Category: Canada
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Justice Ginsburg to Egypt: Don’t copy the U.S. Constitution
Let’s say you’re a newly democratizing country – say, Egypt – in the market for a new constitution. What constitutions, if any, should you consider as models in drafting your own? According to Justice Ginsburg, the answer is, maybe Canada or South Africa, or constitutions written after World War II more generally.
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The Declining Influence of the United States Constitution
Mila Versteeg and I have just posted to SSRN a paper that might be of interest to readers of this blog entitled “The Declining Influence of the United States Constitution“. It follows up on an earlier article, imminently forthcoming in the California Law Review, in which we took a very bird’s eye view of the…
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The Canadian angle to the Ugandan High Court’s ruling
Follow-up on Tom’s very timely coverage of the Ugandan High Court decision forbidding a tabloid newspaper from publishing the names and pictures of suspected homosexuals (and urging that they be killed). The CBC reports on the Canadian angle to this story: the Ugandan decision cited with approval a 2002 Saskatchewan Court of Queen’s Bench decision…
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The Legal Status of the Queen in Canada
Canada is constitutional monarchy, a term which refers to a system of government headed by a monarch whose actions are both constrained and compelled by a constitution. The monarch in Canada is the Queen. The Constitution Act of 1867 says so expressly and the Constitution Act of 1982 affirms it implicity.
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Renewing the Upper Chamber in Canada
The Canadian Prime Minister has recently appointed a slate of five new Senators to the Upper Chamber. Two things are significant about this latest round of Senatorial appointments. First, the governing Conservative Party now holds a plurality of seats in the Senate after spending years in the wilderness of minority status.
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Canadian Supreme Court decision in Khadr handed down
For those following the Khadr case (previously discussed here), the Supreme Court of Canada has handed down its decision. To recap, Khadr is a Canadian citizen who was captured by the U.S. as a teenager and has been tortured in the course of his indefinite detention without trial at Guantanamo Bay.
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Competing Models of Democracy in Canada and the United States
A few years ago, Michael Adams illuminated the many ways in which the United States and Canada are hardening in their views on civil society, culture, and politics. Entitled “Fire and Ice,” the book marshals an encyclopedic volume of data to show that Canada retains its own distinct identity—one that remains vibrant and strong despite…
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Will the head of state in Canada please stand up?
Several years after you read Peter Russell’s excellent book on the evolution of the Canadian constitution (now in its 3rd edition), you will be forgiven for forgetting the details of the many twists and turns of Canada’s constitutional odyssey. You will likely remember, however, Russell’s anecdote in the preface in which he describes the motivation…
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A Win for Wal-Mart, in Canada of All Places
Last week I wrote here about a landmark anti-privatization ruling by the Supreme Court of Israel. But those who thought the days of pro-business, neo-liberal jurisprudence were over, got a sobering reality check reminder last Friday, courtesy of the Supreme Court of Canada.
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Supreme Court of Canada v. detention of juveniles at Guantanamo Bay
Today the Supreme Court of Canada heard oral argument in Prime Minister of Canada et al. v. Omar Ahmed Khadr. Slate’s Dahlia Lithwick (a fellow Canadian, if I am not mistaken) has a very nice story about it here. In a nutshell, the Canadian Supreme Court is being asked to clean up the legal mess…