scholarly journals Haldane Unrevealed

2012 ◽  
Vol 57 (3) ◽  
pp. 597-626
Author(s):  
David Schneiderman
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Review Essay ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
The Political ◽  
Supreme Court Of Canada ◽  
Intellectual Biography ◽  
Privy Council ◽  
Clear Preference ◽  
Division Of Powers ◽  
Canadian Federalism

When historians proffer historical truths they “must not merely tell truths,” they must “demonstrate their truthfulness as well,” observes Hackett Fisher. As against this standard, Frederick Vaughan's intellectual biography of Richard Burdon Haldane does not fare so well. Vaughan argues that Viscount Haldane’s jurisprudential tilt, which favoured the provinces in Canadian federalism cases before the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, was rooted in Haldane’s philosophizing about Hegel. He does so, however, without much reference to the political and legal currents within which Haldane thought, wrote, and thrived. More remarkably, Vaughan does not derive from his reading of Haldane and Hegel any clear preference for the local over the national. We are left to look elsewhere for an explanation for Haldane’s favouring of the provincial side in division-of-powers cases. Vaughan additionally speculates about why Haldane’s predecessor Lord Watson took a similar judicial path, yet offers only tired and unconvincing rationales. Vaughan, lastly, rips Haldane out of historical context for the purpose of condemning contemporary Supreme Court of Canada decision making under the Charter. Under the guise of purposive interpretation, Vaughan claims that the justices are guilty of constitutionalizing a “historical relativism” that Vaughan wrongly alleges Hegel to have propounded. While passing judgment on the book’s merits, the purpose of this review essay is to evaluate the book by situating it in the historiographic record, a record that Vaughan ignores at his peril.

scholarly journals Senate Reform and the Political Safeguards of Canadian Federalism in Québec

2019 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 19-28
Author(s):  
Jean-Christophe Bédard-Rubin
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Constitutional Law ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Political ◽  
Decision Making Process ◽  
The Core ◽  
Division Of Powers ◽  
Canadian Federalism ◽  
Core Idea

Unlike in Canada, the doctrine of political safe-guards of federalism is a tantalizing presence in American constitutional law that changing tides and moods have never completely submerged. The core idea is simple: political institutions in the United States have been designed to ensure that interests of the states are represented in the federal decision-making process. Thus, the judiciary does not need to intervene to police the federal division of powers.

scholarly journals Striving to Maintain a Holistic Nation: Preventing Quebec Sovereignty

Federalism-E ◽  
1969 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 28-42
Author(s):  
Kimberley Gosse
Keyword(s):  
Political Identity ◽  
Personal Autonomy ◽  
The Political ◽  
Individual Identity ◽  
Division Of Powers ◽  
Canadian Federalism ◽  
Self Rule ◽  
Political Turmoil

Federalism is essentially a system of voluntary self-rule and shared rule […] a binding partnership among equals in which the parties to the covenant retain their individual identity while creating a new entity.‖1 Canadian federalism illustrates how a political sub-unit such as a province, can maintain personal autonomy while contributing and recognizing its importance to the holistic entity. The federal and provincial governments‘ relationship is constitutional, as their division of powers is entrenched in our written Canadian constitution. However, ambiguity in legislature and a provinces belief of having a weak political identity can create tension among these levels of government. Historically, this has been an issue seen through the province of Quebec and the political turmoil experienced on each respective level of government [...]

scholarly journals Balancing Power: The Supreme Court of Canada’s Impartial Role in Federalism

Federalism-E ◽  
1969 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 46-53
Author(s):  
Darcy Drury
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
Federal Government ◽  
Federal System ◽  
Privy Council ◽  
The Third ◽  
Canadian Federalism ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Legal Theorist

The problem with Lord Acton’s state-ment is that it leaves out the third essential ingredient to a federal system of government: a supreme court. In Canada, like most federa-tions, the Supreme Court (SC) is responsible for articulating the constitution and serving as an independent mediator in intergovernmen-tal relations. Each decision made by the SC in regards to government jurisdiction changes the dynamics of Canadian federalism, and some critics fear it can be used as a centraliz-ing device by the federal government. This paper will discuss the nature of the SC by demonstrating its necessity, purpose, and the importance of its independence by examining its crucial role in Canadian federalism. Next, there will be a historical breakdown of the impact of2 the SC on the federal balance of powers through an examination of three es-sential eras: Judicial Committee of the Privy Council (decentralizing), Laskin (centralizing), and Charter (mixed), with analysis involving the attitudinal and legal theorist models of decision making in SC decisions. Finally, the SC’s impartiality towards provincial and feder-al preferences will be evaluated to show that justices have remained immune to direct po-litical pressures [...]

Ghosts of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council: Group Politics and Charter Litigation in Canadian Political Science

2002 ◽  
Vol 35 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-29 ◽  
Author(s):  
Miriam Smith
Keyword(s):  
Political Science ◽  
Supreme Court Of Canada ◽  
Privy Council ◽  
Empirical Relationships ◽  
Litigation Process ◽  
Alternative Approach ◽  
Collective Actors ◽  
Canadian Federalism ◽  
Group Politics

This article examines the criticism of the activist Supreme Court of Canada in Canadian political science, as exemplified by the work of F. L. Morton and Rainer Knopff. It compares the debate over the legitimacy of judicial review with a previous generation's debates over the same question with reference to the role and impact of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council on the development of Canadian federalism. The article argues that, particularly in examining the role of groups in the litigation process, we need to return to the lessons of the previous debate on the JCPC by emphasizing the ways in which group politics and litigation are connected to power relations in Canadian society. In the conclusion, the article offers an alternative approach to exploring the theoretical and empirical relationships between collective actors and litigation based on the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

scholarly journals La Cour Supreme et le Partage des Competences

1969 ◽  
pp. 21 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jean-Charles Bonenfant
Keyword(s):  
The Political ◽  
Constitutional Court ◽  
Privy Council ◽  
Division Of Powers ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
French Speaking ◽  
Institu Tions ◽  
English Speaking ◽  
Constitutional Decisions ◽  
Political Economic

