Amici Curiae : The Political Battle Behind U.S. Healthcare Reform, the Mandatory Minimum Sentence Justifiability Question, and Regulation of Fertility Tourism

Congress Wants the Last Word on Health Care Reform The celebrations did not last long. Before you even finish saying, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, Congress has already started jostling to overturn the Supreme Court’s decision. Less than two weeks ago, the Supreme Court of the United States kept the Act intact, thereby allowing […]

Westmount (City) v Rossy: Faulting Quebec’s No-Fault Insurance Law

As the proverb goes, when a tree falls in the forest, and no one is there to hear it, did it happen at all? When a tree hits a man while he is driving, and Quebec has a no-fault insurance law, then does that mean that, for civil liability purposes, it did not happen at […]

Clarity into Causation: The SCC Articulates the Standard in Clements v Clements

In true McLachlin fashion, the Chief Justice brought clarity and consensus to a highly disputed element of the law in the recent decision, Clements v Clements, [2012] 2 SCR 181 [Clements]. Caselaw related to causation, the element in negligence actions that is often most confusing, was synthesized by the Supreme Court of Canada. The Court further […]

Amici Curiae: Cologne's Ban on Religious Circumcision, Toronto's New Background Check Policy & London's Banking Scandal

Conflict with the Covenant: German Court Bans Religious Circumcision After a medical complication arising in a circumcision performed on a four year old Muslim boy, a Cologne court ruled that circumcising young boys on religious grounds equated with bodily harm – even if the parents had consented to the practice. In this decision, the court […]

Is Home Where the Work Is? Depends On Where Home Is: Ernst v Destiny Software Productions

With the advent of social media and technology in the professional world, workplaces have become far more flexible in terms of the physical location of the actual work done by employees. In Canada, the terms “work from home” and “telework” are often used interchangeably to reflect arrangements where an employee can set up and use […]

Diversity and the Judiciary: Who is the Bench Representing Anyway?

Justice Bora Laskin, the first Jewish Supreme Court of Canada ("SCC)" jurist, was appointed in 1970. Justice Bertha Wilson was appointed to the SCC bench in 1982 as the first woman, which  laid the groundwork for greater diversity in the Canadian judiciary. Currently, four out of the nine seats are filled by women. That being […]

Health Care Reform: The Real Winner is The Court

(No, we are not tooting our own horn.) The Supreme Court of the United States' decision on health care reform last Thursday is surely one of the most important decisions of the century. President Obama, who proposed the law amidst a firestorm of controversy in 2010, seemed cautiously victorious. Despite quashing the individual mandate provision […]

Appeal Watch: The Khadr Tug-of-War, A Spring Election Bringing the Court Back This Summer and When a Trial is Conducted Unreasonably Late

They Don’t Want Him and Neither Do We: Omar Khadr’s Continuing Canadian Transfer Issues The story of Omar Khadr, the Canadian who was captured by U.S. troops in Afghanistan in 2002 as a 15-year old boy, and subsequently accused of being a terrorist, is familiar to many Canadians by now. Equally resonant in the nation’s public […]