Both sides in Barclays Bank PLC v Metcalfe & Mansfield Alternative Investments VII Corp., in its capacity as trustee of Devonshire Trust, et al. [Metcalfe & Mansfield] (involving the treatment of asset-backed commercial paper in a bankruptcy settlement) have now stated their hopes that, should the Supreme Court of Canada hear the case, it might come to […]
The Supreme Court of Canada recently granted leave to appeal to United States of America v Anekwu, 2008 BCCA 138 [Anekwu], a decision of the the British Columbia Court of Appeal. The issue before the Supreme Court of Canada in Anekwu is whether or not the Court of Appeal erred in finding that hearsay evidence that […]
After the Supreme Court of Canada's ("SCC") decision in BCE Inc, et al. v A Group of 1976 Debentureholders, [2008] 3 SCR 560 in June, newspaper business pages across the nation were once more reminded that the Supreme Court exists and is relevant to the financial news which they cover. Now, once more, the media is […]
On August 20, 1998, the Supreme Court of Canada handed down its landmark opinion in Reference re Secession of Quebec. To mark the ruling's ten-year anniversary, TheCourt.ca commissioned a piece from Warren J. Newman, co-counsel for the Attorney General in the Quebec Secession Reference, and author of the acclaimed study, The Quebec Secession Reference: The Rule of Law and […]
Chief Justice Beverly Mclachlin's rebuff of a (preposterous) call for her resignation made by a coalition of Christian and right-to-life organizations in response to her involvement in granting the Order of Canada to Dr. Henry Morgentaler, (see TheCourt.ca's Christopher Bird's comment) overshadowed another interesting remark the embattled Chief Justice made at a Canadian Bar Association […]
At the Canadian Bar Association's ("CBA") annual meeting last week, Justice Minister Rob Nicholson was asked how he intends to solve a national legal aid problem. After a decade of cutbacks and neglect, provinces now offer less legal aid services and have instituted higher eligibility criteria. A number of lawyers pressed the Minister to devise […]
Last week, a group of 42 organizations, spearheaded by the Canada Family Action Coalition, collectively filed a letter of complaint with the Canadian Judicial Council to complain about Chief Justice Beverly McLachlin's participation in the committee which recommended that Dr. Henry Morgentaler receive the Order of Canada. (TheCourt.ca senior editor Diana Younes contributed an excellent […]
TheCourt.ca is very pleased to reproduce the decisions of the Women's Court of Canada. In 2004 this group of feminist / equality Charter activists, lawyers, and academics, decided to do something about what they saw as the sorry state of equality jurisprudence under s. 15. The solution, rewrite the key decisions of the Supreme Court […]
In addition to being the last court of appeal to all constitutional issues, including the division of powers between the federal and provincial governments, the Supreme Court of Canada is the final arbitrator to the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. In this role, the nine judges give meaning and interpret the relative and open-ended values […]
MP Dennis Coderre's recent bill tabled in the House of Commons, Bill C-548, "An Act to amend the Official Languages Act (understanding the official languages - judges of the Supreme Court of Canada)," proposes to amend s.16 of the Act so that Supreme Court justices are required to be bilingual (similar to the requirement for […]