This note criticizes the court’s application of Vavilov tout court. Vavilov lays down a useful statement about appellate courts’ jurisdictions when they are granted a statutory appeal. That case does not pretend to make private-law rules, and courts must be wary of mistaking application for analogy.
This note gives practitioners (and interested members of the public) a sense of the law surrounding criminal contempt of court. It describes some of the cases and then applies the cases to the facts described by Chief Justice Joyal.
This commentary proposes a sliding scale between religion as a word denoting spiritual belief and practise in community and creed, a word that captures a broader swath of collective and individual conduct.
Lawyers often refer to those who pay for services as ‘clients’, yet in the same breath frame their efforts in their service recipient’s interest. Use of the word ‘client’, though widespread in English, is inexact–and indeed may invert the relationship. The proper term does relate to the patron-client relationship, but lawyers are in fact the …
Patron v. Client: the modern lawyer’s relationships Read More »
I have the privilege to request your intervention in the Law Society of Ontario’s current conduct of its licensing examinations. Your intervention is requested pursuant to sub-section 5(c) of the Ministry of the General Act and sub-section 13(1) of the Law Society Act.
Transport Canada’s Civil Aviation Medicine program has continued a discriminatory policy against subjects with mental health conditions.
This piece is released as part of a broader book project currently soliciting funds via Kickstarter. Aequitas sequitur legem: equity follows the law, which concept expresses the victory of common law over its equitable counterpart. There is good reason for this win, for the ancient law of equity was administered by the Lord Chancellor, a …
This post is cross-posted to CanLII. The Law Society of Ontario occupies a special place in most lawyers’ hearts, and much talk has sprung up in recent years about how that special place first forms, then concatenates. One reason that springs to mind among the next crop of legal advisers is that articling students are …
The Canadian approach to conscience is, as the title suggests, confused. Conscience is often only paid scanting attention in judge-made law because its legal and social meaning is obscured by its most common manifestation. Courts adjudicating on issues relating to religious rights, or balancing the rights of a religious person or group against another minority’s interest, often touch on conscience as a facet of religion.
One’s conscience is received by legal institutions and ethicists alike as the centre for moral decisions, yet the freedom to have a conscience is often interpreted in terms of religious belief. This interpretation is, of course, borne from conscience’s long association with religion: Canada’s governors were, for example, instructed to ‘permit Liberty of Conscience, and the free Exercise of all such modes of Religious Worship as are not prohibited by Law’.
This post is cross-posted on CanLii. A significant danger when governing safety-sensitive occupations is lapsing into anecdotal evidentiary practises to justify rigid rules. The danger inherent in anecdotes is their subjectivity, which is often clothed in the guise of fact: a rule’s legitimacy depends on the safety that it provides, which in turn must relate …
People are looking to fly, but aviation medicine falls short Read More »
This post is cross-posted on CanLII. International and domestic arbitration is becoming an attractive dispute resolution service, and it is one that allows parties to chose the law under which their rights are established. As this form of law becomes increasingly popular, the limits of arbitral jurisdiction will be tested. International and domestic law on …
The arbitrator’s conscience and revivified legal pluralism Read More »
Canadian doctoral candidates, who study in relative obscurity to advance the state of knowledge, are poorly remunerated (if they are remunerated at all). More doctoral candidates are receiving their degrees at the present time than ever before: federal and provincial funding agencies simply do not have the resources to keep up with demand. Nor do …
Time for full-time: give doctoral candidates a salary Read More »
The University of Ottawa’s Wellness Week, which aims to help students and staff mind their own mental health during a self-declared mental health crisis, falls well short of a useful response to mental health concerns. Then again, a recent University report promises a ‘cross-university wellness strategic framework’. If such a framework is going to work, …
Taking the time for wellness v. fostering the spirit of wellness Read More »
Elected oversight of municipal (or provincial) police forces is, as I indicated in my previous post, a difficult system by which to enforce standards on police. Foremost among the difficulties of this system: the relative lack of enforcement power granted to these boards. A corollary difficulty is the civilian nature of the oversight. Lack of …
Oversight awry: municipal police and elected oversight bodies, part II Read More »
The problem and our typical solution This analysis of police supervision in Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States will appear in two parts. The first part breaks down the problem with civilian policing oversight; the second part addresses the issue with reference to English precedents that were received in Canada and the United …
Oversight awry: municipal police and elected oversight bodies, part I Read More »
