Constitutional law and ideas about constitutional law.
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Back to school
I was wrong. The Court’s framework summer had one last peak left. I just went on vacation and missed it. Before coming down in its most recent judgments, the Court in York Region School District Board v. Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario, 2024 SCC 22 approached its early-term highs: 40 “frameworks” in 143 paragraphs (28.0 FW/100¶). The updated…
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Organizing principles for organizing principles
The Supreme Court of Canada’s framework era may have been short lived. Its framework usage rate has dropped from early-term heights like the Nikkei 225: Frameworks may have fallen out of favour (for now), but the Court remains preoccupied with constitutional structure. It continues to rely on concepts and metaphors that may seem banal or…
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dolorem ipsum
In Ontario (Attorney General) v. Restoule, the Court once again reminds us that the relationship between the Crown and indigenous peoples is sui generis (¶70). Lest we forget our Latin, this is what sui generis means in 2024:
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NOS > NOx
SCOTUS has had a busy week undermining the rule of law, so I’d prefer to take a charitable interpretation of the supposed typos in Ohio v. EPA. Rather than confirmation of the majority’s scientific ignorance, I choose to see them as evidence of impeccable cinematic taste.
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What are we even doing here?
In CBC v. Named Person, 2024 SCC 21, a unanimous Supreme Court of Canada explained that, under the open court principle, “every person, as a general rule, has the right to access the courts, to attend hearings, to consult court records and to report on their content” (¶28). While it may be “a hallmark of democracy…
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Major Kodos and Kang vibes from SCOTUS on Flag Day
FDA v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine Garland v. Cargill Go ahead, throw your vote away!
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Conventional wisdom only gets you so far
An administrative decision is unreasonable if it fails to meaningfully consider a relevant constitutional convention (i.e. a convention that forms part of the factual and legal context for the decision) (Ontario (Attorney General) v. Ontario (Information and Privacy Commissioner), 2024 SCC 4, ¶¶21, 40, 57, 58). Such a decision also may be incorrect, as the majority of…
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Architects and Artisans
The Constitution of Canada has an architecture. Another name for that architecture is the basic constitutional structure. This familiar metaphor is profound: architecture is built by humans but must comply with certain natural laws (e.g. gravity) to serve its various physical and aesthetic functions. The notion of constitutional architecture also has profound implications for the…
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What is a constitutional imperative?
Unwritten constitutional principles are the “lifeblood” of the Canadian Constitution (Reference re Secession of Quebec (QSR), [1998] 2 S.C.R. 217, ¶51) and “the vital unstated assumptions upon which the text is based” (QSR ¶49) which are so fundamental that to explicitly identify them in the text “might have appeared redundant, even silly, to the framers” (QSR ¶62). We…
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It’s official: the SCC is in its Framework Era
In Societé des Casinos du Québec inc. v. Association des cadres de la Société des casinos du Québec, 2024 SCC 13, the Supreme Court of Canada reached yet another level of framework usage, setting season-high numbers (and possibly an all-time peak) for both total “frameworks” and usage rate. Truly impressive – and potentially historic – numbers,…
Interesting case? New idea?