NOTES
Public Policy and the Judicial Role
Rosalie Silberman Abella*
Judges have always been involved with pub-
lic policy. They have also been involved in
the development of the law, whether in in-
terpreting statutes or selectively applying
precedents. After examining the traditional
functions of judges in this light, the author
concludes that the Charter has not changed
anything in this regard.
Les juges ont toujours 6tabli une politique
judiciaire qui tienne compte de 1intr& pu-
blic. Ils participent au d6veloppement du
droit que ce soit par l’interpr~tation qu’ils
donnent au lois ou par la s~lectivit6 dont ils
font preuve dans le choix des pr6c6dents A
suivre. Apr~s avoir analys6 les fonctions tra-
ditionnelles des juges, ‘auteur conclut que la
Charte ne change rien a ces fonctions.
*
*
*
*Former judge; Chair, The Ontario Law Reform Commission. This article is based on the
text of an address given to the Canadian Bar Association “Judges Day” on 23 August 1988 in
Montreal. I would like to thank Marisa Pollock, Ken MacDonald, Douglas Millar and Marc
Noreau for their invaluable research assistance.
McGill Law Journal 1989
Revue de droit de McGill
1022
REVUE DE DROIT DE McGILL
[Vol. 34
Judges have always been involved with public policy. And judges, in
their role either in the interpretation of statutes or in the selective application
of precedent, have always been involved in the development of law. Why
then is there now an unfolding drama about the appropriate limits to judicial
power and an intense curiosity about the backgrounds of the men and
women who wield it?’ The answer is, of course, the Charter.2
What the Charter’s Klieg lights did as they illuminated the long-running
play called “The Judicial Role” was to spotlight a participant whose talents
the audience had not previously appreciated. That participant was public
policy.
For centuries, and at least from the time of Montesquieu, public policy
had been in all three of the play’s acts in English-speaking Western De-
mocracies –
in Act I, as Common Law; in Act 2, as Statutory Interpretation;
and in Act 3, as Constitutional Review. But it rarely had a speaking part,
and was almost always billed far below the star, judicial neutrality. But when
the Charter was added to this country’s Constitution, what came promi-
nently into the nation’s consciousness was the realization that public policy,
far from playing a minor role in the judicial script, had in fact been a co-
star all along.3 With the Charter, the public wondered whether policy wasn’t
being given too pronounced a form of recognition. It is one thing, after all,
for the courts to enunciate policy in tort law, and even to revolutionize it
as the judges did in cases like Rookes v. Barnard4 however, what to the
legal profession may have seemed like Copernican revolutions in contract
or tort seemed largely inconsequential to the wider public. The attribution
to unelected judges of the responsibility for the final determination of fun-
damental issues no less controversial and political than human rights –
frequently and essentially the equitable distribution of scarce commodities
‘In the United States and England, this generation in particular has spawned literature at-
tempting to identify the relationship between the backgrounds and decision ofjudges. See, for
example, M. Shapiro, Law and Politics in the Supreme Court (New York: Free Press of Glencoe,
1964) and R. Stevens, Law and Politics: the House of Lords as a Judicial Body, 1800-1976
(Chapel Hill, N.C.: University of North Carolina Press, 1978). But the examination of the
judicial role is neither a new preoccupation nor one fixated on constitutional issues. See O.W.
Holmes, The Common Law (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1881) and B.N. Cardozo, The
Nature of the Judicial Process (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1921).
2Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, Part I of the Constitution Act, 1982, being
3P.H. Winfield, “Public Policy in the English Common Law” (1928) 42 Harv. L. Rev. 76 at
Schedule B of the Canada Act 1982 (U.K.), 1982, c. 11 [hereinafter Charter].
77.
4[1964] A.C. 1129 (H.L.).
1989]
NOTES
1023
like opportunities 5 – brought upon us a tempest of inquiry into the judicial
relationship with public policy. For some, the tempest revealed public policy
as Caliban, a grotesque monster to be kept under control. For others, the
tempest was a cathartic exegesis finally permitting public policy, like Pros-
pero, to attain openly its proper status.
As the storm raged, two primary concerns swirled through the land:
had the Charter compromised judicial neutrality by making public policy
so conspicuously a partner in the determination of how rights and freedoms
were to be allocated; and had the Charter compromised the historic juris-
dictional division of lawmaking authority between the legislature and the
courts? Once the tempest subsides, my own prognosis is that in the end it
will be concluded that nothing has been inappropriately compromised with
the Charter. The Charter has simply spotlighted, rather than created, a ju-
dicial role, and what we are seeing, because of the public nature of the
Charters impact and issues, is a difference in degree in judicial decision-
making and the role of public policy, and not in kind.6
I.
