SCC Poised for Retirement Boom In case you weren’t keeping track, seven of the Supremes will be eligible to retire by next year. “The impending retirements could give Prime Minister Stephen Harper, or whoever succeeds him as prime minister, a rare opportunity to overhaul the top court’s composition and thereby perhaps influence or reshape the [...]

Khadr’s lawyers blast government’s ‘perverse’ reaction The Harper government showed bias and bad faith and acted in a “perverse” manner by not requesting the return of Omar Khadr from Guantanamo Bay, or so say Khadr’s lawyer’s in their filings this week, according to The Globe and Mail. The lawyers’ move comes just days after the Canadian [...]

Feds to appeal ruling in Vancouver safe-injection site case Federal Attorney General Rob Nicholson announced earlier this week that the government would seek leave to appeal to the Supreme Court in PHS Community Services Society v. Canada (Attorney General), 2010 BCCA 15. “This case raises important questions regarding the doctrine of interjurisdictional immunity and the [...]

YouTube Lives as California Gay Marriage Trial is Re-enacted It’s Hollywood to the rescue. The U.S. Supreme Court may have nixed District Court Judge Vaughn Walker’s plans to make video of the trial in Perry v. Schwarzenegger, the so-called California gay marriage case, available publicly on YouTube, but an enterprising group of Los Angeles-based filmmakers have decided [...]

SCC Decision in Khadr Today Will the SCC defy, or defer to, the Harper government? Today, the SCC delivers its judgment in Prime Minister of Canada et al. v. Omar Ahmed Khadr (discussed on TheCourt.ca here, here and here). In doing so, it will also deliver its verdict on lingering issues about the government’s “duty [...]

As briefly surveyed in last Friday’s Amici Curiae, the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, No. 08-205, is causing quite the stir in judicial circles for its recognition of corporations as legal persons entitled to First Amendment protection. What many conservative commentators are calling a major victory for free [...]

Let Money Talk The U.S. Supreme Court delivered a “blow to democracy” in a “disastrous” judgement yesterday, The New York Times editorial board declared, urging the U.S. Congress to “act immediately to limit the damage of this radical decision.” In its bitterly-divided 5-4 ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Elections Commission, the high court found [...]

Facebook and Judicial “Friendship” If a judge makes Facebook “friends” with a lawyer, is she friends with that lawyer? Could she try a case argued by that “friend” impartially? In the wake of minor controversies involving Facebooking American judges, the Montreal Gazette’s Janice Tibbett writes that Canada’s judiciary is aware of the issues provoked by [...]

A proud, happy Chief turns 10 Beverley McLachlin marks her 10th anniversary as chief justice of the Supreme Court of Canada this week. Speaking to The Globe and Mail, McLachlin observed that the impacts of the court’s judgements continue to weigh heavily on her. “They are all really, really important issues at this level,” McLachlin [...]

At least one advantage of a neutral citation is it provides a quick way to determine how many judgments the Court has released in a year. As we move out of the Aughts (or whatever pop culture decides to call the last ten years) I can confidently report that the Court closed out the decade [...]