[Editor's note: This article was first published in Lesbian/Gay Law Notes, a publication of New York Law School.] The Israeli Supreme Court on November 21, 2006 accepted the petitions of five same-sex Israeli couples who married in Toronto, Canada and requested to be registered in the Israeli population registry as married. (HCJ 3045/05 Ben-Ari v […]
One of the more interesting things I learned in first-year Criminal Law was that, during the 1970s and 1980s, the Supreme Court of Canada ("SCC") twisted itself into knots over the defence of necessity. First, in Morgentaler v The Queen, [1976] 1 SCR 616, it neither confirmed nor denied that the defence existed at common law. […]
The Supreme Court released it's decision in R v Spencer, 2007 SCC 11, today. From the Supreme Court's summary: The Respondent was tried on an indictment containing 98 counts with reference to 18 robberies. Convictions were recorded on 92 counts. The Respondent did not challenge the convictions on the counts relating to the robbery of […]
The Supreme Court of Canada ("SCC") decision in Chaoulli v Quebec (Attorney General), [2005] 1 SCR 791 [Chaoulli], was seen by many commentators as a significant blow to the future of public health care in Canada. Some of these criticisms were canvassed by Dean Monahan in his post in defence of the majority judgment. These fears were […]
What is the Supreme Court reading? More than gets cited to them, I hope. A survey of the 2006 judgments' "Authors Cited" sections reveals a meagre and mundane stock of stimulation, heavy on textbooks and light on theory. (I assume that the great bulk of references in decisions originate in parties' factums and do not […]
Anytime differential treatment of a group is recognized as morally wrong or a violation of equality rights there arises a difficult issue. In trying to determine how best to compensate persons who have been affected by such treatment, how far back should the courts go to calculate the appropriate compensation or remedy? This is precisely […]
Background While on duty in the early morning hours of September 22, 2000, Sergeant Beaudry and two of his colleagues on the Repentigny Police Service noticed a vehicle traveling at high speed with a flat tire. They pursued the vehicle, which ran a stop sign and almost hit the median before stopping. When Sergeant Beaudry […]
The protective dimensions of labour and employment law regularly collide with the norms of corporate and commercial law. In some instances, legislators have expressly overridden those norms, for example, through related employer provisions that treat two or more legally distinct entities as a single employer, making each jointly and severally liable for the obligations owed […]
Last week, Jodi Martin wrote the post "When you are strong on the facts..." on the Leskun v. Leskun decision. This post will serve as my counter-point. It seems to me that Jodi's main concerns with Leskun are that it implicitly reintroduces fault into the spousal support scheme and that it was far too light […]
As every personal injury lawyer working on contingency knows, the key to finding a good case is identifying a solvent party that can be affixed with liability. Lawyers will not take on a case even where the defendant's negligence clearly caused injuries to the client if that defendant does not have insurance coverage or funds […]