The first subject under review must necessarily be judicial neutrality,
whose examination becomes vital if we are to prevent Charter adjudication
from becoming an eternally frustrating Sisyphean task to lawyers and judges
who may otherwise feel they are being made to present a different play than
the one they rehearsed. The main fear, I think, is that an explicit judicial
acknowledgement of the role public policy plays in decision-making invites
accusations that the judiciary is usurping a political function reserved to
the legislatures, namely, the requirement to consider public policy when
formulating law. The term “public policy” radiates a political heat judges
fear will smother the light of their neutrality and independence. It therefore
becomes important to define “public policy” and “judicial neutrality” in
order to understand why policy considerations (as well as moral consider-
ations) are an integral part of law and therefore legal interpretation, and
why judicial neutrality need not be, or need not be seen to be, or need not
ever have been, impaired by the express or implied application of policy
considerations to decision-making.
5L.G. Scarman, “Human Rights in a Plural Society” in R. Dhavan, R. Sudarshan, & S.
Kharshid, eds., Judges and the Judicial Power (London: Sweet and Maxwell, 1985; Bombay:
N.M. Tripathi, 1985) at 107.
6L.L. Jaffe, English and American Judges as Lawmakers (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969) at
1024
McGILL LAW JOURNAL
[Vol. 34
“Public policy” is the philosophical blueprint for the systems and rules
that regulate social and political conduct. 7 It is both a strategy and an ob-
jective; that is, at any given time it may be either hortatory or derivative,
inspirational or reflective of what is perceived to be in a community’s op-
timal self-interest. It is the compendium of directives under which com-
munities, of which judges are members, evolve. It may or may not enjoy
a consensus. It has an inherent fluidity and may change within generations,
from generation to generation, or may not change for several generations.
Ultimately it defines a society’s character. Despite the fact that it can rarely
be empirically tested, it forms the basis of law. It has been described as an
“unruly horse”,8 though not a “Pegasus”. 9 In its statutory incarnation, it
may either represent a Faustian bargain between the legislature and the
majority in exchange for continued electoral success where such a consensus
is seen to exist; or it may represent a Kantian acappella refrain, seeking
daringly to redefine the social contract without benefit of majority accom-
paniment where the consensus is nowhere to be seen. It is, in short, an
imprecise yet crucial progenitor of the rules we choose to live by.
Above all, however, the concept of public policy is value-laden.’ 0 Any
given public policy stands for certain values or a code of morality with
which we intend or expect most of society to abide. The legislature’s basic
function, whether it does so consciously or unconsciously, is to determine
which values will be translated into statutory law based on a perception of
public interests, the importunings of constituents, the prevailing partisan
ideology, collegial input, and perceived electoral risk.
In this legislative blender, the application of public policy is purely a
political judgment. But this in no way detracts from its fundamental char-
acter as originating from values. It means, rather, that the values that orig-
inally inspired the statute are subject to political realities and may not
emerge intact or unchanged. The final legislative product is still called public
policy, but it is public policy as political compromise. It is political in the
purest sense of the word: an accountable institution –
assesses how best to balance societal values with the prospect of re-election.
Essentially the application of public policy is an exercise in the promulgation
as law of selected perceived majority wishes.
the legislature –
Freedoms” (1986) 20 L. Soc. Gaz. 217 at 227.
7R.S. Abella, “Public Policy and Canada’s Judges: The Impact of the Charter of Rights and
8Public policy “is a very unruly horse, and when once you get astride it you never know
where it will carry you”: Richardson v. Mellish (1824), 2 Bing. 229, 130 E.R. 294 at 252 per
Burrough J.
9Winfield, supra, note 3 at 91: “But none, at any rate in the present day, has looked upon
it as a Pegasus that might soar beyond the momentary needs of the community.”
10M. Schneiderman, “Toward a Public Policy Oriented Jurisprudence: ‘Principles’ as a Sub-
situte for ‘Rules’ in the Legal Syllogism” (1969) 34 Sask. L. Rev. 314.
1989]
NOTES
1025
The courts, in their relationship with public policy, are also involved
in an evaluative process. The process, however, is interpretive and not bla-
tantly political. It is impervious to electoral judgment, unrestricted by the
constraints of partisan ideologies, and relatively immune to the requirement
of compromise. The public policy values the court is therefore free to eval-
uate are related to but independent from the political values which moti-
vated the existence or absence of a statute. Parliament passes laws, courts
decide what the laws mean,1 and in so doing courts react, at least to some
extent, either consciously or unconsciously, positively or negatively, to what
they feel are the public policy values that underlie the statute. And if one
feels that this interpretive role has the potential for interfering with the
Parliamentary supremacy which emerged triumphant from the Glorious
Revolution of 1688 overthrowing the obstructive Stuart Kings, it was ever
thus.’ 2 The interpretive judicial function, whether of statute or common
law, has always necessarily involved the sifting of normative considerations,
not only because laws derive from and operate in a social system and culture
of values, 13 but because judges are conditioned and operate in the same
system. 14 Insofar as the sifting of legal choices is the sifting of policy values,’ 5
judges, in interpreting law, do consider and always have considered, in
addition to logic and precedent, the values or policy implications their legal
conclusions represent. 16 But because judges tended to be wary about ap-
pearing to make policy judgments which some thought were more acceptably
made in a political forum,17 they have historically used anodyne terminology
to shield the exercise of policy choice from conspicuous view. Policy-laden
words like “reasonable”, “arbitrary”, “due process”, “good faith”, “unjus-
tified”, or “discretion” are what Learned Hand called a “protective veil of
adjectives”‘ 8 for insulating judicial policy-making from censure for violating
the accepted spheres of policy-making. When judges interpret terms of art
like “best interests”, “discrimination”,’ 9 “unfair labour practice”, or “re-
of the common law”: Hurtado v. California, 110 U.S. 516 at 530 (1884).
