Your search

This Article advances the comparative constitutional literature by examining the exercise of remedial discretion in rights litigation. It compares how the Supreme Court of Canada and the Constitutional Court of South Africa remedy unconstitutional legislation under their respective, relatively new, bills of rights. It uses an internal legal approach and, rejecting universalism and convergence, it pays attention to difference in constitutional texts. By reporting remedial practices and studying the written and unwritten factors that judges identify as conditioning their remedial determinations, the Article studies the significant gap between authoritative text and practice. In a warning for those who draft bills of rights, who rely on their texts to forecast judicial practice, or who simply aim to delineate and understand the exercise of judicial power under bills of rights, judges’ discussion reveals that the scope of action they perceive as legitimate may differ from what a rights instrument’s text implies. This gap has implications for efforts to classify forms of judicial review as strong-form or weak-form, as it may reduce the effective distance between different models as they appear on paper. The Article identifies shifting and contradictory views about reading-in versus invalidating legislation, and about immediate versus delayed orders. Based on its comparison of judicial remedial practices, the Article flags the unavoidable uncertainty of applying a bill of rights to legislation. It interprets the practices of the two countries’ highest courts as embodying a preference for a judicial posture of legislative engagement over one of constitutional enforcement. This conception of the judicial role emerges from similarities in practice, despite differences in the authorizing constitutional texts. The Article establishes a firm basis for normative evaluation of the legitimacy of judicial remedial discretion exercised with a view to engaging the democratic branches of government.

During Justice Louis LeBel’s fifteen-year tenure at the Supreme Court of Canada, Québec’s distinct character was taken into account in several decisions, for example in cases involving the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms or language rights. Although Québec was not always victorious, the Supreme Court still recognized the legitimacy of Québec’s language policy and, as a result, gave Québec more control over admissions to English-language schools than is evident at first sight. However, the most significant recognition of Québec’s specificity is found in cases connected with the constitutional amending formula. In some of its key decisions, the Supreme Court adopted a “contractual” vision of the origins of Canada’s constitution and interpreted it in a way explicitly intended to provide protection for the interests of the provinces, including Québec’s specific interests.

This book provides a comprehensive study of the tort of misfeasance in a public office in Canada and other Commonwealth jurisdictions. Misfeasance is a unique tort in that it applies only to public officers, and so exists at the intersection of private and public law. Since the House of Lords' decision in Three Rviers District Council v. Bank of England (no.3) (2001) and the Supreme Court of Canada's decision to Odhavji Estate v. Woodhouse (2003)m misfeasance has been pleased with increasing frequency and in situations covering a wide range of official misconduct. This book provides an organizational framework for the tort and a thorough catalogue of its application in specific cases. It also provides a theoretical foundation that clarigies the underlying purposes of misfeasance in a public office, its relationship to other areas of law, and its present and future role in the modern administrative state. -- back cover.

Courts, Litigants, and the Digital Age examines the ramifications of technology for courts, judges, and the administration of justice. It sets out the issues raised by technology, and, particularly, the Internet, so that conventional paradigms can be updated in the judicial context. In particular, the book dwells on issues such as proper judicial use of Internet sources, judicial ethics and social networking, electronic court records and anonymization techniques, control of the courtroom and jurors' use of new technologies, asnwell as the Internet's impact on judicial appointments and the diversity of thenjudiciary. The second edition includes discussion of current issues in thisnrapidly developing area, such as privacy protection, the "right to be forgotten," cyber intimidation, freedom of digital speech, and litigant anonymity. Through examination of relevant practical, legal, and ethical issues, it endeavours to extract lessons from the developing issues surveyed and proposes forward-thinking approaches based on proportionality principles.

This text compares the position adopted by the Court of Appeal in 2009 on the punishment of insults in the Genex ruling with the decisions rendered since then by the Supreme Court of Canada and the Quebec Court of Appeal. This analysis shows that the positions of the courts have changed and that offensive and insulting comments can no longer be sanctioned independently, as they were in Genex. The outcome is that insults must qualify as a breach of the right to the safeguard of reputation or of the right to equality, without which it will be found that the damage to the safeguard of dignity resulting from the insults cannot be considered as giving rise to compensation. The new analytical framework generates a confused amalgam in the distinction of rights guaranteed by the Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms.

"Defamation and privacy are now two central issues in media law. While defamation law has long posed concerns for media publications, the emergence of privacy as a legal challenge has been relatively recent in many common law jurisdictions outside the US. A number of jurisdictions have seen recent defamation and privacy law reforms, which have often drawn on, or reacted against, developments elsewhere. This timely book examines topical issues in defamation and privacy law focused on media, journalism and contemporary communication. Aimed at a wide legal audience, it brings together leading and emerging analysts of media law to address current and proposed reforms and the impact of changes in communication environments, and to re-examine basic principles such as harm and free speech. This book will be of interest to all those working on commonwealth or US law, as well as comparative scholars from wider jurisdictions"-- Provided by publisher.

"This casebook provides a thorough examination of all traditional conflict-of-law issues, including jurisdiction, choice of law and enforcement of judgments."-- Provided by publisher.

Disclaimer: This summary was generated by AI based on the content of the source document.

"This text is aimed at law school and criminology courses that offer a comprehensive analysis of sentencing law and principles in Canada."-- Provided by publisher.

This article raises a dissenting voice against the widespread scholarly view that discretion in remedying legislative infringement of rights can be dialogic, gentle, and cooperative. It focuses on delayed and prospective orders under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and the South African Bill of Rights. Scholars have neglected remedial discretion’s significant negative consequences. It harms litigants and other right bearers, potentially producing perverse systemic effects. In particular, keeping a rights-infringing criminal prohibition temporarily in force is unlikely to achieve legal certainty and risks undermining the rule of law. Far from being restrained and deferential, remedial discretion increases the reach of judicial decision-making and enables judges to shape new law more boldly. The widespread exercise of remedial discretion calls for refashioning the conception of a bill of rights’ place in a supreme constitution. If delayed or prospective remedies are sometimes appropriate, they are not something to celebrate.