Law School of York University, [email protected] Source Publication: 52:1 U.B.C. L. Rev. 293 (2019) Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.osgoode.yorku.ca/scholarly_works Part of the Administrative Law Commons, and the Environmental Law Commons Repository Citation Collins, Lynda and Sossin, Lorne, "Approach to Constitutional Principles and Environmental Discretion in Canada" (2019). Articles & Book Chapters. 2740. https://digitalcommons.osgoode.yorku.ca/scholarly_works/2740 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Faculty Scholarship at Osgoode Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Articles & Book Chapters by an authorized administrator of Osgoode Digital Commons. IN SEARCH OF AN ECOLOGICAL APPROACH TO CONSTITUTIONAL PRINCIPLES AND ENVIRONMENTAL DISCRETION IN CANADA LYNDA COLLINS, & LORNE SOSSINt I. INTRODUCTION One of the most important and least scrutinized areas of environmental policy is the exercise of administrative discretion. Those committed to environmental action tend to focus on law reform, international treaties, and political commitments-for example, election proposals for carbon taxes and pipelines, or environmental protections in global protocols and trade agreements. Many proponents of stronger environmental protection have focused their attention on the goal of a constitutional amendment recognizing an explicit right to a healthy environment,' while others seek recognition of environmental protection within existing Charter rights.2 As the rights conversation evolves,, advocates t Professor with the Centre for Environmental Law and Global Sustainability at the University of Ottawa, Faculty of Law, situated on the traditional territory of the Algonquin Nation. -
Natural Resources,Mobility Rights,Meech Lake Accord
Habeas Corpus Existing since the 13th century, habeas corpus is both a free- standing right and, more recently, a right protected under section 10(c) of the Charter.[1] Habeas Corpus translates to “produce the body”.[2] A habeas corpus application is used by persons who feel they are being wrongfully detained. Upon application, the individual is brought before a judge who will determine whether the detainment is lawful. Provincial courts must hear these applications quickly. The right is available to all individuals in Canada, including refugees and immigrants.[3] Habeas corpus is most often used when a person is being detained against their will and is suffering a deprivation of liberty. Most applications are brought by prisoners detained in correctional institutions and by immigration, child welfare, and mental health detainees.[4] An example of an unlawful detainment is a prisoner being moved from a minimum-security prison to a maximum-security prison without being told why he or she is being moved. If habeas corpus is granted, the individual’s detainment will change such that it is no longer considered illegal. This could include moving a prisoner from a maximum- security back to a minimum-security prison or even releasing the prisoner all together. The Supreme Court of Canada has described habeas corpus as a “vehicle for reviewing the justification for a person’s imprisonment”.[5] A habeas corpus application will typically be approved in cases where an individual has proved two things: 1. Their liberty was deprived in some way.[6] Three circumstances typically lead to a deprivation of liberty: 1. -
Parliamentary Debates in Statutory Interpretation: a Question Of
Parliamentary Debates in Statutory Interpretation:A Question of Admissibilityor of Weight? St6phane Beaulac" The exclusionary rule which prohibits references La r~gle qui exclue l'utilisation des debats parle- to parliamentary materials as an aid to statutory inter- mentaires comme outil d'interpr6tation legislative a te pretation has been applied for decades in most common appliqude pendant des d6cennies dans la plupart des ju- law jurisdictions. The House of Lords handed down its ridictions de common law jusqu'a la decision de prin- fundamental decision in Pepper v. Hartwhich allowed cipe du comit6 d'appel de la House ofLords dans Pep- reference to parliamentary debates in limited circum- per c. Hart. L'auteur examine d'abord les origines an- stances. glaises de la r~gle d'exclusion ainsi que ses applica- The author first examines the English origins of tions dans d'autres juridictions de common law telles the exclusionary rule as well as its application in other I'Australie, la Nouvelle-Z6lande, les ttats-Unis et le 1998 CanLIIDocs 38 common law jurisdictions, including Australia, New Canada. L'auteur commente aussi la situation dans le Zealand, the United States and Canada. The author also syst~me de droit civil qu6b6cois. L'exclusion des d6- comments on the situation prevailing in Quebec's civil bats parlementaires est ensuite consid6r6e dans le con- law system. The exclusion of parliamentary debates is texte plus global des m6thodes et des principes then considered in the broader context of the methods d'interpretation legislative. and principles of statutory construction. L'auteur soutient que l'utilisation des d6bats par- The author contends that the issue of parliamen- lementaires dans l'interpretation legislative est une tary debates in statutory interpretation is a question of question de poids plutft que d'admissibilite. -