“”This flexibility and capacity for growth and adaptation is the peculiar boast and excellence
12E. McWhinney, in Judicial Review, 4th ed. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1969)
at 238 refers to the “dynamic process of legal evolution” which keeps pace with society.
13M. Shapiro, “Political Jurisprudence”, (1964) 52 Ky L.J. 294.
14See for example Sommersett’s Case (1772), Lofft (Easter Term, 3 Geo. 3) 1, 98 E.R. 499,
where Lord Mansfield rejected a slave-owner’s claim for the return of his slave on the grounds
that slavery was repugnant to English ideas. See also R. Hiers, “Normative Analysis in Judicial
Determinations of Public Policy” (1985) 3 J. Law and Religion 77.
15M.S. McDougal, The Application of Constitutive Prescriptions (New York: Association of
16Hiers, supra, note 14 at 78.
17Winfield, supra, note 3 at 86.
18L. Hand, The Bill of Rights (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1958) at 70.
19The results-oriented concept of “discrimination” sprang full-panoplied from judicial fo-
the Bar of the City of New York, 1978).
reheads in Griggs v. Duke Power, 401 U.S. 424 (1971).
1026
REVUE DE DROIT DE McGILL
[Vol. 34
sponsibility for damage caused by his fault”, 20 are they not making policy
judgments? Do not the areas of family law,21 especially custody and support,
sentencing, damages in tort,22 contractual interpretation,2 3 and the entire
history of common law24 represent processes whereby judges evaluated
which values or policies ought to be operational?
This is not mere reliance on semantics to distract the public from ob-
serving the judicial trespass on Parliament’s property. Considering policy is
a function of the court’s legitimate role in legal interpretation, a role nec-
essarily evaluative of policy. The Charte; therefore, has allowed public
policy to come out of the judicial closet and more openly to participate in
20This article, Article 1053 of the Civil Code of Lower Canada, provides the only legislative
guidance for the development of the Quebec law of delict or quasi-delict (analogous to tort in
the common law).
21Consider the introduction, without benefit of statutory guidance, of concepts like joint
custody, constructive trusts, or legal representation for children. In Besant & Wood (1879), 12
Ch. 605 for example, a custody issue inspired the judge to observe, at 620, that it was “a branch
of law which depends upon what is commonly called ‘public policy”‘, which in turn was “a
matter of individual opinion, because what one man, or one judge, and … one woman …
might think against public policy, another might think altogether excellent public policy.” In
this case a mother lost custody because of the embarrassment she was causing her husband in
using her married name to publish articles on “The Rights of Women”.
22Rylands v. Fletcher (1868), 3 L.R.H.L. 330, 19 L.T. 220; Rookes v. Barnard, supra, note 4;
Overseas Tankship v. Morts Dock & Engineering Co., (The Wagon Mound); Overseas Tankship
v. Miller Steamship Co. Pty, (Wagon Mound 2), [1961] A.C. 388; [1967] 1 A.C. 617; and
M’Alister (Donoghue) v. Stevenson, [1932] A.C. 562. See also P.S. Atiyah, “From Principles to
Pragmatism: Changes in the Function of the Judicial Process and the Law” (1980) 65 Iowa L.
Rev. 1249 at 1254 and B.S. Markesinis, “Policy Factors and the Law of Tort” in D. Mendes
da Costa, ed., The Cambridge Lectures (Toronto: Butterworths, 1981) at 199.
23See Davies v. Davies (1887), 36 Ch.D. 359, dealing with covenants in restraint of trade.
The Court at 364 noted that the “doctrine on this subject is founded on ‘public policy”‘, and
at 365 said, “it was considered public policy to assist England to become a nation of traders.”
