Ruling Canada

Ruling Canada
Author: Jamie Brownlee
Publisher: Fernwood Publishing
Total Pages: 172
Release: 2005
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN:

The "economic elite" has long been thought to cooperate at a corporate level to impact state and national policies and programs at the expense of the Canadian citizenry. However, this work reveals the expanding reach of the elite and their current encroachment into the noncorporate arena as yet another opportunity to exert their formidable influence. Citing the increasingly unified and class-conscious aspects of the group, this text reveals the degree to which this minority continues to prosper, dominate, and threaten Canadian democracy through numerous unifying mechanisms: corporate director interlocks; concentrated economic ownership; ties to the mass media; and the many business-oriented think tanks, philanthropic foundations, and corporate policy organizations. Maintaining that these existing relations need not be considered inevitable, the author challenges concerned citizens to come together to disrupt the political and economic status quo.

Law, Ideology, and Collegiality

Law, Ideology, and Collegiality
Author: Donald R. Songer
Publisher: McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP
Total Pages: 240
Release: 2012-04-11
Genre: Law
ISBN: 0773587497

The authors use confidential interviews with Supreme Court justices, analysis of their rulings from 1970 to 2005, and measures that tap their perceived ideological tendencies to provide a critical examination of the ideological roots of judicial decision making, uncovering the complexity of contemporary judicial behaviour. Examining judicial behaviour through the lens of three different research strategies grounded in qualitative and quantitative methodologies, Law, Ideology, and Collegiality presents compelling evidence that political ideology is a key factor in decision making and a prominent source of conflict in the Supreme Court of Canada.

Most Dangerous Branch

Most Dangerous Branch
Author: Robert Martin
Publisher: McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP
Total Pages: 309
Release: 2003
Genre: Canada
ISBN: 0773526145

Judges on the Supreme Court of Canada are guided by reason and principle - or so most Canadians think. In The Most Dangerous Branch Robert Martin argues that the court has changed from acting on principles to acting on values, allowing it to impose its own personal preferences. As judges are not elected, Martin argues, they should not be permitted to set the social agenda, amend legislation, amend the constitution, or attack democracy and democratic institutions.The Most Dangerous Branch shows that the Supreme Court has done exactly this in dealing with abortion, assisted suicide, homosexuality, and Quebec secession through decisions that were guided not by reasoned understanding of the principles of law but by the values of judges - values they, as unelected representatives of the Canadian state, had no right to impose. Martin shows that Supreme Court judges have adopted an orthodoxy of moral relativism and identity politics that he likens to a secular state religion. This orthodoxy denies the possibility of objectivity about human endeavour and regards social reality as "constructed." While purporting to be concerned with the plight of the oppressed, it is actually based on profound condescension. Martin believes that the "theocracy" which dominates the Supreme Court of Canada is subverting democracy and the rule of law. In The Most Dangerous Branch he calls on Canadians to take back their country.

Seven Absolute Rights

Seven Absolute Rights
Author: Ryan Alford
Publisher: McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP
Total Pages:
Release: 2020-05-21
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0228002222

For 150 years, Canada's constitutional order has been both flexible and durable, ensuring peace, order, and good government while protecting the absolute rights at the core of the rule of law. In this era of transnational terrorism and proliferating emergency powers, it is essential to revisit how and why our constitutional order developed particular limits on the government's powers, which remain in force despite war, rebellion, and insurrection. Seven Absolute Rights surveys the historical foundations of Canada's rule of law and the ways they reinforce the Constitution. Ryan Alford provides a gripping narrative of constitutional history, beginning with the medieval and early modern context of Magna Carta, the Petition of Right, and the constitutional settlement of the Glorious Revolution. His reconstruction ends with a detailed examination of two pre-Confederation crises: the rebellions of 1837–38 and the riots of 1849, which, as he demonstrates, provide the missing constitutionalist context to the framing of the British North America Act. Through this accessible exploration of key events and legal precedents, Alford offers a distinct perspective on the substantive principles of the rule of law embedded in Canada's Constitution. In bringing constitutional history to life, Seven Absolute Rights reveals the history and meaning of these long-forgotten protections and shows why they remain fundamental to our freedom in the twenty-first century.

Governing from the Bench

Governing from the Bench
Author: Emmett Macfarlane
Publisher: UBC Press
Total Pages: 265
Release: 2012-12-22
Genre: Law
ISBN: 0774823526

In Governing from the Bench, Emmett Macfarlane demystifies the inner workings of the Supreme Court of Canada. Drawing on interviews with current and former justices, law clerks, and other staff members of the court, Macfarlane sheds light on the institution’s internal environment and decision-making processes. He explores the complex role of the Supreme Court as an institution; exposes the rules, conventions, and norms that shape and constrain its justices’ behaviour; and situates the court in a broader governmental and societal context. At once enlightening and engaging, Governing from the Bench is a much-needed and comprehensive exploration of an institution that touches the lives of all Canadians.

Mighty Judgment

Mighty Judgment
Author: Philip Slayton
Publisher: Penguin Canada
Total Pages: 429
Release: 2011-04-12
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0143180517

In Mighty Judgment Philip Slayton describes the important issues the Supreme Court decides for individual Canadians and for Canada as a nation, and the surprising and dramatic ways in which these decisions shape our future. In the Morgentaler case (1988), the court struck down laws restricting abortion, leaving Canada the only Western country without any abortion laws. In the Same-Sex Marriage Reference (2004), it decided that gays and lesbians could marry. In the Secession Reference (1998), it laid down the conditions under which Quebec could secede from Canada. In the Patrick case (2009), the court decided that the right of privacy does not stop the police from rifling through our garbage. More recently, the court administered a tongue-lashing to the federal government over its treatment of Canadian youth Omar Khadr, accused by the United States government of fighting with the Taliban. Mighty Judgment makes clear that the Supreme Court of Canada is a political institution, and that judges are politicians. But unlike other politicians, judges cannot be voted out of office. Slayton discusses reforms that will be needed, particularly in the way judges are chosen, once we recognize that the court decides policy and plays a pivotal role in governing Canada.

Attitudinal Decision Making in the Supreme Court of Canada

Attitudinal Decision Making in the Supreme Court of Canada
Author: C. L. Ostberg
Publisher: UBC Press
Total Pages: 290
Release: 2011-11-01
Genre: Law
ISBN: 0774841311

This book provides a comprehensive exploration of ideological patterns of judicial behaviour in the Supreme Court of Canada. Relying on an expansive database of Canadian Supreme Court rulings between 1984 and 2003, the authors present the most systematic discussion of the attitudinal model of decision making ever conducted outside the setting of the US Supreme Court. The groundbreaking discussion of the viability of this model as a unifying theory of judicial behaviour in high courts around the world will be essential reading for a wide range of legal scholars and court watchers.

Canada

Canada
Author:
Publisher:
Total Pages: 40
Release: 1989
Genre: Labor
ISBN: