Articles for category: Canada

The Salience of “Writtenness” and “Unwrittenness” as Constitutional Categories in Canada

Canada's Constitution sits somewhere between the paradigms of a fully codified written and partially codified unwritten constitutional order. This blog post explains why the differentiation between the written and unwritten matters for our understanding of Canada's constitutional system with a view to terminological, institutional, proceduaral, and policial questions.

Statement by Canadian Law Professors and Jurists on the Proposed Legal Reforms in Israel

The undersigned are Canadian law professors and jurists. We write out of concern that recent proposals to transform Israel’s legal system will weaken democratic governance, undermine the rule of law, jeopardize the independence of the judiciary, impair the protection of human rights, and diminish the international respect currently accorded to Israeli legal institutions. In the aftermath of the Holocaust and the other atrocities of the Second World War, the great project of legal reform throughout the world has been the establishment of systems of rights that protect human dignity. These systems exemplify the definitive legal repudiation of  those (and similar) ... continue reading

Consensus and the Crown

The late Queen was loved by many of those who felt no allegiance to her, and respected by many who did not love her. By contrast, prior to his accession, the new King had struggled to be respected, let alone loved. Will his Canadian subjects maintain their allegiance to him? The question, however inevitable, is largely idle in light of the political difficulties that any attempt to secure constitutional change in Canada has encountered for 30 years. The monarchy will remain, by default if not by desire, just as King Charles III rather than his more popular son succeeded regardless of his subjects’ feelings on the matter.