A Clash of Canons: Lenity, Chevron, and the One- Statute, One-Interpretation Rule
A Clash of Canons: Lenity, Chevron, and the One- Statute, One-Interpretation Rule JUSTIN LEVINE* TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION ..................................................... 1424 I. THE RULE OF LENITY AND THE CHEVRON DOCTRINE . 1427 A. THE RULE OF LENITY ...................................... 1427 1. Types of Canons ............................... 1427 2. Rule of Lenity Examined......................... 1429 B. THE CHEVRON DOCTRINE ................................... 1430 1. Pre-Chevron Jurisprudence ....................... 1430 2. Chevron's Two-Step Doctrine ..................... 1431 3. Chevron's Rationales ........................... 1432 4. Mead's Emphasis on Congressional Intent. 1433 C. LENITY AND CHEVRON IN CONFLICT .......................... 1434 1. Overview .................................... 1434 2. Possible Resolutions ............................ 1435 a. Lenity Over Chevron (Lenity in Step One). 1435 b. Chevron Limited by Lenity (Lenity in Step Two) . 1436 c. Chevron Over Lenity ........................ 1436 d. Path Dependence ........................... 1438 II. ONE-STATUTE, ONE-INTERPRETATION RULE REJECTED . 1438 A. OVERVIEW .............................................. 1438 B. SUPREME COURT PRECEDENT RE-EXAMINED .................... 1440 1. Leocal v. Ashcroft .............................. 1441 * Georgetown Law, J.D. expected 2019; Dartmouth College, A.B. 2016. © 2019, Justin Levine. I would like to extend my sincere appreciation to Professors Bernick and Westmoreland for their insights on administrative law and -
Judging Electoral Districts in America, Canada, and Australia Erin Daly
Boston College International and Comparative Law Review Volume 21 | Issue 2 Article 2 8-1-1998 Idealists, Pragmatists, and Textualists: Judging Electoral Districts in America, Canada, and Australia Erin Daly Follow this and additional works at: http://lawdigitalcommons.bc.edu/iclr Part of the Comparative and Foreign Law Commons, and the Election Law Commons Recommended Citation Erin Daly, Idealists, Pragmatists, and Textualists: Judging Electoral Districts in America, Canada, and Australia , 21 B.C. Int'l & Comp. L. Rev. 261 (1998), http://lawdigitalcommons.bc.edu/iclr/vol21/iss2/2 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Law Journals at Digital Commons @ Boston College Law School. It has been accepted for inclusion in Boston College International and Comparative Law Review by an authorized editor of Digital Commons @ Boston College Law School. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Idealists, Pragmatists, and Textualists: Judging Electoral Districts in America, Canada, and Australia Erin Daly* I. INTRODUCTION In the 1960s, the United States Supreme Court entered the political thicket of voting rights cases in which plaintiffs challenged apportion ment and districting plans. In the 1970s, the Australian High Court heard its first districting case, and in the 1980s, the Canadian courts entered the fray. This decade has seen renewed and intensified interest in voting rights as the highest courts of all three countries have issued landmark decisions in this area. With a surprising degree of consensus, the Canadian and Australian courts have held that their respective Constitutions do not guarantee that electoral districts must be of equal size; in other words, they rejected the one person, one vote standard that has been a staple of American law for nearly 35 years. -
Conservatives, the Supreme Court of Canada, and the Constitution: Judicial-Government Relations, 2006–2015 Christopher Manfredi Mcgill University
View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by York University, Osgoode Hall Law School Osgoode Hall Law Journal Article 6 Volume 52, Issue 3 (Summer 2015) Conservatives, the Supreme Court of Canada, and the Constitution: Judicial-Government Relations, 2006–2015 Christopher Manfredi McGill University Follow this and additional works at: http://digitalcommons.osgoode.yorku.ca/ohlj Part of the Law Commons Article This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License. Citation Information Manfredi, Christopher. "Conservatives, the Supreme Court of Canada, and the Constitution: Judicial-Government Relations, 2006–2015." Osgoode Hall Law Journal 52.3 (2015) : 951-984. http://digitalcommons.osgoode.yorku.ca/ohlj/vol52/iss3/6 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Journals at Osgoode Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Osgoode