Sources Of Law : Neil Boyd

In contrast to the Canadian parliamentary system, which has remained fairly static and unchanged since Victorian times, the Canadian legal system has undergone a tremendous evolution over the last century and a half. When looking at Canadian history in depth one discovers the repeated movement to take power from the superiors or the overruling and place it into the palms of the people. As seen through examples our western law (canadian law) has slowly branched off from the supremacy of God (mosaic law), to the supremacy of the monarchy (bristish law), finally to a realization of the importance of citizen participation in the creating, governing, and administrating of the laws (Greek law).

The entrenchment of rights in the Canadian Constitution comes after long experience with a system of parliamentary supremacy. The American judicial tradition of treating the written constitution as fundamental law cannot have an instant Canadian counterpart. Thus, it does not follow that the Canadian courts will necessarily claim a role comparable to that of courts in the United States, nor is it clear that the representative bodies in Canada would tolerate such a judicial assertion of power. Opposition by government bodies to the Charter have already occurred in Canada, where the Parti Quebecois government of Quebec invoked the “notwithstanding the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms” clause for the purpose of protecting their language laws from attack under the charter. This report will attempt to note some of the common and distinctive features of the text of the two constitutions as well as to how they differ.

For those looking at Canada from an outside perspective they may assume that Canada had a long political fight with its British motherland to gain its patriation given their ties from colonialism. However, that was not particularly the obstacle Canadians had, provided that the Statue of Westminster gave Canada its opportunity in 1931. In fact the obstacles Canadians had at the time were other provinces failing to agree with one another on how to proceed from there on. Only in 1982 were these disagreements resolved. However, this paper is not focusing on how it was resolved, because much of that is well-known. This paper will focus on why it took Canada so long to patriate by examining failed attempts on agreeing on the domestic amending formula.

This act occurred on July 1st, 1867 the law The British North America Act is important in Canadian history because it is the 1867 Act which officially created the new country of Canada by joining together the four provinces of Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia legal in Confederation. This legislation, passed by the British Parliament, created Canada as a new making it its own today. Therefore Canada is an independent country that must not listen to anyone but themselves.

Starting with the Constitution Act of 1791, Canada was divided into two parts: Upper Canada and Lower Canada. Upper Canada was where the wealthy British, known as the Family Compact, resided. Lower Canada was where the less wealthy French resided. Although Lower Canada had its own branch of government, known as the Legislative Assembly, it had tremendously limited power. After many Canadians voiced their anger towards this circumstance, the Constitution of 1867 was created (Billingsley, 2013). The constitution combined Lower Canada and Upper Canada, and it gave the people much more rights, although it did not actually make Canada an independent country. Canada’s road to independence was, to a large extent, evolutionary and not revolutionary because it was unoriginal and because it took much too long of a time for its changes to be considered revolutionary.

F.L. Morton examines the political impact of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms by comparing pre-Charter practices to post-Charter developments in five different areas: judicial behaviour, public policy, interest group behaviour, federalism, and executive behaviour. Morton presents the Charter through its continuity and change, beginning with the move away from Britain’s “unwritten constitution” and distinguishing the doctrine as constitutional supremacy that still depends on public opinion. He argues that due to the Charter’s constitutionality, Canadian courts are able to have a more active and influential role in interpreting and enforcing the listed rights which is a negative development in Canadian democracy.

As time goes on, some countries become more relevant in the global sphere while others start to fade away. Canada is a country that only becomes more relevant as time goes on. Since being granted full sovereignty, Canada has had a growing role as a major world player. Much of their international growth has to do with its close ties to the United States and the United Kingdom. However, the country has also undergone huge change and refocusing on a domestic level. With influence from both Europe and the United States, Canada has a very unique system of governing. This paper will focus on a few major areas of Canada. It will look into the history of Canada, the structure of its government, its politics, and many of the major issues it faces today.

