{"id":1587,"date":"2016-01-17T18:13:07","date_gmt":"2016-01-17T18:13:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ruleoflaw.ca\/?p=1587"},"modified":"2017-01-14T03:35:48","modified_gmt":"2017-01-14T03:35:48","slug":"justice-stratas-on-the-decline-of-doctrine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ruleoflaw.ca\/justice-stratas-on-the-decline-of-doctrine\/","title":{"rendered":"Justice Stratas on the Decline of Doctrine"},"content":{"rendered":"

Justice David Stratas of the Federal Court of Appeal gave an excellent talk at the Canadian Constitution Foundation’s Law and Freedom Conference on January 8, 2016. The title of his keynote address was “Reflections on the Decline of Legal Doctrine.” It can be viewed here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0address focussed primarily on constitutional and administrative law. In Justice Stratas’s view, judges and academics too often take a results-oriented approach to the law, rather than rigorously applying legal doctrine. This lack of attention to doctrine leads to uncertainty and inconsistency, and\u00a0ultimately means that our courts will be less equipped to protect the rights and freedoms of Canadians in the face of some new crisis. As Justice Stratas put it to the attendees,\u00a0should Canada ever be gripped by some form of threat or disorder, leading the government to abridge the civil liberties of many Canadians, do we want the judge deciding the constitutionality\u00a0of the government’s action to be able to turn to a\u00a0body of constitutional law “based on fundamental principles, consistently applied over decades” \u00a0– in other words, “settled legal doctrine” – or do we want the judge deciding the issue based upon “her or his own worldview?”<\/p>\n

Justice Stratas stated at the outset that he would not be making the “beige” speech – a non-controversial and often platitudinous address that judges have sometimes been known to offer at conferences. And while his address was certainly powerful and provocative, it was also\u00a0entirely non-partisan and highly nuanced. I would strongly\u00a0recommend watching the address on YouTube and the question\/answer period that followed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Justice David Stratas of the Federal Court of Appeal gave an excellent talk at the Canadian Constitution Foundation’s Law and Freedom Conference on January 8, 2016. The title of his keynote address was “Reflections on the Decline of Legal Doctrine.” It can be viewed here. The\u00a0address focussed primarily on constitutional and administrative law. In Justice …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1600,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[132,201,202,53,174],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ruleoflaw.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1587"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ruleoflaw.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ruleoflaw.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ruleoflaw.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ruleoflaw.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1587"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.ruleoflaw.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1587\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1591,"href":"https:\/\/www.ruleoflaw.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1587\/revisions\/1591"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ruleoflaw.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1600"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ruleoflaw.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1587"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ruleoflaw.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1587"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ruleoflaw.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1587"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}