They have done away with the nightmarish scenes from George Orwell’s 1984. They have done away with the unnerving language of insidious dangers around the corner. They have even done away with hypothetical scenarios involving round-the-clock surveillance of each other. The decision that the nine justices on the United States Supreme Court reached last week [...]

Between 2000 and 2008, under Chief Justice McLachlin’s oversight, the Supreme Court of Canada (SCC) was unanimous in its disposition of division of powers issues in 25 rulings or reference opinions. Then, after the 2009 division in Fastfrate, 2009 SCC 53, the SCC divided sharply in all six federalism rulings released in 2010. In 2011, [...]

Appeal Watch is a new feature that profiles cases that have been recently granted or denied leave to appeal at the Supreme Court of Canada. SCC Refuses to Revisit Murder Mens Rea Standard In the years following the adoption of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, the courts in Canada used their new-found power [...]

If you’ve read a newspaper in the past two months, you’ll know that Canada’s right-to-die debate has come back to life. Leading the revival is B.C. resident Gloria Taylor, a 63-year-old grandmother—and reported motorcycle enthusiast—who was diagnosed with ALS (aka Lou Gehrig’s disease) in 2009. As is often the case for people suffering from this [...]

In the Supreme Court of Canada’s (SCC) recent opinion on the federal government’s proposed Securities Act, the Court held that the proposed Act was not a valid exercise of federal power under the general branch of the trade and commerce power in section 91 of the Constitution Act, 1867. Though the Court rejected the federal [...]

This post is one of two winning papers submitted by JD students at Osgoode Hall Law School, York University as a written assignment for Prof. Richard Haigh’s State and Citizen course. In its 2007 ruling, the Supreme Court of Canada addressed the controversies regarding interjurisdictional immunity in Canadian Western Bank v The Queen in Right [...]

This post is one of two winning papers submitted by JD students at Osgoode Hall Law School, York University as a written assignment for Prof. Richard Haigh’s State and Citizen course. The doctrine of interjurisdictional immunity, which can be used to challenge statutes on the ground of division of powers, seeks to limit the applicability [...]

Anti-gay demonstrator Bill Whatcott will soon learn what the Supreme Court of Canada has to say about the offensive flyers he dumped on Western Canada in the early 2000s. Whatcott spammed “hundreds of thousands” of Saskatchewanites until four people filed human rights complaints against him, claiming he had violated the Province’s hate laws. He responded [...]

Last April, the Supreme Court of Canada heard arguments regarding the constitutionality of the proposed national securities regulator. Broadly, the issue was whether the proposed Canada Securities Act (the Act) was a valid exercise of the federal government’s trade and commerce power under s. 91(2) of the Constitution Act, 1867. With the Legal Post reporting [...]

Before being born again, Bill Whatcott had it rough: by 14 he was living on the streets, selling himself to older men to survive, sniffing glue to get by. His religious rebirth transformed him into an outspoken member of the Christian Truth Activists. The religious teachings he chooses to preach in this new life do [...]