The Canadian Confederation was the process of establishing a new government within Canada during the 1860s. This was when three British colonies became the four provinces that would join under one government called the Dominion of Canada which was formed on July 1st, 1867. The provinces in the Dominion consisted of Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. This event in history became important to Canadian society and was a turning point that lead to the current Canada. Even with this knowledge, the question rises: Why was Confederation so important to Canada? What lead to it? Was it truly necessary in Canadian history? In this paper, the importance of the Canadian Confederation will be discussed through its context and the events and

The history of Canada is defined by many different eras of time that symbolize a distinct stage of the growth of the country. Each of these phases was a step towards where we are today with immigration policy .We converse, oppose, and sometimes fiercely confront one another over the significance, issues and outcome of these eras. We modify, redefine, revive and sometimes come to accept the portrait created by historians of these eras and through that process gain a greater perceptive of how Canada came to the point in history where we now stand at which helps Canadians use this knowledge in making decisions about where they will go next. Historians recognize two distinct colonial periods in Canada's past: • New France, from 1604 to 1763 • And British North America from 1670 to 1873.

The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, implemented in 1982 outlines the rights and freedoms that Canadians have as citizens of this country. In this paper I will ask whether we need such a charter, whether we can trust the interpretation of the Charter by the Supreme Court and how the Charter balances power in a democratic way. I will then contemplate the foundational place morality holds in the lawmaking process. In all of this I argue that to make a good law one must hold to a moral standard and one must act in the understanding that belief, and not objectivity, plays the main role in rational thought.

The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms is an important milestone in Canadian history. An effort through rigorous debate and compromise gave birth to this document that defines our collective values and principles by guaranteeing and protecting the fundamental rights of its citizens. Prior to the Charter, there was no gurantee in Canada that rights and freedoms would not be taken away by legislation. The Charter also allows courts to render the constitutional duty so that any decisions made are consistent with those rights and freedoms. The Charter was established firmly in “The Constitution Act, 1982”, with the declaration of this act Canada escaped from the severe practice of concept of parliamentary supremacy. The Charter has an enormous effect on court’s decision power to award justice to important and debatable issues about policies that affect public. In awarding the verdict courts are not even reluctant to rewrite laws that violate the testament of the Charter. The judges have a duty to regulate the rulings of both provincial and federal governments which, disagree with the root value of Charter.

The Supreme Court of Canada uses the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms to limit the scope of legislation and administrative power by implementing section one of the charter; which results in an open dialogue between the government and the courts on various legislation deemed unconstitutional. In this essay I will discuss the extent in which section one of the Canadian Charter allows the Supreme Court of Canada to dictate legislation, how they go about narrowing legislation and administrative power through the Oaks test, and the history of the Supreme Court from 1982 – present day will be analyzed resulting in an understanding of the legitimacy the courts play with such a role.

As the 20th century comes to an end, Canada is a transcontinental nation whose interests and representatives span the face of the globe and extend into every sphere of human behaviour. However this was not always the case. When the four colonies of British North America united to create Canada on July 1, 1867, the new country's future was by no means secure. Canada was a small country, with unsettled borders, vast empty spaces, and a large powerful neighbour, the United States. Confronting these challenges was difficult for the young country. Though Canada was independent in domestic matters, Britain retained control over its foreign policy. Over the next fifty or so years, Canada's leaders and its

What is Canada? What is a Canadian? Canada, to employ Voltaire's analogy, is nothing but “a few acres of snow.”. Of course, the philosopher spoke of New France, when he made that analogy. More recently, a former Prime Minister, Joe Clark, said that the country was nothing but a “community of communities”. Both these images have helped us, in one way or another, try to interpret what could define this country. On the other hand, a Canadian could be a beer, a hockey-playing beaver or even a canoe floating in a summer day's sunset. A Canadian could also be a “sovereigntyphobe”, refusing to see the liquefaction, albeit political, of the second largest country in the world.

The rule of law is a difficult concept to grasp and proves elusive to substantive definition. However, the following work considers the attempts of various social and legal theorists to define the concept and pertinent authorities are considered. Attitudes and emphasis as to the exact shape, form and content of the rule of law differ quite widely depending on the socio-political perspective and views of respective commentators (Slapper and Kelly, 2009, p16), although there are common themes that are almost universally adopted. The conclusions to this work endeavour to consolidate thinking on the rule of law in order to address the question posed in the title, which is at first sight a deceptively simple one.