Hall Law Journal by an authorized editor of Osgoode Digital Commons. Conservatives, the Supreme Court of Canada, and the Constitution: Judicial-Government Relations, 2006–2015 Abstract Three high-profile government losses in the Supreme Court of Canada in late 2013 and early 2014, combined with the government’s response to those losses, generated a narrative of an especially fractious relationship between Stephen Harper’s Conservative government and the Court. This article analyzes this narrative more rigorously by going beyond a mere tallying of government wins and losses in the Court. Specifically, it examines Charter-based invalidations of federal legislation since 2006, three critical reference opinions rendered at the government’s own request, and two key judgments delivered in the spring of 2015 concerning Aboriginal rights and the elimination of the long-gun registry. -
12; Duranti F., Corti E Parlamenti
Between Judicial Activism and Political Cooperation: The Case of the Canadian Supreme Court* Andrea Buratti 1. On the occasion of the 150th anniversary, of the British North America Act (1867), a group of Italian comparative law scholars dedicated two publications to Canadian constitutional law. They are G. Martinico, G. Delledonne, L. Pierdominici, Il costituzionalismo canadese a 150 dalla Confederazione. Riflessioni comparatistiche, Pisa University Press, 2017; and the special issue of “Perspective on federalism”, vol 9(3), 2017, The Constitution of Canada: History, Evolution, Influence, and Reform. These two works – which also involve distinguished foreign scholars – cover a wide range of topics: the legal systems, federalism and the Québec case, fundamental rights, the Supreme Court, etc. Despite the variety of authors and the heterogeneity of their backgrounds, all the chapters are well linked one with the other, and homogeneous in style and methodology. In this post, I will focus only on the chapters dealing with constitutional adjudication. On this issue, Canadian constitutionalism plays a relevant role, because it is placed in a middle ground between English and American traditions. Moreover, Canadian law brought on peculiar innovations in the landscape of comparative law, and represents, as I will try to underline, a model for alternative approaches to constitutional adjudication. 2. Canadian constitutionalism has always been a crucial case for comparative law, because of the peculiarities of its multicultural society, its heterogeneity, and its interconnections of the legal systems, which shows the asymmetric structure of its federalism. In this perspective, Canadian constitutional law is a lab in which many solutions of legal syncretism and institutional innovation are experienced. -
Medical Assistance in Dying: Journey to Medical Self-Determination
JOURNEY TO MEDICAL SELF-DETERMINATION 777 MEDICAL ASSISTANCE IN DYING: JOURNEY TO MEDICAL SELF-DETERMINATION ROSE M. CARTER, Q.C. AND BRANDYN RODGERSON* In 2016, the Supreme Court of Canada struck down the laws criminalizing medical assistance in dying (MAID) in Carter v. Canada (Attorney General). In this article, the authors discuss the historical prohibition on MAID in Canada, the important change in the law represented by Carter, and Bill C-14, the federal government’s legislative response to the Supreme Court’s verdict. The authors explain the new MAID regime created by Bill C-14 and discuss the various issues raised by the new legislation, including the possibly unconstitutional exclusion of patients not suffering from terminal conditions, problems of certainty in determining when death is “reasonably foreseeable,” problems related to patients’ mental capacity, and the need for effective data collection. TABLE OF CONTENTS I. INTRODUCTION ............................................. 777 II. HISTORY OF ASSISTED DEATH IN CANADA ........................ 779 A. TERMINOLOGY ......................................... 779 B. THE HISTORY OF SECTION 241 OF THE CRIMINAL CODE .......... 780 C. BILL C-14 ............................................ 790 III. THE CURRENT MAID REGIME ................................. 793 A. LEGISLATIVE ELIGIBILITY REQUIREMENTS ................... 793 B. FIRST STAGE: REQUESTING MAID.......................... 795 C. SECOND STAGE: ASSESSMENTS FOR ELIGIBILITY ............... 796 D. FINAL STAGE: ENGAGING MAID.......................... -
A Challenging Wine Trade, Part 2 Chris Wilson
