Since the death of former Chief Justice Lamer in November, there have been many thorough articles written about his legacy as a jurist, including James Stribopoulos' piece for TheCourt.ca. I was very pleased to be asked to add to these tributes to "the Chief" (as I will always think of him), as one of his former […]
Recently CanLII announced that they have implemented a new sorting order for the results of searches. Now along with the ability to sort by relevance and date, you can sort by "most cited." I've been interested for quite a while in looking at Supreme Court of Canada ("SCC") judgments ranked by their impact, and this […]
2007 will be a year to remember in the history of the Spanish Constitutional Court. Not because of the last amendment of its regulatory law, which has changed the individual appeal process for the protection of fundamental rights and is supposed to put an end to the huge number of pending cases, but because of […]
The following is an Supreme Court of Canada news release regarding the recent passing of The Honourable Justice Gerald Eric Le Dain: The Honourable Gerald Eric Le Dain, formerly a justice of the Supreme Court of Canada, passed away in Toronto on December 18, 2007. Justice Le Dain was born in 1924 in Montreal. He […]
A fallen international businessman has, until recently, split his time between Parliament hill and a humble detention centre in west Toronto. He was recently granted bail by the Ontario Court of Appeal for $1.31 million dollars. The reputation of a former and sitting Prime Minister hang on his words. While his fate in turn rests […]
On August 9, 2007, the Federal Court of Appeal dismissed an application for judicial review of a decision denying an adoptive mother maternity benefits after the adoption of her children. Tomasson v Canada (Attorney General), [2008] 2 FCR 176 is a case involving a s. 15(1) Charter equality rights challenge to provisions of the Employment Insurance Act, SC […]
I remember reading about an old case in first year contracts about a man whose horse lost a shoe while he was travelling to marry a rich heiress. The blacksmith he hired to replace the horsehoe did the work poorly and made the horse lame. Consequently, the man missed his wedding and the heiress married […]
When a seventeen-year-old, already subject to two probation orders, sucker punches another teen, and continues his assault until the victim loses consciousness and later dies – what is the appropriate societal response? Crown prosecutors said: sentence the seventeen-year-old as an adult and make him prove why his name shouldn’t be published. Two lower courts ruled […]
Like my friend Eric Baum, I am also in the midst of studying for my Criminal Procedure exam. Appropriately, then, we have both (rather resourcefully) grabbed hold of the opportunity to explore our understanding of the Charter’s exclusionary rule, section 24(2). The case discussed in Eric’s post, Curtis Shepherd v Her Majesty the Queen [Shepherd], is […]
With the Christmas shopping season in full swing, I thought I would take today to consider how a fairly new technological trend in e-book readers might be impacted by the Supreme Court of Canada's ("SCC") decision in Théberge v Galerie d’Art du Petit Champlain inc., [2002] 2 SCR 336 [Théberge]. On November 19, Amazon.com released their wireless e-book […]