Academic literature on the topic 'Juges – Canada – Attitudes'

Policy convergence theory suggests that political leaders of societies will often emulate policy solutions that work in other settings. Yet political leaders can also reject policy alternatives, leading to policy divergence. This study explores the extent to which policy convergence (and/or divergence) takes place in the legal setting of citation practices by the Supreme Court of Canada. The authors examine the Court's practice of citing authorities from other countries, particularly the United States. The findings echo earlier works that have found increasing citation of US case law since the adoption of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms in 1982. The justices of the Canadian Supreme Court continue to devote considerable attention to the legal doctrines of other countries' courts, particularly when they are confronted with Charter disputes. Thus, convergence theory gets some qualified support when applied to the Canadian Supreme Court's citation practices. The authors provide several complementary explanations for this evidence of policy emulation, suggesting that it stems from the individual attitudes of justices, from the litigation strategies pursued by groups and from broader societal values that the justices adhere to in their rulings. As such, foreign citation patterns of justices on the Supreme Court of Canada should not only be of interest to public law scholars, but to political scientists generally.La théorie sur la convergence des politiques soutient que les dirigeants des sociétés imitent souvent les solutions politiques qui ont fait leur preuve dans d'autres contextes. Les dirigeants peuvent également, cependant, rejeter les alternatives politiques menant à des divergences. Cette étude examine la portée de la convergence (ou des divergences) des politiques dans le cadre des pratiques de citation de la Cour suprême du Canada, lorsque celles-ci concernent les autorités de d'autres pays, les États-Unis en particulier. Ses conclusions rejoignent celles de travaux antérieurs qui ont constaté une augmentation des citations des lois américaines depuis l'adoption de la Charte canadienne des droits et libertés, en l982. Les juges de la Cour Suprême du Canada continuent d'accorder une attention importante aux doctrines légales des cours des autres pays, en particulier lorsqu'ils sont confrontés à des contestations de la Charte. Donc la théorie de la convergence est confirmée dans une certaine mesure par les pratiques de citation de la Cour suprême du Canada. L'article fournit plusieurs explications complémentaires de cette politique d'imitation, suggérant qu'elle origine des attitudes individuelles des juges, des stratégies de contestation utilisées par les groupes et, plus largement, des valeurs sociétales auxquelles se référent les juges dans leurs décisions. Par conséquent, les patterns de citation des jurisprudences étrangères de la Cour suprême du Canada devraient intéressé, non seulement les chercheurs en droit public, mais les spécialistes de la science politique en général.