A challenging wine trade, part 2 Chris Wilson 1 External and internal trade challenges B.C., Ontario, Quebec, Nova WTO Challenges Scotia and Federal measures Comeau The Hicken Report (Interprovincial trade) 3 General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade Article III:1 (internal taxes) 1. The contracting parties recognize that internal taxes and other internal charges, and laws, regulations and requirements affecting the internal sale, offering for sale, purchase, transportation, distribution or use of products, and internal quantitative regulations requiring the mixture, processing or use of products in specified amounts or proportions, should not be applied to imported or domestic products so as to afford protection to domestic production. 3 4 General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade Article III:4 (national treatment) The products of the territory of any contracting party imported into the territory of any other contracting party shall be accorded treatment no less favourable than that accorded to like products of national origin in respect of all laws, regulations and requirement affecting their internal sale, offering for sale, purchase, transportation, distribution or use. 4 5 General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade Article XVII:1 (state trading enterprises) Each contracting party undertakes that if it establishes or maintains a State enterprise, wherever located, or grants to any enterprise, formally or in effect, exclusive or special privileges,* such enterprise shall, in its purchases or sales involving either imports or exports, act in a manner consistent with the general principles of non-discriminatory treatment prescribed in this Agreement for governmental measures affecting imports or exports by private traders. 5 6 General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade Article XXIV:12 (regional governments) Each contracting party shall take such reasonable measures as may be available to it to ensure observance of the provisions of this Agreement by the regional and local governments and authorities within its territories. -
Judicial Interpretation of Statutes April 2020
Judicial Interpretation of Statutes April 2020 Executive Summary Courts in the United States serve several functions. They oversee civil and criminal trials, issue orders requiring or prohibiting certain actions, decide whether a particular law violates the constitution, and determine the meaning of language in a contract or law. This publication discusses the role the courts play in interpreting statutes. The primary focus of statutory interpretation is the language of a statute. Courts only move beyond that language when there is ambiguity. This publication discusses the tests and tools the court uses to resolve ambiguity and includes questions for legislators to consider when crafting legislation. Authority to Interpret Statutes The judicial system in the United States adopted the common law system from England.1 Under that system there were few statutes. Courts developed the law by relying on general principles, following decisions of prior courts, and applying that guidance to the specific facts of a case. The common law tradition gave courts great power to say what the law was, and there was an understanding that courts in the United States retained that power. In one of the most famous decisions by the United States Supreme Court, Marbury v. Madison, the court said: “It is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is. Those who apply the rule to particular cases, must of necessity expound and interpret that rule.”2 Every court has the authority to interpret statutes. Minnesota has three levels of courts— district courts, the court of appeals, and the supreme court. -
Assisted Suicide and the Supreme Court of Canada
University of Calgary PRISM: University of Calgary's Digital Repository Graduate Studies The Vault: Electronic Theses and Dissertations 2015-07-24 Winning Conditions for Charter Reconsideration: Assisted Suicide and the Supreme Court of Canada Ogilvie, Chelsea Ogilvie, C. (2015). Winning Conditions for Charter Reconsideration: Assisted Suicide and the Supreme Court of Canada (Unpublished master's thesis). University of Calgary, Calgary, AB. doi:10.11575/PRISM/28714 http://hdl.handle.net/11023/2363 master thesis University of Calgary graduate students retain copyright ownership and moral rights for their thesis. You may use this material in any way that is permitted by the Copyright Act or through licensing that has been assigned to the document. For uses that are not allowable under copyright legislation or licensing, you are required to seek permission. Downloaded from PRISM: https://prism.ucalgary.ca UNIVERSITY OF CALGARY Winning Conditions for Charter Reconsideration: Assisted Suicide and the Supreme Court of Canada by Chelsea Ogilvie A THESIS SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS GRADUATE PROGRAM IN POLITICAL SCIENCE CALGARY, ALBERTA JULY, 2015 © Chelsea Ogilvie 2015 Abstract In February 2015, the Supreme Court struck down Canada’s prohibition of physician-assisted suicide (PAS). Not only did the Carter decisions mark a historic point in the long fight to legalize PAS in Canada, but it was also the second Supreme Court case in a little over a year to revisit, and depart from, an earlier Charter precedent. Stare decisis, or precedent, is a fundamental doctrine of the legal system that judges are reluctant to ignore.