University of Toronto Law School Faculty Blog

Ed Morgan - "In Yellowknife, language rights go back on the menu"

First published in the Globe and Mail, April 21, 2009.

In taking on the chef who runs the famed Wildcat Cafe, Yellowknife's city council appears to have concocted a recipe for bringing Quebec-style language politics to the Northwest Territories. In the process, it has given us the basis for a constitutional crise du jour.

The iconic eatery in Yellowknife's Old Town sports a log cabin veneer, rough wooden benches and floors, and a pedigree that harks back to the 1930s prospectors who founded it and the miners and bush pilots who made it a frontier landmark. The building was designated a heritage site in the early 1990s and it has been leased out by a municipal committee to licensed operators since reopening as a popular tourist destination in the late 1970s.

Book Launch and Panel Discussion: Parliamentary Democracy in Crisis - Live Webcast

The David Asper Centre for Constitutional Rights will be hosting a book launch for the new book Parliamentary Democracy in Crisis: The Dilemmas, Choices and Future of Parliamentary Government in Canada on Tuesday April 21 at 4:30 pm.

The book launch will include a panel discussion on the future of Canada's democracy: lessons learned and where to we go from here.  This is the third in the series on the topic and celebrates the book that came out of our December 5th event on the Governor General's decision to prorogue Parliament. Panelists include Peter Hogg, Michael Valpy, David Cameron and Barbara Cameron.

The event will be webcast live starting shortly after 4:30 pm.

Click here April 21 at 4:30 to watch the webcast.

Click here to find out more about the event.

Click here to find out more about and purchase the book.

Alarie: Charter Decisions in the McLachlin Era

Andrew Green and I have just posted a new paper on SSRN in which we analyze 105 Charter decisions of the Supreme Court of Canada.  Here's the abstract:

This paper examines how justices on the Supreme Court of Canada voted in Charter appeals between 2000 and 2009. Charter appeals, at least in popular belief (and possibly also in theory), have the greatest potential to reveal voting that is influenced by extra-legal policy preferences. Confining the analysis to the time during which Chief Justice McLachlin has led the Court aids in controlling for the effects of a particular Chief Justice in assessing the roles of ideology and consensus.

Several of the Court's members have exhibited sharply different voting proclivities in s.15 (equality rights) appeals as compared with Charter claims made in the context of criminal law appeals (and, indeed, other Charter appeals). This finding suggests that at least some of the justices on the Court have been influenced by policy preferences on at least some occasions in discrete areas of Charter rights adjudication. On the other hand, it also suggests that judicial policy preferences are richer and significantly more nuanced than can adequately be captured by a simple "right"-"left" or "conservative"-"liberal" characterization of these policy preferences. The paper discusses a number of implications of the analysis and findings.

Here is one of the graphics from the paper, showing estimated ideal points of the justices overall, in equality cases, and in criminal appeals featuring a Charter rights violation.  (The ideal point distributions were calculated using the Martin-Quinn method popularized in the study of the policy preferences of the justices of the US Supreme Court):

It is particularly interesting to note that although Justice Major and Chief Justice McLachlin are both in the centre of the distributions when all Charter appeals are considered together, Justice Major is an accidental centrist in that he is quite amenable to finding Charter rights violations in criminal appeals and disinclined to find in favour of claimants in equality rights appeals.  Chief Justice McLachlin, on the other hand, is firmly planted in the centre with respect to each of the areas we examined.

Follow the download link at this page to access the full-text in pdf (and to have a look at some more revealing graphics).

Prof. Ayelet Shachar's new book, The Birthright Lottery

Prof. Ayelet Shachar's new book, The Birthright Lottery, has been published by Harvard University Press.

From the publisher:

The vast majority of the global population acquires citizenship purely by accidental circumstances of birth. There is little doubt that securing membership status in a given state bequeaths to some a world filled with opportunity and condemns others to a life with little hope. Gaining privileges by such arbitrary criteria as one’s birthplace is discredited in virtually all fields of public life, yet birthright entitlements still dominate our laws when it comes to allotting membership in a state.

In The Birthright Lottery, Ayelet Shachar argues that birthright citizenship in an affluent society can be thought of as a form of property inheritance: that is, a valuable entitlement transmitted by law to a restricted group of recipients under conditions that perpetuate the transfer of this prerogative to their heirs. She deploys this fresh perspective to establish that nations need to expand their membership boundaries beyond outdated notions of blood-and-soil in sculpting the body politic. Located at the intersection of law, economics, and political philosophy, The Birthright Lottery further advocates redistributional obligations on those benefiting from the inheritance of membership, with the aim of ameliorating its most glaring opportunity inequalities.

• See the publisher's web page
• Buy the book on Amazon.com
• Read an exerpt from the book (PDF) 

Michael Trebilcock - "Wind power is a complete disaster"

This commentary was first published in the Financial Post on April 9, 2009.

There is no evidence that industrial wind power is likely to have a significant impact on carbon emissions. The European experience is instructive. Denmark, the world's most wind-intensive nation, with more than 6,000 turbines generating 19% of its electricity, has yet to close a single fossil-fuel plant. It requires 50% more coal-generated electricity to cover wind power's unpredictability, and pollution and carbon dioxide emissions have risen (by 36% in 2006 alone).

Flemming Nissen, the head of development at West Danish generating company ELSAM (one of Denmark's largest energy utilities) tells us that "wind turbines do not reduce carbon dioxide emissions." The German experience is no different. Der Spiegel reports that "Germany's CO2 emissions haven't been reduced by even a single gram," and additional coal-and gas-fired plants have been constructed to ensure reliable delivery.

Jacob Ziegel: "Who Cares About the Consumer?"

Jacob Ziegel is a Professor of Law Emeritus, University of Toronto. Professor Ziegel has written widely about consumer law problems.

As Canadians brace themselves for the hardships of the country’s worst recession in more than twenty-five years, they are entitled to ask what protection they can expect against the many abuses that abound in the market place and the many more that are sure to emerge as unconscionable businesses and outright swindlers seeks to exploit consumer vulnerabilities during the recession.

The answer to the question is that consumers can expect very little help from federal or provincial governments. In some cases, in fact, governments are part of the problem and not likely to provide the solutions.

The picture was not always so bleak. In the 1970s, a wave of euphoria swept across Canada and federal and provincial governments vied with each other in introducing new consumer protection legislation and in establishing new ministries to administer and enforced the new programmes. Canada was the first country to establish a federal Department of Consumer and Corporate Affairs, and Ontario followed closely on its heels with the establishment of a Ministry of Consumer and Commercial Relations.

Anita Anand - "Canada's banks: conservative by nature"

This commentary was first published in the Financial Post on March 31, 2009.

In a recent interview with a major U.S. news network, Prime Minister Stephen Harper touted the fine regulatory balance that underpins the strength of Canadian financial institutions. Without question, Canadian banks have been relatively insulated from the economic turmoil that has crippled their U.S. counterparts. But why is this case? What characteristics particular to the Canadian economy and corresponding legal regime have protected Canada’s financial institutions?

If we look deeply, we see that Prime Minister Harper is partially right: The regulatory regime is an important factor to consider. Yet other considerations, including a conservative mentality that pervades our financial system and its players, are also relevant in the analysis.