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Insights From Canada For American Constitutional Federalism, Stephen Ross

Stephen F Ross

The U.S. Supreme Court's decision in National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius, 132 S. Ct. 2566 (2012), has again focused widespread public attention on the Court as an arbiter of the balance of power between the federal government and the states. The topic of the proper role a nation's highest court in this respect has been important and controversial throughout not only American, but also Canadian history, raising questions of constitutional theory for a federalist republic: What justifies unelected judges interfering with the ordinary political process with regard to federalism questions? Can courts create judicially manageable doctrines to police …

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The Constitutional Priority Of The Charter, Brian Slattery

Brian Slattery

What rules determine the relative priority of the various Constitution Acts among themselves? In particular, how do the Constitution Act, 1982 and the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms stand relative to constitutional provisions enacted after 1982? To what extent do they have the capacity to control later amendments? Various answers might be given to this question. This paper looks first at an answer with strong initial appeal. This invokes a principle of sequential ordering, which maintains that the priority between constitutional enactments is determined simply by the temporal sequence in which they were enacted. While this approach admits that …

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The Independence Of Canada, Brian Slattery

Brian Slattery

Canada is in independent state and has been for many years. Its sovereign status has long been acknowledged by the international community and the courts. So the constitutional manoeuvres that culminated in the enactment of the Constitution Act, 1982, by the British Parliament, must strike any observer as a somewhat puzzling series of events. How can we explain the fact that a sovereign state should consider itself bound to employ the legislature of another sovereign state to secure for itself a new constitution? Underlying this question are a number of fundamental issues going to the foundations of the Canadian legal …

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Insights From Canada For American Constitutional Federalism, Stephen Ross

Stephen F Ross

The Constitutional Priority Of The Charter, Brian Slattery

Brian Slattery

The Independence Of Canada, Brian Slattery

Brian Slattery