University of Toronto Law School Faculty Blog

Prof. Ed Morgan: "An insidious cultural campaign"

This commentary by Prof. Ed Morgan was first published in the National Post on July 2, 2009.

The Dead Sea Scrolls, which are being exhibited this week at the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM), have survived time, weather, sand--and now the political storm caused by protests at their being toured by the Israel Museum, which houses the scrolls in Jerusalem.

Opponents of the exhibit include the Palestinian Minister of Tourism and Canadian solidarity groups supporting the Palestinian cause. They accuse the Israel Museum of having taken the scrolls from the Jordanian Department of Antiquities upon Israel's occupation of East Jerusalem and the West Bank in 1967. Israel's actions are alleged to be contrary to international conventions protecting cultural artifacts and prohibiting their removal.

The ROM is right to stare down the protests.

Prof. Ed Morgan - "It's a legal maze for Canadian authorities abroad"

This commentary by Prof. Ed Morgan was first published in The Globe and Mail on May 27, 2009.

Canadians may be surprised to learn a few things about our constitutional law.

First, the military owes no duty toward detainees arrested by us and turned over to a foreign state for custody.

Second, our intelligence service does owe a duty toward prisoners taken into custody by a foreign state and turned over to us for interrogation.

Third, our diplomats are obliged to intervene with a foreign legal system that fails to live up to our domestic standards of punishment.

And fourth, our police are free to comply with a foreign legal system that fails to live up to our domestic standards of search and seizure.

When it comes to the powers of the Canadian government abroad, each new court ruling makes us wonder if the judges took the time to read the last one. How did this confused state of affairs come to be?

Prof. Audrey Macklin: "The Omar Khadr Case: Redefining War Crimes"

This commentary was first published on the Jurist website on October 31, 2008.

George W. Bush’s term as president is coming to an end, and he has little to show by way of meting out justice for the terrorist attacks of 9/11. Perhaps this is why his administration seems so desperate to score a victory on the judicial battleground of the military commissions. That its target is Omar Khadr, a child soldier at the time of the alleged offenses, makes the spectacle all the more pathetic to the observer, and tragic for Khadr.

The charges against Khadr include “murder in violation of the laws of war,” and providing material support to the enemy. The most serious allegation against him is that on July 27, 2002 in Afghanistan, he threw a grenade that killed US soldier Sergeant Christopher Speer. Indeed, until a few months ago, the official story went unchallenged in the public domain. Thanks to an inadvertent government leak, we have since learned of evidence supporting at least two alternate scenarios, namely that another combatant might have thrown the grenade or that Sgt. Speer was killed by “friendly fire.”

Inviting trouble: The West may come to regret the International Criminal Court's indictment of Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir

Originally published in the National Post on Wednesday, July 16, 2008

The announcement that an indictment is pending against Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir has been greeted with enthusiasm in Western capitals. But international justice can be fickle. If the new international criminal court (ICC) doesn't show more responsibility than have similar institutions, the tables may soon turn on those applauding the loudest.

First the good news: The ruling clique in Sudan deserves all the condemnation the world can muster. The crimes perpetrated by the Khartoum government and the Janjaweed militia, which acts as its surrogate in the Darfur region, seem to beg for precisely this type of international prosecution. If, as ICC prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo has said, "the decision to start the genocide was taken by Bashir personally," no rational observer should shed a tear over this particular defendant.

The Significance of Khadr - Part II

In my previous post, I talked about the new ground broken by Khadr.  In this post, I want to identify and offer preliminary reflections on some important questions raised by the judgment.  First, though, full disclosure: I was counsel for the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association in the appeal.  Second, a disclaimer: these views are strictly my own.

To recall, in my last post, I wrote

Suresh established what we termed the “doctrine of constitutional complicity”, which holds that Canada is constitutionally liable for human rights abuses committed by foreign states which occur outside of Canada when (a) such abuses would violate the Charter had they occurred in Canada at the hands of the Canadian government; and (b) Canada has been complicit in the human rights abuses of the foreign state.

In fact, Suresh built upon and extended two previous decisions, Burns and Singh which held that Canada would be constitutionally liable for extradition to face the death penalty (Burns), and the denial of entry to Canada which would potentially expose someone to a deprivation of  their security of the person (Singh).  As these three cases make clear, the textual home for this doctrine has been s. 7 of the Charter (although it need not be).  Thus, in every case, the question has been whether the human rights abuse would violate s. 7 if committed by Canada within Canada.  And as I mentioned earlier, the Court has looked to international human rights law as a source of the principles of fundamental justice, to determine when such violations have occurred.