24J. Stone, Precedent and Law: Dynamics of Commom Law Growth (Sydney: Butterworths,
1985) at 31. “The common law is an example par excellence of this flexible choicemaking
process”. See also, ibid. at 112; and J. Bell, “Three Models of the Judicial Function” in Dhavan,
Sudarshan & Kharshid, supra note 5 at 57. Lord Devlin in “Judges and Lawmakers” (1976)
39 Mod. L. Rev. I at 13, feels that Lord Halsbury’s prohibition against self-reversal, which
lasted from 1898 to 1966, prevented the House of Lords from moving with the times and was
“utterly antagonistic to the spirit of the common law”.
1989]
NOTES
1027
a policy partnership it has in reality been a part of for centuries. 25
Moreover, I do not think the neutrality ofjudges is at risk, partly because
it may be that true neutrality is a myth,26 and partly because I am not sure
what neutrality really means. The usual antonyms in a judicial context for
neutral are conservative and liberal. But what, for example, is supposed to
be the liberal view of in vitro fertilization, the conservative one of separate
school funding, or the progressive one of Wisconsin v. Yoder?27 We must
define more clearly what we are talking about and move away from the
unproductive exercise of “label-pasting”. 28
Neutrality and impartiality are the words most often used to describe
the primary virtue a judicial temperament should reflect. The importance
of the virtue is obvious –
the entire purpose of judicial and quasi-judicial
adjudication is to provide a peaceful and civilized method of dispute res-
olution where the law29 or the application of certain facts to it,30 as between
individuals or as between individuals and the state, is in dispute. In this
role, it is fundamental that the people who decide the outcome are free from
inappropriate or undue influence, independent in fact and appearance, and
intellectually willing and able to hear the evidence and arguments with an
open mind. If this is what neutral or impartial means, then all adjudicators
should be it.
But neutrality and impartiality do not and cannot mean that the judge
has no prior conceptions, opinions or sensibilities about society’s values. It
only means that those pre-conceptions ought not close his or her mind to
the evidence and arguments presented. All law is about values, 31 values are
about public policy, and public policy and laws are about morality.32 We
cannot pretend that judges are prohibited from being influenced by them,
25For a slightly different approach, see W.R. Lederman, “Democratic Parliaments, Inde-
pendent Courts and the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms” (1986) 11 Queens L.J. I
at 24, where it is argued that the Charter has changed the equilibrium point between the main
functions of the legislature (i.e. law-making) and the courts (i.e. law application). It is never-
theless implied that each has had a part in performing the function of the other before the
advent of the Charter. Only the balance has been altered. In any case, Lederman asserts that
the “courts and legislatures are partners and not rivals” in the delivery of justice under the
Rule of Law.
26A.S. Miller & R.E Howell, “The Myth of Neutrality in Constitutional Adjudication” in
L.W. Levy, ed., Judicial Review and the Supreme Court (New York: Harper and Row, 1967)
at 198.
27406 U.S. 205 (1972).
28Hiers, supra, note 14 at 82.
29Atiyah, supra, note 22 at 1249; Devlin, supra, note 24 at 3.
30Stone, supra, note 24 at 110.
31R.W.M. Dias, Jurisprudence, 5th ed. (London: Butterworths, 1985) at 196.
32H.L.A. Hart, The Concept of Law (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1961).
1028
McGILL LAW JOURNAL
[Vol. 34
whether as “liberals” or “conservatives”. Antonin Scalia admits that it is
“foolish to deny the relevance of moral perceptions to law”; 33 Lon Fuller
talks about law’s “inner morality”; 34 Holmes implicitly ackowledges that
values are the inarticulate major premise of judicial reasoning; 35 and Em-
mett Hall explains every decision as a “court’s decision about how com-
peting interests and values ought to be reconciled”. 3 6 Lord MacMillan once
said that “in almost every case, … it would be possible to decide the issue
either way with reasonable legal justification”. 37 In the area of disputed law,
in other words, there is no right answer.38 The answer or interpretation we
choose, therefore, will be based to some extent on extra-legal premises like
values. 39
Judicial precedent is, of course, the major interpretive guide, but a judge
can always choose from among different rationes decidendi in any given
precedent 4. The outcome will depend on which ratio is selected. The same
is true for the principle of stare decisis. In stare decisis, we draw legal con-
clusions by analogy,41 not mimicry. Julius Stone has built an academic career
on demonstrating compellingly that law is full of indeterminate categories, 42
that the application of stare decisis is selective, and that all adjudicators
reflect in their decisions partly precedent, partly their experience 43 and partly
their own notions of justice.44
33A. Scalia, “Morality, Pragmatism and the Legal Order” (1986) 9 Harv. J. Law and Public
Policy 123 at 123.
34See L.L. Fuller, The Morality of Laiv (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1969) at
162, where Fuller equates the law’s inner morality with dignity: “Every departure from Laws
Inner Morality is an effront to man’s dignity as a responsible agent.”
35Lochner v. New York, 198 U.S. 45 at 74-76 (1905).
