Publications ←

My new book!!! Courts Without Cases: The Law and Politics of Advisory Opinions

May

25

2019

Tweet I’m really thrilled to announce that my new book is out! Courts Without Cases: The Law and Politics of Advisory Opinions (Hart) was released on April 18, 2019. When one thinks of courts, it most often is in the context of deciding cases: live disputes involving spirited, adversarial debate between opposing parties. Sometimes, though, a court ...

October 23, 2017: more on that Quebec face covering law

Oct

24

2017

Tweet Well, I did promise that I would have more to say about Bill 62, the law recently passed by Quebec than bans niqabs, veils and, it would seem, sunglasses. First, a piece written for Policy Options. Second, an interview with Don Martin of CTV Power Play. There has been lots of talk about whether the ...

Book Chapter: The Federal Principle (Const. Amendment in Canada)

Sep

7

2017

Tweet Looks like I’ve been a little delinquent posting my publications. I have a chapter in Emmett MacFarlane’s Constitutional Amendment in Canada (UTP 2016). Not going to post a PDF yet, but the following excerpt gives a sense of it: “Amending the Constitution of Canada is difficult. The formal procedure (found in Part V of ...

New Publication “Govt Responses to Constitutional Litigation”

Feb

21

2017

Tweet So, here’s a short article that has been published in Constitutional Forum. I originally wrote it for a 2016 symposium, organized by the University of Toronto Asper Centre, that asked participants to strategize about the future of Charter litigation following 10 years of Conservative federal policy and in the early days of a Trudeau ministry. My paper was ...

New Publication: “Nothing to Lose But Our Chains”

Aug

26

2016

Tweet Glad to share a new publication. This one’s a book review, a fairly uncommon format for me (too many scars from grade school!). I accepted an invitation from Osgoode Hall LJ to review Louis M. Seidman’s On Constitutional Disobedience. As you’ll see, it was a fun – if ultimately unpersuasive – read. Link

The Shadow of Absurdity and the Challenge of Easy Cases: New article in SCLR

Dec

21

2015

Tweet You may recall from previous posts that this incident involved an unprecedented ruling, the 2014 Supreme Court Act Reference, in which the Court advised 6-1 that Justice Marc Nadon was ineligible for appointment to one of the three seats on the Court reserved to Quebec. In the article, I discuss several ways in which the Reference was an “exceptional constitutional moment”. ...

“Pushing It” (Stephen Harper and the Courts)

Oct

5

2015

Tweet My latest on Harper and the judiciary, co-authored with Michael Plaxton and appearing in the most recent edition of Policy Options Magazine. “After 10 years of Conservative appointments it is not at all clear that the courts — and certainly the Supreme Court of Canada — are in worse shape than they were when ...