With the United States government locked in a power struggle between the Democrats and the Republicans, former President Bill Clinton swooped in and offered a somewhat curious solution to the American debt problem last week. Termed a “constitutional escape hatch” by the New York Times’ legal correspondent, Adam Liptak, it would be invoked in the […]
It is, in all likelihood, a coincidence that the anniversary of Halpern v. Canada (2002) comes on the heels of Toronto’s annual gay pride festival, but the timing is impeccable. On July 12, 2002, Justice LaForme, for a unanimous Ontario Superior Court of Justice, released a landmark decision that would pave the way towards gay […]
The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation ("CBC") is under fire from Canadian Information Commissioner Suzanne Legault ("Information Commissioner") for recent decisions refusing disclosure requests. While it is usually parliamentarians and public servants who are the subject of Ms. Legault’s criticism, it is now CBC who has been put in the hot seat by Ms. Legault. CBC vs. […]
Just two weeks after the Court split on the issue of whether a ban on video games sold to children is unconstitutional, the United States Supreme Court found itself fractured again. And, again, the Court seems to have divided itself along ideological lines. In a 5-4 decision, the justices on the Supreme Court sealed the […]
In the recent Canada (Attorney General) v. Mavi ruling, a unanimous Supreme Court held that sponsors of immigrants to Canada under the family class must pay for any government social assistance given to the sponsored immigrant. Nevertheless, the government owes a duty of procedural fairness to the sponsor, albeit the content being “fairly minimal”, and […]
On October 7, 2010, Mr. Hassan Rasouli underwent brain surgery at the Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre to remove a benign tumour. A number of “complications” occurred after the operation, however, and Mr. Rasouli contracted a severe case of bacterial meningitis. Within 10 days of the operation, he was breathing through a mechanical ventilator. To this […]
During a November oral argument about a California law that would restrict minors from buying violent video games, Justices Antonin Scalia and Samuel A. Alito squared off on constitutional originalism. These two United States Supreme Court justices debated whether the ratifiers of the First Amendment would have included portrayals of violence in video games as […]