36E.M. Hall, “Law Reform and the Judiciary’s Role” (1972) 10 Osgoode Hall L.J. 399 at
405.
37Lord MacMillan, Law and Custom (Edinburgh: Thomas Nelson & Sons, 1949) at 48.
38Winfield, supra, note 3 at 88 observes that even in cases like Egerton v. Brownlow (1853),
4 H.L.C. 1, 10 E.R. 359, where public policy had to “fight for its life”, two of the judges may
agree that public policy was applicable, but they could still arrive at “opposite conclusions in
applying it”. More recently, see the range of interpretive possibilities evidenced by the different
courts in Chase v. R. (1984), 40 C.R. (3d) 282 interpreting “sexual assault” in the Criminal
Code, R.S.C. 1970, c. C-34; R.S.C. 1985, c. C-46.
39Stone, supra, note 24 at 29 and 109.
4Stone, supra, note 24 at 5.
41R. Cross, Precedent in English Law, 3rd ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977) at 24.
42Stone, supra, note 24 at 113.
43See also Holmes, supra, note I at 1.
44J. Stone, The Province and Function of Law (Sydney: Associated General Publications,
1946); Legal System and Lawyers’Reasonings (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1964); and
Precedent and Law: Dynamics of Common Law Growth, supra, note 24.
1989]
NOTES
1029
An American judge in 1929 went so far as to write an article entitled
“The Function of the ‘Hunch’ in Judicial Decision”. 45 This public acknowl-
edgement ofjudicial indebtedness to the role of instinct may be too cavalier,
but it is hard to quarrel with Cardozo when he says that judges do not stand
on “chill and distant heights” and that everyone, litigant or judge, is a
complex of instincts, emotions, habits and convictions. 46 In other words,
judges, like everyone else, receive information into intellectual baskets
whose shape is partially formed by life-experience, by legal knowledge, by
culture and by personal vision. Inevitably, the information tends to take
the shape of the cerebral basket, perhaps not determinatively but arguably
presumptively. There is, after all, a critical difference between an open mind
and an empty one. As Jerome Frank pointed out, “a mind containing no
preconceptions … would be that of an utterly emotionless human being”. 47
Absolute justice, to paraphrase Bentham, may be unattainable –
there
is no absolute right or wrong answer in many cases 48 – but we can certainly
attempt to reduce injustice by, among other things, acknowledging that
judges have operational intellectual, moral, cultural and social perceptions
which may guide, as opposed to dictate, their legal conclusions. 49 I consider
this observation axiomatic and in no way derogatory of the judicial function,
particularly when one appreciates that there are in any event, many theories
of the role of the judge. Chief Justice Marshall in Marbury v. Madison said
the duty of a judge is “to say what the law is”:. Devlin urged them to “to
do justice according to law”, not to make law. 51 Jaffe said the function of
the judge, at least in the minimum, is “the disinterested application of
known law”. 52 Mencken saw their role as being not to bring in the millenium,
but to keep the peace. 53 Lords Denning, Wilberfore and Diplock thought
judges should apply purposive analyses to statutory interpretation; 54 Vis-
count Simonds thought this teleological approach was a usurpation of the
legislative function. 55 And Herbert Hoover said the business of the courts
45J.C. Hutcheson, “The Judgment Intuitive: The Function of the ‘Hunch’ in Judicial De-
cision” (1927-28) 14 Cornell L.Q. 274.
46Cardozo, supra, note 1 at 167-8.
471n re: J.P Linahan, 138 E 2d 650 at 652 (1943).
48D. Pannick, “Judicial Discretion” in Dhavan, Sudarshan & Kharshid, supra, note 5 at 50.
49Lord Devlin, supra, note 24 at 3, argues that the “social service which the judge renders
to the community is the removal of a sense of injustice”.
505 U.S. 49 at 70, 1 Cranch 137 (1803).
51Devlin, supra, note 24 at 11.
52Jaffe, supra, note 6 at 13.
53Cited in S. Mosk, “The Common Law and the Judicial Decision-making Process” (1988)
11 Harvard J. of Law and Public Policy 35 at 41.
54See for example Lord Diplock’s comment in Jones v. R, [1972] A.C. 944 at 1005 where he
55Magor and St. Mellons R.D.C. v. Newport Corporation, [1952] A.C. 189.
seeks “to ascertain the social ends [the Act] was intended to achieve”.