The Significance of Khadr: Part I

Posted by: Sujit Choudhry, Scholl Chair, Faculty of Law

Khadr is a highly significant judgment, for a number of different reasons.  For Omar Khadr himself, the Court held that he has a constitutional right to the disclosure of the interrogations conducted by Canadian officials in Guantanamo Bay, some or all of which were shared with American authorities.  For the international campaign to close Guantanamo Bay, the Supreme Court has added its voice to the chorus of informed legal opinion in stating that the regime in Guantanamo Bay – at least at the time of the interrogations – violated the Geneva Conventions, which guarantee fundamental human rights to armed combatants.

But the judgment is potentially of much wider significance. Khadr is the latest in a line of cases in which the Court has been asked to set out the precise application of the Charter in situations where Canada cooperates with foreign governments in the national security context.  Canada works with foreign governments in different ways.  For example, it may share intelligence, which foreign governments may then act upon to arrest, detain, interrogate and even torture an individual – as tragically occurred in the case of Maher Arar.  In other situations, Canadian officials may themselves be abroad – such as the CSIS officers who interrogated Omar Khadr in Guantanamo Bay, or Canadian armed forces in Afghanistan.  Canada may also cooperate with foreign governments through extradition and deportation.

Getting on like a house on fire – Bali style

There is something surreal about the current climate talks in Bali. Think about it this way…

Life is good in the penthouse suites.  The open and airy lofts boast the latest in sleek Italian furniture, the ultimate in German kitchen design, and screening rooms with state of the art plasma screens and surround sound systems.

Money is no object. The owners are, well, “financially comfortable” (some would say plain rich).  They enjoy the best wines from around the world, champagne from France, beef from Japan (sometimes Argentina), caviar from Russia and bottled mineral water from the finest springs.

Only one thing is puzzling about the penthouse suites. The blinds are drawn. And the air-conditioning is running in the winter.  Delivery staff rushes in and out, leaving sooty clothes and oxygen tanks at the door.  Because, you see, there is trouble in penthouse paradise. It sits atop a building that is now surrounded by fire and is beginning to smolder.

The Bali Challenge: How to get a global climate deal, and fast?

According to UN secretary-general, Ban Ki- Moon, the most recent findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) suggest that the impacts of climate change will be “so severe and so sweeping that only urgent, global action will do.”

The challenge at the pending UN meetings in Bali will be to set the tracks for just that: a regime that includes all major greenhouse gas (ghg) emitters and imposes meaningful emission reduction targets on them.

Canada’s Environment Minister, John Baird, has called the IPCC findings “powerful” and “overwhelming.”  Assuming, then, that Canada’s goal is to promote urgent and global action, what of its negotiating strategy for Bali?

Why has Canada changed its tune on citizens facing the death penalty?

This commentary was first published in The Lawyers Weekly on November 16, 2007, page 17

Ronald Smith of Red Deer, Alberta is slated to die the same way that Stanley Faulder of Jasper, Alberta did in 1999: by lethal injection. It can be a cruel death, leaving people gasping for air and writhing in pain while jailhouse “doctors” try to hit a vein with the poisoned needle. Observers at the 1994 execution of killer John Wayne Gacey in Illinois told reporters that the person who inserted the tube in his arm appeared to have “never taken I.V. 101”.

The two Canadians also share another trait: brutality. Faulder murdered a 75 year old Texas woman by crushing her skull with a blackjack and then stabbing her with a kitchen knife, while Smith killed two young Native Americans in Montana by shooting them with a sawed-off shotgun at point blank range in the back of the head. Two cold Canadians whose confessions left little doubt as to the identity of the killers and horror of the crimes.

And yet with all the similarities, Canada has responded in starkly different ways. In Faulder’s case, the government turned interventionist, petitioning the U.S. courts and requesting clemency from the governor of Texas. By contrast, in Smith’s case, the government has turned isolationist, refusing to intervene in a judicial system that shares the same rule of law approach as Canada.

A Common but Differentiated Approach to Global Climate Policy: How not to Re-invent the Wheel

The world appears to have arrived, grudgingly in some cases, at a consensus that climate change is a serious environmental threat.  The global policy-making machine has slowly creaked into gear.  Indeed, various initiatives are now picking up speed on multiple tracks.

On track 1, discussions about new commitments to follow Kyoto post-2012 are taking place under the auspices of the 1992 UN Climate Convention.  On track 2, this year’s G8 Summit saw the leading industrialized states endorse the idea of 50% cuts in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.  On track 3, the Asia-Pacific Climate Partnership, which Canada has now joined, is chugging along towards technological cooperation and an “aspirational” emissions target.  On track 4, US President Bush’s climate initiative wants to bring the 15 countries, including China and India, that emit 80% of global greenhouse gases on board.  Here too the destination is a “flexible” long-term target.