RésuméMESURE DE LA DELINQUANCE AU CANADA« Mesure de la delinquance au Canada > presente les resultats definitifs d'une replique methodologique de l'etude de T. Sellin et M.E. Wolfgang qui ont valide, il y a quelques annees, un indice de la criminalite pour les Etats-Unis. Le but de la presente recherche vise a mettre au point un indice semblable pour le Canada.Le Bureau federal de la statistique est responsable de la compilation des statistiques criminelles canadiennes. Ces statistiques sont basees sur les rapports annuels des differents corps de police du Canada et la classification des crimes est semblable, dans l'ensemble, au systeme americain communement appele Uniform Crime Reporting.Ce systeme ne tient pas compte, toutefois, de la gravite relative des differentes violations de la loi. Cette carence biaise toute analyse de l'etendue et de la nature de la criminalite dans le temps et dans l'espace. C'est ce qui determina Sellin et Wolfgang, ainsi que les auteurs de la presente etude, a y remedier.L'objectif principal de la recherche est la quantification des elements qualitatifs inherents aux evenements criminels. Aux Etats-Unis, un systeme pondere, fruit de l'analyse des attitudes caracterisant des echantillons d'etudiants universitaires, de policiers et de juges de la Cour juvenile, servit a cette fin.La strategie de la presente etude repose sur un « modele de replique minimum ». Ce modele, legitime par la validite des resultats, des interpretations et des conclusions de la recherche de Sellin et Wolfgang, reprend le dernier stade — qui est aussi le plus essentiel — de l'etude originale. Quatorze versions de delits criminels sont alors retenues afin de developper l'indice final.Les postulats de base qui sous-tendent cet indice sont les suivants:1 ) La mesure de la criminalite et de la delinquance juvenile doit etre fondee sur une echelle de gravite qui reflete les sentiments de la communaute sur la gravite relative des differents delits criminels.2) L'indice doit etre elabore a partir de renseignements detailles, tires des rapports de police et non a partir des etiquettes legales qui sont apposees aux evenements criminels.3) En ce qui concerne la delinquance juvenile: a) les delits commis par les jeunes delinquants le sont independamment du type de cours ou de procedes qui menent a leur jugement; b) l'indice ne doit tenir compte que des violations qui seraient considerees comme criminelles si ces jeunes delinquants etaient des adultes.4) L'indice doit etre fonde sur les delits criminels qui sont de nature a amener rapidement les victimes ou leurs proches a rapporter lesdits evenements a la police.5) L'indice doit etre fonde sur les delits qui sont rapportes d'une facon un tant soit peu constante et qui causent un prejudice explicite aux membres de la communaute, tels que les blessures corporelles, le vol et la perte des biens ou les dommages a la propriete. L'indice exclut: a) les delits impliquant le consentement de la victime et la conspiration; b) les delits dont la decouverte depend surtout de l'activite de la police; c) les delits qui ne sont que des attentats ne produisant aucun dommage corporel ou materiel.6) L'unite de compilation doit etre l'« evenement » pris dans sa totalite et non un seul element, si important soit-il.7) Une echelle de proportions (ratio) est la plus appropriee, particulierement a cause de la qualite cumulative d'une telle echelle.8) Des variables supposement importantes — telles que le type d'armes ou la legalite de la presence du coupable .— n'accroissent pas la gravite des delits et n'entrent donc pas en ligne de compte.L'echantillon canadien est de 2 738 sujets. Des etudiants, des juges, des policiers et des employes de bureau ont participe a cette etude.Les methodes et les techniques employees furent empruntees au domaine de la psychophysique, particulierement aux travaux de S.S. Stevens, de l'Universite de Harvard. Ces travaux etablissent une relation mathematique entre « stimulus » et « perception ».Chaque sujet recut les quatorze descriptions de delits criminels auxquels il attacha des poids numeriques variant selon ses attitudes particulieres. Ces resultats numeriques furent compiles a l'aide de la moyenne geometrique et analyses par les methodes de correlation (r) et de regression (b).Les hypotheses majeures de Sellin et Wolfgang, sur la base de ces resultats, furent reformulees de la facon suivante:Expectative minimumSi les indices de gravite des delits tires de deux populations (sexe, culture, pays) sont confrontes, la relation qui existe entre eux doit etre une fonction ayant la forme Y = aXb (les points traces graphiquement sur papier log-log se placent sur une ligne droite). Il est evident que cette expectative ne s'applique qu'aux delits choisis par Sellin et Wolfgang.Expectative maximumSi les indices de gravite des delits tires d'un grand nombre de populations ou de sous-populations (specialement a l'interieur d'un pays) sont mis en rapport, la relation qui se forme entre eux est une fonction ayant la forme Y = aXb (les points traces graphiquement sur papier log-log se placent sur une ligne droite); de plus, a mesure que le nombre de groupes dans l'echantillon augmente, la pente tend vers 1. De nouveau, ceci ne s'applique qu'aux delits choisis.Les resultats de cette etude confirment la fiabilite et la stabilite de l'indice de Sellin et Wolfgang. Ils permettent l'elaboration d'un indice canadien de gravite des delits qui constitue une mesure raffinee de la criminalite et de la delinquance juvenile, capable de remplacer avantageusement celle utilisee presentement au Canada.

The author deals with the question of the Supreme Court's entire jurisdiction over all subject matters. Is the amount of work, especially with the arrival of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, too much for the Court to handle ? He also questions the number of judges, their nomination process, the inequity of their remuneration and the problems inherent in a dual judicial system. The thrust of the article is that it is not the Supreme Court that is in need of reform, but rather the attitude that the government has towards it.

ABSTRACTThe Department of Emergency Medicine at Queen's University developed, implemented, and evaluated an interprofessional simulation-based competition called the Simulation Olympics with the purpose of encouraging health care providers to practice resuscitation skills and foster strong team-based attitudes. Eleven teams (N= 45) participated in the competition. Teams completed three standardized resuscitation scenarios in a high-fidelity simulation laboratory with teams composed of nurses, respiratory therapists, and undergraduate and postgraduate medical trainees. Trained standardized actors and a dedicated technician were used for all scenarios. Judges evaluated team performance using standardized assessment tools. All participants (100%) completed an anonymous two-page questionnaire prior to the competition assessing baseline characteristics and evaluating participant attitudes, motivation, and barriers to participation. The majority of participants (71%) completed an evaluation form following the event focusing on highlights, barriers to participation, and desired future directions. Evaluations were uniformly positive in short-answer feedback and attitudinal scoring measures. To our knowledge, the Simulation Olympics competition is the first of its kind in Canada to be offered at an academic teaching hospital.

In this paper, the author explores the question of whether formalizing the Canadian law of reception would lead to an increase in the domestic influence of international law. He begins by briefly recounting Canada’s decidedly informal law of reception and, through a review of academic commentary, suggests a relationship between informality and international law’s historically weak influence on judicial reasoning. Tying this commentary to seemingly sociological perspectives on globalization, judges’ international legal personality and the changing forms and functions of law, he forwards the hypothesis that judges’ subjective recognition of the authority of international law can be engendered, modified and/or regulated through the procedural use of more familiar domestic legal authority. This hypothesis is then tested through a comparative analysis of the impact which international law has had in South Africa, where an historically informal law of reception akin to Canada’s has been replaced with clear and robust constitutional rules obligating the judiciary to consider and use international law. The author observes that there are no perceptible differences in the two jurisdictions; in neither country does international law exert a significant, regular or predictable impact on judicial reasoning. He concludes, modestly, that there is no available evidence to support the belief that Canadian judicial practice would change if the Canadian law of reception were formalized. He further concludes, less modestly, that this has significant implications for underlying legal theory and, in particular, that theories concerning how the domestic impact of international law can be augmented, though seemingly sociological, are decidedly positivist in orientation. Given that judges’ subjective attitudes towards international law are not perceptibly linked to domestic legal procedures, international, comparative and transnational legal theorists must, either, find evidence to demonstrate this link, or, recognize that their theoretical allegiances are divided between two, inconsistent traditions: legal positivism and the sociology of law.