In the B.NA. Act and the Senate Canada has had two limping federative institu tions for over century. This has given more important role to the judiciary in interpreting the constitution than in other countries, Switzerland excepted. From its inception until the abolition of appeals to the Privy Council, the S.C.C. has often been unjustly kept in the shadows; its decisions often contained more of substance than those of the Privy Council. It appears that since 1949 the S.C.C. has rejected literal interpretation of the outdated B.NA. Act and has been prepared to create the law necessary for the political, economic and social functioning of the country. Unless change occurs in our institutions, we may drift into kind of neofederalism that amounts to government by judges. This is result to be feared, no matter how honest the judges or generous their decisions may be. Since the S.C.C. can create law in respect of the division of powers, it is under standable that Quebec, province different from the others, has not always accepted the decisions of the S.C.C. enthusiastically. As long as the S.C.C. was subordinate court its constitutional decisions were not feared in Quebec: rather, there was longstanding fear that the purity of Quebec civil law would be endangered. Since the 1974 amendments to the Supreme Court Act civil appeals will be considerably fewer and Quebec's problem in respect of the S.C.C. will above all relate to the division of powers. Although it would be difficult to specify any anti-Quebec attitudes on the S.C.C. bench, the court is still perceived by most French-speaking Quebeckers as primarily English-speaking institution as distant and strange as the Privy Council, and above all pro-federal tribunal. Several calls for the establishment of constitutional court have been made. Although number of decisions of the S.C.C. over the last twenty-five years have proven to be blessing to Quebec, two recent decisions have been perceived as unjustified federal int

Women in Power and Decision making Positions : Conditions and Restraints

1970 ◽  
pp. 53-57
Author(s):  
Azza Charara Baydoun
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Political Participation ◽  
Political Life ◽  
The Political ◽  
Decision Making Process ◽  
Power Structures ◽  
Policies And Procedures ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Status ◽  
Slow Progress

Women today are considered to be outside the political and administrative power structures and their participation in the decision-making process is non-existent. As far as their participation in the political life is concerned they are still on the margins. The existence of patriarchal society in Lebanon as well as the absence of governmental policies and procedures that aim at helping women and enhancing their political participation has made it very difficult for women to be accepted as leaders and to be granted votes in elections (UNIFEM, 2002).This above quote is taken from a report that was prepared to assess the progress made regarding the status of Lebanese women both on the social and governmental levels in light of the Beijing Platform for Action – the name given to the provisions of the Fourth Conference on Women held in Beijing in 1995. The above quote describes the slow progress achieved by Lebanese women in view of the ambitious goal that requires that the proportion of women occupying administrative or political positions in Lebanon should reach 30 percent of thetotal by the year 2005!

Virginia Woolf and Being-in-the-world

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emma Simone
Keyword(s):  
Virginia Woolf ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
The Political ◽  
Cartesian Dualism ◽  
Self And Other ◽  
The World ◽  
Binary Oppositions ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Existential Perspective

Virginia Woolf and Being-in-the-world: A Heideggerian Study explores Woolf’s treatment of the relationship between self and world from a phenomenological-existential perspective. This study presents a timely and compelling interpretation of Virginia Woolf’s textual treatment of the relationship between self and world from the perspective of the philosophy of Martin Heidegger. Drawing on Woolf’s novels, essays, reviews, letters, diary entries, short stories, and memoirs, the book explores the political and the ontological, as the individual’s connection to the world comes to be defined by an involvement and engagement that is always already situated within a particular physical, societal, and historical context. Emma Simone argues that at the heart of what it means to be an individual making his or her way in the world, the perspectives of Woolf and Heidegger are founded upon certain shared concerns, including the sustained critique of Cartesian dualism, particularly the resultant binary oppositions of subject and object, and self and Other; the understanding that the individual is a temporal being; an emphasis upon intersubjective relations insofar as Being-in-the-world is defined by Being-with-Others; and a consistent emphasis upon average everydayness as both determinative and representative of the individual’s relationship to and with the world.

A.I. Solzhenitsyn Apropos of Russia’s Future: Specific Outlook Features Depending on Different Historical Context

2019 ◽  
Vol 66 ◽  
pp. 327-334
Author(s):  
Inga V. Zheltikova ◽  
Elena I. Khokhlova
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Context ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
The Political ◽  
Social Stability ◽  
Political Situation ◽  
The Future ◽  
Pessimistic Attitude ◽  
Personal Qualities ◽  
Images Of The Future ◽  
The Church

The article considers the dependence of the images of future on the socio-cultural context of their formation. Comparison of the images of the future found in A.I. Solzhenitsyn’s works of various years reveals his generally pessimistic attitude to the future in the situation of social stability and moderate optimism in times of society destabilization. At the same time, the author's images of the future both in the seventies and the nineties of the last century demonstrate the mismatch of social expectations and reality that was generally typical for the images of the future. According to the authors of the present article, Solzhenitsyn’s ideas that the revival of spirituality could serve as the basis for the development of economy, that the influence of the Church on the process of socio-economic development would grow, and that the political situation strongly depends on the personal qualities of the leader, are unjustified. Nevertheless, such ideas are still present in many images of the future of Russia, including contemporary ones.

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