1030
REVUE DE DROIT DE McGILL
[Vol. 34
is to look out for business.56 In my view, Stone’s theory is the most seductive:
judges do their duty by doing their utmost to make the best choice among
possible premises. 57
At heart, this is a debate characterized as either the difference between
legal positivists and legal realists, between black-letter lawyers and what
Dworkin calls instrumentalists, 58 or between judicial activism and judicial
restraint. The legal positivists, black-letter lawyers and those in favour of
restraint, are known for their literal or strict adherence to the language of
statutes or to stare decisis and tend to deny that there is any moral com-
ponent to decision-making. Their critics argue that judges cannot be “ven-
triloquial puppets” 59 to statutes and that stare decisis cannot realistically be
seen, like Rumpole’s wife, as emanating from one who must be obeyed.60
The legal realists, instrumentalists and activists feel courts are agents of
society and cannot or should not function oblivious to social realities or
the social consequences of their decisions. Their critics suggest that judges
are not accountable, have no objective insight into the mind of the reason-
able person, and therefore cannot permit their view of law to be determined
by a subjective policy perspective. Moreover, multi-varied and interlocking
questions –
are unfit for ad-
judication and best left to the legislative forum. Judicial activists like Den-
ning believe that judges, as policy partners, should fill in legislative gaps;
those like Devlin in favour of restraint feel judges may only interpret and
not create law.
those Fuller refers to as “polycentric 61 –
Essentially, the debate is between those who feel, like Cappelletti, that
in a modern democracy unaccountable people like judges ought not to over-
rule the majority will, 62 and those like Stone who argue that the judicial
function has always been, through the interpretative, evaluative process that
judging represents, either to advance or block certain values. 63 In nineteenth-
century England, for example, judges relying on a literal rule of interpre-
tation which they felt required them to glean the meaning of the statute
from the words alone, so routinely declawed social welfare and labour leg-
islation in England that the Prime Minister, Lord Salisbury, felt sufficiently
moved to rebuke Lord Halsbury with the warning: “The judicial salad re-
56See Hiers, supra, note 14 at 110.
57Stone, supra, note 24 at 9.
58R.A. Dworkin, “‘Natural’ Law Revisited” (1982) 34 U. Fla. L. Rev. 165 at 181.
59Winfield, supra, note 3 at 89.
60Hiers, supra, note 14 at 91.
61L.L. Fuller, “Adjudication and the Rule of Law” (1960) 54 Proceedings of the Am. Soc. of
62M. Cappelletti, Judicial Review in the Contemporary World (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill,
63Stone, supra, note 24 at 8.
1971) at 98.
Int’l L. 1 at 3.
1989]
NOTES
1031
quires both legal oil and political vinegar, but disastrous effects will follow
if due proportion is not observed”. 64 We tend not to think of black-letter
adjudicators as being activists, but their legal conclusions in this period were
extremely interventionist. 65 In refusing to give the statute a “liberal” con-
struction, these judges were being “activists” in creating conservative results.
Simple labels, in other words, are meaningless. It is, in the end, the result
that counts.
Nor are we even assisted by words like “progressive” or “traditional”
in defining judicial approaches. Lord Denning, for example, who expan-
sively developed the Mareva injunction, 66 is the same person who so re-
strictively interpreted labour legislation so as to prevent secondary
picketing.67 The same Privy Council which in 1929 chastized the Canadian
Supreme Court for so narrowly interpreting the word “persons” 68 such that
it excluded one of this country’s two official genders, in 1902 overruled the
Canadian Courts, and declared legal the B.C. Act depriving the franchise
to Chinese, Japanese and Indians. 69
II.
Since 1867, Canada has lived with the concept that the legislature,
although supreme, is itself subject to the Constitution. This was particularely
true with respect to the authority of respective legislatures according to the
division of powers. The Charter does not therefore introduce the novel
concept of Constitutional supremacy.70 What it does, is add the concept of
constitutionally entrenched human rights to the content of that supremacy.
The Charter is about human rights, not about judicial versus legislative
roles, nor about judicial activism versus restraint, nor about the politici-
zation of the judiciary. The Charter, introduced after all by the accountable
legislature, represents the willing subjugation by the legislature of its conduct
6Cited in G. Jones, “Should Judges be Politicians?: The English Experience” (1982) 57 Ind.
L.J. 211 at 213. Voices as ideologically disparate as Harold Laski, Jeremy Bentham and William
Gordon-Harrison, a distinguished parliamentary draftsman, blamed British “judicial conserv-
atism” for blocking social progress: See Jones, supra, at 215.
65The pre-New Deal Supreme Court in the United States was similarly accused of “activism”
for striking down industrial and social welfare legislation. It was only with the Warren Court
in the 1950s that the “activist” label came to be associated with “progressive” policy choices.
See the articles by E.V. Rostow and PA. Freund in Levy, supra, note 26.
66Mareva Compania Naviera SA v. International BulkCarriers SA, [1975] 2 Lloyd’s Rep. 509
(C.A.).
67Express Newspapers Ltd v. McShane, [1979] 1 W.L.R. 390; and Duport Steels Ltd v. Sirs,
[1980] 1 W.LR. 142. In both cases the House of Lords reversed Lord Denning.
68Edwards v. A.G. of Canada, [1930] A.C. 124 (PC.).
