Suchergebnisse

This article asks whether Quebec has lost relevance in the constitutional politics of language. It proposes a doctrinal analysis of the Supreme Court's Charter jurisprudence, with an emphasis on the most recent body of case law, and an assessment of its political consequences in the area of language policy in Quebec. The article argues that constitutional review has increasingly protected individual rights over Quebec's collective right to maintain its language and culture. This can be explained by the move towards an implacable parallel constitutionalism and a redefinition of official minority linguistic rights in the jurisprudence, as well as by the exhaustion of Quebec's legislative counterattacks to court rulings. The article concludes that Quebec is no longer driving concepts of Canadian citizenship. Undifferentiated rather than multinational citizenship appears to be the direction in which Charter language jurisprudence is taking Canada.

Abstract This article unpacks how legislators in five Canadian provinces turn to official languages (French and English) for digital constituent outreach. In a linguistically fragmented society, use of languages is highly strategic as they can help spread information on political
matters to the public and help legislators build support ahead of elections. This article first measures legislators' uses of bilingualism in the digital mediascape with the help of an index. It finds that legislators tend to be mostly unilingual in their digital constituent communications.
Second, this article identifies factors influencing legislators' linguistic choices. It tests correlations between legislators' socio-demographic and political profile (e.g. gender, party affiliation, political rank) and uses of official languages. It also determines if the linguistic makeup
of legislators' ridings impacts language choices. This article concludes that these variables may impact legislator's use of bilingualism depending on the province of origin and the type of online platform.

AbstractThis article analyzes an important discretionary power of the Supreme Court of Canada, the ability to award costs. With the use of an original data set, we explore trends in costs awarding in public interest litigation at the Supreme Court from 1970 to 2012. Our findings suggest that, over time, the Court has tended to favour nongovernment parties over government parties where the former are less likely to pay costs when they lose and more likely to receive costs when they win. In these cases, costs orders were more likely to benefit public interest litigants, such as nongovernmental organizations, than individual litigants and businesses. Together, these findings suggest a sensitivity to access to justice concerns when making costs orders, though some may argue that this sensitivity by the Court does not extend far enough.

Abstract. Studies of federal judicial appointments made before 1988 discovered significant partisan ties between judicial appointees and the governments appointing them. In 1988, in response to criticism of these "patronage appointments," the Mulroney government introduced screening committees to the process. This article explores the impact of these committees. Using information gained from surveys of legal elites, we trace the minor and major political connections of federal judicial appointees from 1989 to 2003 in order to determine whether patronage has continued despite the reform to the process. We discover that political connections continued to play an important role in who was selected for a judicial appointment. However, these connections were not quite as common as those found before 1988, and the new process does appear to have prevented the politically motivated appointment of completely unqualified candidates. Interestingly, our findings also suggest that the impact of patronage varies by region and interacts with other, newer influences, in particular, concerns for group representation on the bench. The paper concludes by briefly discussing these results in the context of the relationship between judicial selection and politics with a comparative perspective.Résumé. Les études sur les nominations judiciaires fédérales réalisées avant 1988 ont découvert des liens partisans étroits entre les juges nommés à la cour et les gouvernements les nommant. En 1988, en réponse aux critiques sur le favoritisme entourant les nominations, le gouvernement Mulroney a introduit des comités d'évaluation dans le processus. Cet article explore l'impact de ces comités. En utilisant de l'information recueillie lors de sondages menés auprès de la communauté légale, nous retraçons les connexions politiques mineures et majeures des attributaires judiciaires fédéraux de 1989 à 2003 en vue de déterminer si le favoritisme a persisté malgré la réforme du système. Nous découvrons que les connexions politiques continuent à jouer un rôle important dans la sélection des juges. Toutefois, ces connexions ne sont pas aussi importantes que celles qu'on a identifiées avant 1988 et le nouveau processus semble avoir réussi à prévenir les nominations partisanes de candidats entièrement non qualifiés. Les résultats de notre recherche suggèrent également que l'effet du favoritisme varie par région et dépend aussi d'autres facteurs plus nouveaux, en particulier le souci de représentation de certains groupes au sein de la magistrature. L'article conclut en discutant brièvement ces résultats dans le contexte de la relation entre la sélection judiciaire et la politique dans une perspective comparative.