Advocates for the Rule of Law

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 ...