{"id":263885,"date":"2015-10-05T13:00:46","date_gmt":"2015-10-05T17:00:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/policyoptions.irpp.org\/issues\/appointmentironies\/"},"modified":"2025-10-07T21:03:37","modified_gmt":"2025-10-08T01:03:37","slug":"appointmentironies","status":"publish","type":"issues","link":"https:\/\/policyoptions.irpp.org\/fr\/2015\/10\/appointmentironies\/","title":{"rendered":"Appointment ironies"},"content":{"rendered":"

Prime Minister Stephen Harper\u2019s appointment of seven of the Supreme Court\u2019s nine judges has done his government little good. The high profile clashes between the \u201cHarper Court\u201d and the Harper government are the stuff of legend. But not to worry, the real action has reportedly occurred behind the scenes with the appointment of lower court judges. Roughly three-quarters of federally appointed trial and appeal court judges owe their positions to Harper\u2019s government, and they might promote his conservative agenda in ways that the Supreme Court has not. These lower court appointments, we are told, \u201care Mr. Harper\u2019s enduring legacy.<\/a>\u201d<\/p>\n

Trial judges play a particularly important role by authoritatively ruling on the \u201csocial\u201d or \u201clegislative\u201d facts that decisively shape constitutional rulings. Such facts are distinguished by the literature \u2014 and by the Supreme Court<\/a> \u2014 from \u201cadjudicative facts.\u201d Adjudicative facts concern the particular circumstances of the parties before the court.\u00a0Did the accused pull the trigger or was it someone else? Was the woman having an innocent conversation or soliciting for the purposes of prostitution? Did the physician intend to euthanize the patient or did he simply provide palliative comfort (which might have hastened death, but was not designed for that purpose)? In short, adjudicative facts answer the questions of “who did what, where, when, how, and with what motive or intent<\/a>“?<\/p>\n

The questions change when the law itself is on trial for constitutional infirmity. For example, do traditional prostitution laws justifiably limit the Charter rights of \u201cliberty\u201d and \u201csecurity of the person\u201d? Do they mitigate\u00a0or exacerbate the dangers associated with prostitution? The answers to such constitutional questions depend on \u201csocial facts\u201d that significantly transcend the particular circumstances of the case being tried.<\/p>\n

Adjudicative facts are generally settled by trial courts, where judges (and sometimes juries) can directly assess the credibility of live testimony.\u00a0 Appeal courts, operating at a greater distance, concern themselves with legal errors; they rarely contest the adjudicative facts established at trial. This\u00a0“privileged position of the trial judge to appreciate and weigh adjudicative facts” did not “extend to the assessment of \u2018social’ or \u2018legislative’ facts that arise in the law-making process,\u201d said the Supreme Court in 1995<\/a>. Indeed, the\u00a0social-fact findings of trial judges were \u201centitled to minimal deference.\u201d The Court has changed its mind on this issue, however, declaring in Bedford<\/em> (2013)<\/a> that “a\u00a0no-deference standard of appellate review for social and legislative facts should be rejected.\u201d Trial-court “findings of fact \u2014 whether adjudicative, social, or legislative” \u2014 now receive equally high deference and are subject to appellate review only for “palpable and overriding error.\u201d<\/p>\n

The\u00a0Bedford<\/em>\u00a0judgment didn\u2019t just give trial judges enhanced authority over social facts; it also allowed them to use these facts to alter precedents established by appeal courts, including the Supreme Court of Canada. Previously, trial courts could reconsider only the rare higher court judgments that were per incuriam<\/em><\/a> \u2014 i.e., that unknowingly failed to consider a legally binding authority. Now, they can revisit precedents when there is \u201ca change in the circumstances or evidence that fundamentally shifts the parameters of the debate<\/a>.\u201d New social-fact evidence of this kind led the trial judge in Bedford<\/em><\/a> to invalidate prostitution laws that the Supreme Court had upheld two decades earlier<\/a>, an outcome confirmed by the Supreme Court. In Carter<\/em> (2015)<\/a>, the Supreme Court similarly deferred to a trial court reversal<\/a> of the 1993 Rodriguez<\/em><\/a> decision on assisted suicide. Again, new social-fact findings by the trial judge played a critical role.<\/p>\n