69Cunningham & A.G. for B.C. v. Tomey Homma & A-G.for Canada, [1903] A.C. 151 (RC.).
70Lederman, supra, note 25 at 1.
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to the scrutiny and supremacy of certain principles of human rights –
as
interpreted by the judiciary. The morality of any law is now subject to the
supreme morality of civil and human rights. The debate as to whether this
is an appropriate role for the judiciary was held, and resolved in favour of
the judiciary or, at the very least, in favour of the importance of declaring
the reach of human rights and the values they represent to be beyond simple
legislative grasp.
Judges have always reached legal conclusions based on their under-
standing of, sympathy, or antipathy for current social values. The Charter
brings us nothing new in this regard. The judge who in 1873 said “the
paramount destiny and mission of women are to fulfill the noble and benign
offices of wife and mother”; 71 the judge who in 1915 thought admitting
women to the legal profession would be a “manifest violation of the law of
… public decency”; 72 the judge who said in 1905 that fault-based support
laws were desirable because wives “ought to be preserved from imminent
temptation”; 73 the House of Lords who said in 1959 that privative clauses
ousting the jurisdiction of the courts were to be disregarded;74 the court that
said in 1975 that property rights take precedence over peaceful picketing; 75
the courts that said in 1949 that sanctity of the contract and restrictive
covenants took precedence over the rights of Jews to purchase property; 76
the court that said in 1939 that freedom of commerce took precedence over
the rights of blacks to be served beer;77 and the court that said in 1959 that
Duplessis had overstepped the boundaries of permissible political behav-
iour,78 were all invoking or articulating, long before the Charter, their view
of what public policy either required, prevented or permitted.
So what are we really talking about when we discuss judicial activism
versus restraint, the politicization or “Americanization” of the judiciary, or
related concerns? 79 We are really talking about whether we agree with a
71Bradwell v. Illinois (1873) 83 U.S. (16 Wall.) 130 at 141.
72Langstaffv. Bar of the Province of Quebec (1915), 47 S.C. 131 at 139 (C.A.) affirming (1915),
25 C.B.R. 11.
7aSquire v. Squire, [1905] P. 4 at 8.
74Anisminic Ltd v. Foreign Compensation Commission, [1969] 2 A.C. 147.
15Harrison v. Carswell, [1975] 2 S.C.R. 200, 62 D.L.R. (3d) 68, reversing Chief Justice Freed-
man of the Manitoba Court of Appeal whose balancing list yielded the opposite result, as did
Chief Justice Laskin’s in his dissent.
76Re Noble and Wolf (1949), 4 D.L.R. 375.
71Christie v. York, [1940] S.C.R. 139.
78Roncarelli v. Duplessis, [1959] S.C.R 121.
79A. De Tocqueville, in Democracy in America, trans. H.Reeve, rev’d H. Bowen, ed. P. Bradley
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1945) at 290 said: “Scarcely any political question arises in the
United States that is not resolved, sooner or later, into a judicial question.” See also the
discussion, ibid. at 103-109. But Devlin, supra, note 24 at 6, suggests that the American Supreme
Court, “like the vines of France is not for transplantation”.
1989]
NOTES
1033
court’s result and what to do about it if we do not. If we favour the court’s
result we tend to applaud the approach, whether it be called restrictive or
expansive. If our notion ofjustice is offended by the result, we chastise what
we consider either too narrow or too broad an interpretation, as being either
an abdication of the judicial role or an invasion of the legislative one. And
this leads us into the question of whether, since there is always someone
who disagrees with a court’s decision, it was wise to have the capacity of
correction removed from the legislature by the universality of the Charter
and by virtue of the fact that judges have always articulated public policy.
Is the public not entitled to indulge in some nervous anticipation now that
in the field of rights and freedoms the court’s role has changed from a
penultimate to an authoritative one?
This may be true, but considering that in the traditional triumvirate
division of legislative, executive and judicial branches, judges alone need
fear no political consequences for an unpopular decision, they may be best
suited to decide the kinds of controversial issues that Charter disputes
involve.
In response to the argument that it is antidemocratic for unaccountable
persons to impose their will on the majority, is the belief that there should
be an institution in society which can independently and fairly and without
fear of consequences safeguard against what Lord Scarman called “the mod-
em menace of unbridled majority power”. 80 Human rights essentially con-
cerns the protection of minority rights from arbitrary erosion or violation
by the majority. The legislature which relies on majority support, cannot
be expected routinely to risk political self-destruction by promulgating mi-
nority causes; on the other hand, the courts, who do not rely on any con-
stituency, risk nothing in protecting them. What body can better attenuate
the impact of majoritarian expectations when they may unfairly circum-
scribe minority ones, than one which does not depend for its survival on
an appeal to popularity with the majority?
