{"id":291520,"date":"2015-02-20T19:49:48","date_gmt":"2015-02-21T00:49:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/policyoptions.irpp.org\/2015\/02\/how-not-to-criticize-the-supreme-court\/"},"modified":"2025-08-28T15:17:56","modified_gmt":"2025-08-28T19:17:56","slug":"how-not-to-criticize-the-supreme-court","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/policyoptions.irpp.org\/fr\/2015\/02\/how-not-to-criticize-the-supreme-court\/","title":{"rendered":"How not to criticize the supreme court"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>As the CBA National Magazine&#8217;s excellent Yves Faguy <a href=\"https:\/\/nationalmagazine.ca\/Blog\/February-2015-(1)\/A-new-era-of-judicial-activism.aspx\" target=\"_blank\">notes on its blog<\/a>, &#8220;<span style=\"color: #252122;\">charges of judicial activism [directed at the Supreme Court of Canada] are back in vogue.&#8221; He links to a couple of examples. Yet another one\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.theglobeandmail.com\/globe-debate\/who-is-judging-the-judges\/article23069380\/\" target=\"_blank\">by Gordon Gibson<\/a>, appeared in the Globe yesterday. The charge may always be the same, but the sophistication of the argument to support it varies. <a href=\"https:\/\/news.nationalpost.com\/2015\/02\/13\/andrew-coyne-supreme-court-euthanasia-ruling-marks-the-death-of-judicial-restraint\/\" target=\"_blank\">Andrew Coyne&#8217;s<\/a>\u00a0was interesting and worth a detailed answer, which I provided\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/doubleaspectblog.wordpress.com\/2015\/02\/15\/here-be-no-dragons\/\" target=\"_blank\">over at my own blog, Double Aspect<\/a>. Mr. Gibson&#8217;s, by contrast, is despairingly simplistic. At its root are two claims\u00a0that are either na\u00efve or deliberately misleading.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Mr. Gibson\u00a0accuses the Court of &#8220;making&#8221; the law instead of &#8220;interpreting&#8221; it. But any interpretation, especially interpretation of a vaguely worded text, as most constitutional provisions are, must perforce add something new to the law. The distinction\u00a0is a purely rhetorical construct.<\/p>\n<p>Mr. Gibson claims that with\u00a0&#8220;the 1982 Trudeauvian amendments,&#8221; \u201d\u2022 i.e. the Patriation of the Constitution and the enactment of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms \u201d\u2022 &#8220;the court replac[ed] Parliament as the highest authority in the land.&#8221; But Parliament never was &#8220;the highest authority,&#8221; because its powers were limited by those of the provinces, and for as long as Canada has existed, courts have invalidated legislation that infringed\u00a0the federal division of powers. The Charter added to the number of grounds on which courts could strike down laws, but it did not create this power.<\/p>\n<p>I have sharply criticized two of the Supreme Court&#8217;s decisions which Mr. Gibson invokes in support of his claim of &#8220;activism&#8221; (<a href=\"https:\/\/doubleaspectblog.wordpress.com\/2014\/03\/22\/what-you-wish-for\/\" target=\"_blank\">here <\/a>for that in &#8220;l&#8217;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.canlii.org\/en\/ca\/scc\/doc\/2014\/2014scc21\/2014scc21.html\" target=\"_blank\">Affaire Nadon<\/a>&#8221; and \u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/doubleaspectblog.wordpress.com\/2015\/02\/04\/laboured-thoughts\/\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a>\u00a0and <a href=\"https:\/\/doubleaspectblog.wordpress.com\/2015\/02\/05\/check-their-privilege\/\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a>, or <a href=\"https:\/\/news.nationalpost.com\/2015\/02\/18\/leonid-sirota-the-court-vs-economics\/\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a>\u00a0in summary form, for that <a href=\"https:\/\/www.canlii.org\/en\/ca\/scc\/doc\/2015\/2015scc1\/2015scc1.html\" target=\"_blank\">constitutionalizing<\/a>\u00a0the right to collective bargaining). But, as I say in response to Mr. Coyne, we do better by criticizing the Court&#8217;s reasoning than by invoking the near-meaningless charge of &#8220;activism.&#8221; And we should certainly avoid outright distortions of the legal or historical record, in which Mr. Gibson engages. The Court is not, or should not be, above criticism. But that criticism will not be effective if it can be dismissed as simply misinformed.<\/p>\n<p><em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/mango_sparrow\/5621813850\/in\/photolist-9yMgp1-qFWfZB-6xefv-dnJpcc-4emQku-7AkMiF-nj6ZuQ-fF2HKm-7PEnEn-cSbgn7-bMntyz-79XouB-p7WG5N-mBnc9L-anxtSE-mBm7dV-ansTUt-aqCiHc-8Z9WVL-9qGVTS-8dfgUR-6TpduJ-5nGuBR-bH9CKc-ncMHdf-f74wXT-exBsHh-4VLPuN-dSbsEr-556CT2-6TS6J9-bqrbSm-4fEFTE-eSjg29-CpEMP-6GDnNf-ay5oRT-6GzjL6-6GDmu9-njSSUk-4PgXd7-a61Zef-fLd8Cq-5esWb-74WJEc-8N975a-miNAZF-exyfCP-miPrvg-4ptqkF\" target=\"_blank\">Photo<\/a> by beth \/ <a href=\"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-nc-nd\/2.0\/\" target=\"_blank\">CC BY-NC-ND 2.0<\/a> \/ modified from original\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As the CBA National Magazine&#8217;s excellent Yves Faguy notes on its blog, &#8220;charges of judicial activism [directed at the Supreme Court of Canada] are back in vogue.&#8221; He links to a couple of examples. Yet another one\u00a0by Gordon Gibson, appeared in the Globe yesterday. The charge may always be the same, but the sophistication of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":913,"featured_media":290766,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"content-type":"","ep_exclude_from_search":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[8392,8390],"article-status":[],"irpp-category":[],"section":[],"irpp-tag":[],"class_list":["post-291520","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-charter-of-rights-fr","tag-supreme-court-fr"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v25.8 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>How not to criticize the supreme court<\/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\/02\/how-not-to-criticize-the-supreme-court\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"fr_FR\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"How not to criticize the supreme court\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"As the CBA National Magazine&#8217;s excellent Yves Faguy notes on its blog, &#8220;charges of judicial activism [directed at the Supreme Court of Canada] are back in vogue.&#8221; He links to a couple of examples. Yet another one\u00a0by Gordon Gibson, appeared in the Globe yesterday. The charge may always be the same, but the sophistication of [&hellip;]\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/policyoptions.irpp.org\/fr\/2015\/02\/how-not-to-criticize-the-supreme-court\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Policy Options\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/IRPP.org\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2015-02-21T00:49:48+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2025-08-28T19:17:56+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/policyoptions.irpp.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/justice.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"710\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"390\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"vkurzawa\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@irpp\" 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