Bedford<\/em> and Carter<\/em> are famously part of the Harper government\u2019s losing streak before the Supreme Court, but might they ironically contain a conservative silver lining? After all, the newfound powers of trial judges are available not just to the kind of non-Harper appointees that presided over the Bedford<\/em> and Carter<\/em> trials, but also to all of Harper\u2019s trial-court appointments. Will we see the new cohort of trial judges shaping legislative and social facts to achieve conservative ends in constitutional litigation? It has been suggested<\/a>, for example, that a lone conservative judge could significantly affect the outcome of an upcoming case challenging the public medicare system.<\/p>\n

Because constitutional aspects of the health care debate remain judicially undecided, the policy inclinations of a trial judge may indeed have an effect. But what about the many constitutional issues that have been more clearly settled by the Supreme Court? Will conservative trial judges seek to alter established liberal precedents?\u00a0 Perhaps, but there are multiple \u201cconservatisms\u201d in this context, and one of them worries that a flood of reconsideration cases will damage the order and stability embodied in the principle of stare decisis<\/em> (the rule of precedent). This is the position of Russell Brown, Harper\u2019s latest (and obviously fast-tracked) appointment to the Supreme Court.<\/p>\n

Justice Brown addressed the new reconsideration powers in an Alberta Court of Appeal judgment<\/a> in early 2015, not long before his Supreme Court appointment. Accepting that \u201cBedford<\/em> represents a significant new exception to stare decisis<\/em>,\u201d Brown maintained that this exception \u201cshould be invoked with\u2026restraint.\u201d It should not \u201cbe taken either as a declaration of open season on stare decisis<\/em>, or as positing that the vast majority of Charter<\/em> issues which have been settled by higher courts, and especially by the Supreme Court, are no longer settled.\u201d To the contrary, lower courts should \u201ctake Bedford<\/em>\u2019s stated threshold seriously by applying it strictly,\u201d that is by respecting the Supreme Court\u2019s own admonition that the threshold for reconsideration is \u201cnot an easy one to reach.\u201d On this standard, it is not enough to assert that social and legislative facts are \u201cdifferent now.\u201d Instead, the new circumstances must clearly invalidate the \u201cstarting premise\u201d of the challenged precedent.<\/p>\n

As legal scholar Dwight Newman put it<\/a>, the \u201cSupreme Court of Canada\u2019s seeming invitation to the lower courts to engage in anticipatory overruling had opened an enormous Pandora\u2019s box, and Justice Brown has started to find a way to control the potentially ensuing problems that the Supreme Court’s slimly articulated approach would otherwise cause.\u201d<\/p>\n

Of course, Justice Brown\u2019s proposed constraints on reconsideration apply to all trial judges, including those appointed by the Harper government. Ironically, those who fret about Harper\u2019s trial-court appointments can take some comfort from his appointment of Justice Brown to the Supreme Court.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Prime Minister Stephen Harper\u2019s appointment of seven of the Supreme Court\u2019s nine judges has done his government little good. The high profile clashes between the \u201cHarper Court\u201d and the Harper government are the stuff of legend. But not to worry, the real action has reportedly occurred behind the scenes with the appointment of lower court […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":250768,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"content-type":"","ep_exclude_from_search":false,"apple_news_api_created_at":"2025-10-08T01:03:39Z","apple_news_api_id":"9fb1be0a-d711-492c-b53d-3d9a7e8106f9","apple_news_api_modified_at":"2025-10-08T01:03:39Z","apple_news_api_revision":"AAAAAAAAAAD\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/w==","apple_news_api_share_url":"https:\/\/apple.news\/An7G-CtcRSSy1PT2afoEG-Q","apple_news_cover_media_provider":"image","apple_news_coverimage":0,"apple_news_coverimage_caption":"","apple_news_cover_video_id":0,"apple_news_cover_video_url":"","apple_news_cover_embedwebvideo_url":"","apple_news_is_hidden":"","apple_news_is_paid":"","apple_news_is_preview":"","apple_news_is_sponsored":"","apple_news_maturity_rating":"","apple_news_metadata":"\"\"","apple_news_pullquote":"","apple_news_pullquote_position":"","apple_news_slug":"","apple_news_sections":[],"apple_news_suppress_video_url":false,"apple_news_use_image_component":false},"categories":[9358],"tags":[],"article-status":[],"irpp-category":[4295],"section":[],"irpp-tag":[],"class_list":["post-263885","issues","type-issues","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politique","irpp-category-politique"],"acf":[],"apple_news_notices":[],"yoast_head":"\nAppointment ironies<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/policyoptions.irpp.org\/fr\/2015\/10\/appointmentironies\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"fr_FR\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Appointment ironies\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Prime Minister Stephen Harper\u2019s appointment of seven of the Supreme Court\u2019s nine judges has done his government little good. 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