In a country as heterogeneous as Canada, it is in any event an illusory
task to attempt to ascertain or define consensus; 81 but to the extent that this
task is necessary, it is one the legislature must undertake in deciding whether
to ignore, implement or redirect consensus statutorily. In interpreting human
rights, the consensus may not only be ineffable, insofar as it represents a
majority view, it also may also be irrelevant, involving as it may the pro-
tection of rights from the majority’s views. As Lord Scarman observed,
human rights may be so fundamental that civilized man cannot survive
80Scarman, supra, note 5 at 98.
81Bell, supra, note 24 at 62.
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without them,8 2 but they are “more conspicuous in the mouths of men than
in their practice”. 83 As concerned, therefore, as one might be about an
individual judge’s skill in this role of interpreting and allocating human
rights, institutionally there is no better guarantee that human rights will not
be unduly compromised than by entrusting their protection to the “unac-
countable” judiciary. The legislature has always, in any case, been subject
to the jurisdiction of the Constitution, and as Chief Justice Hughes once
boldly said, “the Constitution is what the judges say it is”.84 In Chief Justice
Dickson’s words, the “judiciary is the guardian of the constitution”.8 5
By pointing out that the Charter represents neither a new nor an un-
desirable variable into the judicial or political system, I do not mean to
minimize the difficulty of the challenge. Definitive judicial Constitutional
interpretation of human rights issues is certainly different in degree from
the responsibility for definitive judicial Constitutional interpretation of the
division of powers. Issues of language, education, religion, equality, expres-
sion, association or liberty involve the most complex of legal assessments.
They are core justice issues and will be affected by what judges read, know,
experience, believe, understand, and above all, value. They are also su-
premely policy-oriented issues and require rigour in the acquisition and
application not only of knowledge, but of greater empathy as well.
III.
The Charter has been like a divining rod, attracting the attention of
the public to the microscope judges themselves routinely use to examine
their function and its appropriate execution. And members of the public,
perhaps somewhat surprised by the impact of the Charter and feeling jolted
from their historic inattention to the policy aspect of the judicial process,
are beginning to put the role and composition of the judiciary on the de-
fensive through persistent questioning and demands for accountability.8 6
82Scarman, supra, note 5 at 98.
83Ibid.
84Ibid. at 96.
85Hunter v. Southam, [1984] 2 S.C.R. 145 at 155.
86Gareth Jones, supra, note 65, advocating an entrenched Bill of Rights for England, none-
theless sees the main problem as being the judges: “[T]he English barrister, from whose ranks
judges are chosen, is a professional, an expert in black-letter law, drawn … from the middle
classes, apolitical, conservative and traditionalist. Not every supporter of a Bill of Rights will
find that picture a comforting prospect.” On the other hand, at 233, he observes that the “lawyer
in the United States has always played a different, and more varied, role in society; floating
in and out of law schools, Wall Street, and the Administration, he brings to constitutional
adjudication a breadth of experience and … a vision which a professional lawyer can never
enjoy.” His words are gently echoed by Lord Devlin in his acknowledgment that judges “like
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This in turn has come as somewhat of a surprise to the judiciary who, on
the whole, had assumed that the Charter represented a more public version
of a role they had always undertaken to the best of their ability.8 7 Everyone,
in short, has become sensitized, and the exercise has been a healthy one.
The Charter has raised public consciousness about a number of things: who
the judges are and the importance of what they do; political consciousness
about territoriality, the policy partnership and the limits it imposes; and
judicial self-consciousness about publicly declaring that the Emperor has
no clothes.
The analysis of proper roles and casting will be an ongoing one. But
whatever history judges to be its ultimate impact, the Charters high road
over the public interest is certain to be a well-travelled one. It is a journey
the judges, with their suitcases full of books and policy, are making with
increasing ease and confidence. There have been no fatalities or serious
injuries to date either to their neutrality, independence or credibility. As
long as the task is clearly understood and undertaken, it need never be
otherwise.
The Charter’s odyssey is destined to enhance everyone’s understanding
of what the Judicial Play is all about and why it has enjoyed such a long
run. There will be some critical reviews, as there always have been, but
there will be glowing ones as well. As long as the play is performed honestly
and with respect for the pluralistic audience, then the public and public
policy, the judiciary and the judiciary’s role, will be history’s fortunate
beneficiaries.
any other body of elderly men who have lived on the whole unadventurous lives, tend to be
old-fashioned in their ideas. This is a fact of nature which reformers must accept”. This, plus
his view that statutes are “not philosophical treatises and the philosophy behind them, if there
is one, is often half-baked” forms a large part of his reasoned resistance to “purposive” or
“creative” lawmaking: Supra, note 24 at 14.
87Stone observes that “the features common to constitutional review and to appellate de-
termination of questions of disputed law generally are more important than the differences”
in Stone, supra, note 24 at 8.
