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The Court Party Theory and the Demise of the Court Challenges Program

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The Court Party Theory and the Demise of the Court Challenges Program Rights Without Remedies: The Court Party Theory and the Demise of the Court Challenges Program by Shannon Salter A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Masters of Law Graduate Department of the Faculty of Law University of Toronto © Copyright by Shannon Salter 2011 ii Rights Without Remedies: The Court Party Theory and the Demise of the Court Challenges Program Shannon Salter Masters of Law Graduate Department of the Faculty of Law University of Toronto 2011 Abstract The author argues that the Court Challenges Program‘s 2006 cancellation was based on claims that judicial review is undemocratic, including those made by three academics, Rainer Knopff, F.L. Morton and Ian Brodie; the Court Party Theorists (the ―CPT‖). Through a study of Charter equality cases, this paper examines the CPT‘s arguments regarding judicial activism, interest groups and interveners and finds they are largely unsupported by statistical evidence. Further, the debate about judicial review and democracy obscures judicial review‘s important auditing function over the legislature‘s constitutional adherence. This audit depends on individuals‘ capacity to pursue Charter litigation, an ability compromised by the access to justice crisis. The author examines this crisis and the efforts to fill the funding gap left by the CCP‘s cancellation and concludes that an accessible publicly-funded program like the CCP is best-placed to ensure that the Charter remains a relevant tool for enforcing fundamental human rights in Canada. iii Acknowledgments I am very grateful to Professor Lorne Sossin for his guidance, thought-provoking questions and comments, and encouragement throughout this thesis paper. Midway through the project, Professor Sossin was appointed as Dean of Osgoode Hall Law School, yet he generously agreed to continue as my thesis supervisor, despite the increased demands of his new position. Richard Haigh provided some excellent practical advice about organizing and structuring a project of this magnitude, and I was fortunate to have his counsel. I am also very much indebted to Professor Lorraine Weinrib for her fresh perspective and comments on a draft of this paper. I would not have been able to undertake a Masters of Law program without a generous fellowship from the Law Foundation of British Columbia as well as scholarship funding from the Faculty of Law of the University of Toronto. I am most indebted to Professor David Dyzenhaus and Julia Hall for their support and assistance with some of the practical aspects of completing this project. Also, Coreen Lapointe at Legal Aid Ontario was very helpful and patient with my myriad questions, and I thank her. The adage that it takes a village to raise a baby applies equally to writing a thesis, and is doubly true when attempting to do both at the same time. I am so very grateful to my family, all of whom contributed to the completion of this project. I am especially thankful to both my mother and mother-in-law, who watched the baby so that I could write, and my father, who provided thoughtful notes and technical assistance with graphs and charts. Most of all, I have been blessed with an exceedingly supportive and loving husband, Robert, and a sunny and spirited daughter, Clara, who together make everything possible. iv Table of Contents Acknowledgments.......................................................................................................................... iii Table of Contents ........................................................................................................................... iv List of Tables ................................................................................................................................ vii List of Figures .............................................................................................................................. viii Introduction and Overview ...........................................................................................................1 Chapter 1: The Court Party Theorists and the Fall of the CCP ..............................................8 1 The history of the CCP ................................................................................................................8 1.1 The CCP‘s cancellation........................................................................................................9 1.2 The CCP‘s partial restoration.............................................................................................12 2 The CCP: Victim of inefficiency or ideology? .........................................................................13 3 The Court Party and the Charter Revolution.............................................................................17 3.1 Who are the CPT? ..............................................................................................................18 3.2 What is the Court Party Theory? .......................................................................................18 4 Evaluating the CPT‘s claims .....................................................................................................22 4.1 The CPT‘s descriptive claims ............................................................................................23 4.1.1 Interest groups, rather than individuals, drive Charter equality cases ...................23 4.1.2 Judges are inclined to radically expand Charter rights ..........................................25 4.1.3 Interveners frequently influence judges to adopt their agendas .............................31 4.2 The CPT‘s normative claim: judicial review is undemocratic ..........................................33 5 The CCP as societal ill ..............................................................................................................34 5.1 Should the CCP be restored? The need for quantitative research .....................................37 Chapter 2: Methodology and Data Summary ..........................................................................39 1 Methodology .............................................................................................................................39 1.1 Selecting the Cases ............................................................................................................39 v 1.2 Limitations .........................................................................................................................42 2 Data Summary and Preliminary Conclusions ...........................................................................43 2.1 Trends in the number of federal equality cases .................................................................43 2.1.1 The endangered federal equality case ....................................................................44 2.2 The identity of the litigants ................................................................................................49 2.2.1 Individuals overwhelmingly initiate federal equality cases ...................................51 2.3 The success rate of equality-seekers ..................................................................................52 2.3.1 Federal equality cases during the CCP years .........................................................53 2.3.2 Success rate by initiator of litigation .....................................................................54 2.3.3 Success rate of interveners .....................................................................................54 2.3.4 Equality-seekers lose most of the time ..................................................................55 Chapter 3: Evaluating the Court Party Theorists’ Claims .....................................................58 1 A quantitative analysis of the CPT‘s descriptive claims ...........................................................58 1.1 Are interest groups at the heart of federal equality cases? .................................................58 1.2 Has judicial review led to the radical expansion of Charter equality rights? ....................61 1.3 Do interveners unfairly influence the outcome of federal equality decisions? ..................64 2 A doctrinal analysis of the CPT‘s normative claim ..................................................................67 2.1 Is judicial review undemocratic? .......................................................................................67 2.2 The democratic dialogue gives government the last word.................................................68 2.3 The participation of unelected bodies in policy-making....................................................73 3 Beyond the democracy debate: judicial review as constitutional audit ....................................77 4 Conclusion.................................................................................................................................81 Chapter 4: Access to Justice in Charter Litigation ...................................................................84 1 Introduction ...............................................................................................................................84 2 The Canadian access to justice crisis ........................................................................................84 3 The effects of the CCP‘s cancellation, four years later .............................................................91 vi 4 The financing of Charter litigation ............................................................................................93
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