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Envisaging Constitutional Space For Aboriginal Governments, Kent Mcneil

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When the Supreme Court decided Sparrow, it could have interpreted s. 35 of the Constitution to give Aboriginal peoples absolute power over Aboriginal and treaty rights, a power which neither Parliament nor the Provinces could trump. Instead, the Court interpreted s. 35 to mean that Parliament could still infringe Aboriginal rights if the infringement could be justified by a strict test. Professor McNeil suggests that this interpretation does not originate in the constitutional text so much as in the British constitutional concepts of Parliamentary sovereignty and the rule of law. He argues that the Court maintained Parliament's power to regulate …