Quebec calls for greater language protection for Canadian federal enterprises The Parliament of Quebec and the Bloc Québecois have formally requested an extension of cooperative federalism to Quebec language protection. ‘Cooperative federalism’ is a legal principle that has courts interpret legislation in ways that allow federal and provincial laws to work together. The term evokes greater ‘interlocking federal …
Quebec protects language: the best defense is a good offense Read More »
The quality of Anglo-American university education is eroding, and the Government of Ontario this past week confirmed its rapidly decaying state. With its rapidly ageing motto, ‘open for business,’ finally maturing, the Minister of Colleges and Universities announced that a long negotiation with Ontarian public universities resulted in a new five-year plan. Ontarian universities will now receive government funds based …
University education: teach narratives, not hard skills Read More »
A couple thoughts for your edification, thoughts only unified by a wretched malaise about the lack of detail and creativity that too often creeps into public discourse. The first presents a method to prosecute Canadian police for abuses of power. The second reminds us that Canada’s constitution doesn’t make either level of government completely responsible …
Democracy Watch, an organization that works toward empowering Canadians and Canadian democracy, again turned to Federal Court to challenge the Canadian judicial appointments process. The organization’s frequent turns away from democratic institutions like Parliament speak to dwindling confidence in any sort of responsible government. The organization’s judicial challenge, in this case, speaks to the continuing …
The Nova Scotia House of Assembly has ground to a standstill for the nine months that COVID-19 has raged throughout the world. I contend that this legislative inaction can either be attributed to the hyper-politicization of parliamentary procedure or to uninformed members stumbling through the motions. Either case is concerning, and it should concern all …
Nova Scotian House of Assembly does not sit for nine months Read More »
Don your futurist caps and peer into a political reality in which technology accelerates the speed at which society changes; what role is left for conservatives? The political, deliberative realm that we sometimes trust to chart our societies’ course either fades as deliberative government becomes too lugubrious for rapid development, or the speed of deliberative …
Preservatives and conservatives in a technological society Read More »
The Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA), the United Kingdom’s statutory regulator for one branch of the legal profession, has done away with the requirement for a university degree in law, which news has caused me to wonder about Canadian legal education. As a law student paying $9 000 per term (for 6 terms, and my tuition …
President Donald Trump has petulantly refused to accept the results of the American 2020 presidential election. His campaign and the Republican Party have filed almost a dozen lawsuits in Nevada, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Georgia, with more on the way. His aggressive legal action—actions that are being described as ‘entirely without merit’ and ‘flailing’—will almost assuredly not affect the election’s outcome. They …
David Hume’s is-ought problem is oft-forgotten in Canadian political and legal circles, and it bears some repetition. We often forget the value of deduction in an algorithmic age, for computers and the science from which they stem cause us to increasingly rely on inductive logic. In this age of induction, we formulate general rules based …
Judicial visits of the Canadian prison system allow judges to witness firsthand the conditions in which Canadian inmates live.
Visitors have the right to supervise and correct the affairs of a charitable corporation. The Law Society of Ontario had visitors mentioned in its charter, but this mention was removed. Does the visitor still exist? If so, what might that mean for the profession?
I have not encountered specialized collective agreement drafting on my journey through labour relations. It would be nice to see these professionals become a reality.
Visitors have all the rights of an executive, a legislator, and a judge. The three branches of government combine in a single person. If this law applies to prisons, judges can exert their powers as judges and as visitors to correct abuses in the prison system. This law then supplies a novel set of remedies to situations not covered by private nor public law.
Parliament has a legislative jurisdiction that can and should be put up against courts’ jurisdiction in Charter of Rights disputes. The legislator is ultimately responsible for adjudicating disputes about societal problems. Courts have a limited jurisdiction in our adversarial system.
This note takes issue with the Court’s refusal to hear more cases. I take a historical approach by examining the case of Sutton’s Hospital, which was heard by the English Exchequer Chamber. The case gives us a beautiful note on which to consider the Supreme Court’s function in Canada.
Some of my neighbours put handwritten signs of encouragement up in their windows. Online stories and videos frequently attest to neighbours’ generosity at a time when uncertainty reigns and people are more isolated than ever. Such charity relies on personal kindness muted in recent years by partisan politics and growing consumerism. The economic woe we …
