Advocates for the Rule of Law

I: Introduction On what basis can the Governor in Council reasonably conclude that there are “threats to the security of Canada” that justify invoking the Emergencies Act[1]? This question was front and centre during the recently concluded fact-finding hearings of the Public Order Emergency Commission (the “Commission”). What appeared at the outset to be a straightforward matter of statutory interpretation ...

On October 12, 2021, Advocates for the Rule of Law returned to the Supreme Court of Canada in Her Majesty the Queen, et al. v. David Sullivan, et al. and Her Majesty the Queen, et al. v. Thomas Chan, et al. (SCC 39270) to make submissions on the effect of a declaration under s. 52(1) of the Constitution Act, 1982 ...

There is a lively debate afoot in legal circles, both in the United States and now in Canada, on the “common good.” It began with Adrian Vermeule’s call for a “common good constitutionalism,” in which vague provisions would be infused with values drawn from the Catholic natural law tradition. Many others have now adopted the “common good” moniker, though it ...

Under Uber's standard form contract, all disputes were subject to mandatory mediation and arbitration in the Netherlands with an upfront fee of US $14,500, representing most of a driver's annual salary.

The Supreme Court of the United States’s recent decision in Bostock v. Clayton Country, Georgia has already elicited a great deal of controversy and scholarly commentary. I typically refrain from commenting on U.S. decisions as I am not an expert on U.S. law. However, the decision in Bostock turned entirely on the application of the principles of statutory interpretation, which has long been an interest of ...

In the wake of the Supreme Court of Canada’s decision in Vavilov, I’ve decided to pick up a copy of A.V. Dicey’s Introduction to the Study of the Law of the Constitution. I had read passages from this book more than a decade ago when I was in law school, but very little since beyond the odd paragraph. Dicey’s book is valuable primarily as a historical work. It lays ...

On October 6, 2019, I had the pleasure of speaking at a conference entitled “Constitutional Democracy Under Stress.” The conference was hosted by Section 1 and its founder, Peter Biro, who incidentally was one of my early mentors when I was a summer student. Mr. Biro, whose article for ARL on the Section 1 project can be read here, gathered ...

Professor Kerri Froc has written a thoughtful guest post for Double Aspect, in which she argues that s. 28 of the Charter is not merely an interpretive provision, but is rather a substantive and justiciable section in its own right. The implication if she is correct should not be understated. Section 28 states: Notwithstanding anything in this Charter, the rights ...

Five years ago, I founded Advocates for the Rule of Law with a small group of like-minded lawyers. We were concerned with what we perceived to be a growing disregard for the rule of law, and a move toward what some – including most notably, Justice Abella of the Supreme Court of Canada – have called the “rule of justice.” ...

Advocates for the Rule of Law returned to the Supreme Court of Canada last month in the Stillman and Beaudry appeals to make important submissions on the topic of stare decisis. I attended with my co-counsel, Adam Goldenberg and Peter Grbac. Mr. Goldenberg’s oral submissions were stellar and the panel kept him up for an additional few minutes to ask him ...