Recent Posts

In honour of our two-year anniversary, Advocates for the Rule of Law has commissioned a new logo that can be viewed near the top of the website homepage. The new logo incorporates a sword and the scales of justice, both of which are traditionally associated with Lady Justice, on the backdrop of a Canadian flag. We hope you enjoy the ...

Canadian law students returning to their studies in the fall of 2016 are eligible to apply for the Runnymede Society’s first Student Leadership Conference. The Runnymede Society will be hosting its Student Leadership Conference this August 26-28, 2016, in the beautiful Ontario countryside. The weekend will include legal study and discussion, training to equip students with the skills and knowledge ...

Few legal concepts have been so little understood yet so much vilified as originalism has been in Canada. Adam Dodek has said that “originalism” is a “dirty word” on this side of the Canada-U.S. border. Following the death of Justice Antonin Scalia, Canadian jurists, including former Supreme Court judges, took to the media to remind us that originalism has no ...

The Runnymede Society, which is a new law student membership group co-founded by and in partnership with Advocates for the Rule of Law, kicked off this spring with a series of great events across the country this past month: March 2nd: Queen’s: Debate on Social and Economic Rights with Profs. Bruce Pardy, Tsvi Kahana, and Chris Essert. March 17th: Calgary: ...

In Batalla v. St. Michael’s Hospital,  the plaintiffs alleged that the physician and nurses who delivered the minor plaintiff did so negligently and caused the minor plaintiff to suffer severe brain damage. He was born with very limited cognitive functioning, impaired motor skills and visual impairments. The parties settled the matter following a mediation in April 2014 for the all-inclusive sum of $6,625,000. Pursuant to Rule 7 ...

A legal lion passed away recently. One might argue that the death of Justice Antonin Scalia means much more for the American legal audience than the Canadian one. After all, Scalia’s death tossed the Supreme Court of the United States into the centre of an already contentious election season and brought to the forefront the divisively partisan tendencies of the ...

This morning, Justice William Horkins of the Ontario Court of Justice acquitted Jian Ghomeshi of four charges of sexual assault and a fifth charge of choking. Social media immediately erupted in a firestorm of #believethevictims and #believeallsurvivors. Many insults were also directed toward the judge, who, by all accounts, behaved impeccably during the trial. Indeed, he made an evidentiary ruling near the ...

The law’s ideals and problems have not changed too much in 400 years I have only now read Francis Bacon’s essay “Of Judicature.” Bacon seems not to enjoy anything like the reputation of his rival Coke, in the law schools anyway ― I suspect that they haven’t heard much of Coke in the science faculties, where Bacon is regarded as ...

On Monday, March 21, 2016, the Runnymede Society will host a debate at the University of Toronto Faculty of Law. The title of the debate is: The Legitimacy of the Welfare State: Governments in Pursuit of the Public Good. Bruce Pardy, Professor of Law at Queen’s University Faculty of Law, will debate Jason MacLean, Assistant Professor of Law at Bora Laskin ...

The Ghomeshi trial has exposed a reality of the criminal justice system which is the bane of every criminal defence lawyer’s existence. In most ‘domestics’ — as allegations of sexual or physical assault between family members or romantic partners are called in the system—the current modus operandi of police and Crown prosecutors is “zero tolerance.” This means, practically, that police ...