AbstractThis is a survey study of 43 judges from the British House of Lords, the Caribbean Court of Justice, the High Court of Australia, the Constitutional Court of South Africa, and the Supreme Courts of Ireland, India, Israel, Canada, New Zealand and the United States on the use of foreign law in constitutional rights cases. We find that the conception of apex judges citing foreign law as a source of persuasive authority (associated with Anne-Marie Slaughter, Vicki Jackson and Chris McCrudden) is of limited application. Citational opportunism and the aspiration to membership of an emerging international ‘guild’ appear to be equally important strands in judicial attitudes towards foreign law. We argue that their presence is at odds with Ronald Dworkin's theory of legal objectivity, and is revealed in a manner meeting his own methodological standard for attitudinal research.Wordsworth's words, written about the French Revolution, will, I hope, still ring true: Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive. But to be young was very heaven.– Justice Stephen Breyer's assessment of ‘the global legal enterprise now upon us’ before the American Society of International Law (2003)

The history of medical malpractice in Canada has received little attention from legal or medical historians. Through a contextualized study of a Nova Scotia case from the 1930s, Davis v. Colchester County Hospital, this article demonstrates how changes in technology and surgical procedures both created situations that spurred malpractice claims, and made it difficult for injured patients to prove medical negligence. In addition, developments in tort law concerning the liability of hospitals, and the doctors and nurses working within them, provided medical defendants ample opportunity to avoid legal liability, even in cases in which the existence of negligent treatment was obvious. The testimony at trial, the legal strategies utilized by the lawyers, and the judicial rulings also shed light on attitudes of the medical profession toward personal responsibility and ethics, and demonstrates how the interests of patients were weighed against those of medical institutions and professionals by lawyers and judges.

This paper applies an emerging method of research, “legal praxeology,” to the study of decisions concerning intoxication as a defense to criminal charges. This method is based on the observation that judges import their own values, attitudes and beliefs into their decisions in identifiable ways. We observed this phenomenon in 40 cases and deduced that judicial views about the intoxication defense are organized around two major constructs that themselves are drawn from the substrate of judicial views concerning the basis of criminal liability in general. The resulting two-dimensional analytic framework was then applied to the leading Canadian case, R. v. Daviault [1994]3 SCR 63. We observe that majority and minority opinions of the Supreme Court in Daviault fall out along the dimensions extracted from the 40 cases, as does the text of the legislative amendment introduced in the wake of the decision (Bill C-72, now S.33.1 of the Criminal Code of Canada). In Daviault, the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms plays a significant role in challenging the judges of the Supreme Court to identify their fundamental values and beliefs. We conclude that the Charter is a benign catalyst to the development of legal praxeology in that it calls for a more declarative, and thus public, jurisprudence. Charter-assisted legal praxeology goes some way toward revealing the great social value tensions locked up in what at first appear to be purely legal doctrinal disputes concerning the scope and application of the intoxication defense.

In this paper, the author examines the role of international law on the development of Canada’s security certificate regime. On the one hand, international law has had a perceptible impact on judicial reasoning, contributing to judges’ increased willingness to recognize the rights of non-citizens named in certificates and to envision better ways of balancing national security and human rights. On the other hand, the judiciary’s attitudes towards international law as non-binding sources of insight akin to foreign law has reinforced disparities in levels of rights afforded by the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and those afforded by international human rights. Viewed skeptically, one might argue that the judiciary’s selective result-oriented use of international law and foreign law helped it spread a veneer of legality over an otherwise unaltered and discriminatory certificate regime. Reviewing Charkaoui I and II in international context, the author suggests an alternative account. He suggests that the judiciary’s use of international law and foreign law, although highly ambiguous and ambivalent, both was principled and has progressively brought named persons’ Charter rights more closely in step with their international human rights. Although the current balance between national security and human rights is imperfect, the way in which aspects of Canada’s certificate regime have been improved suggests that international law is a valuable resource for protecting the rights of non-citizens in Canada.

This chapter explains briefly the origins and development of the common law tradition in order to better understand the rise of judicial review in the seven common law countries discussed in this volume. The common law legal tradition is characterized historically, in public law, by limited, constitutional government and by forms of judicial review of the constitutionality of legislation. In private law, the common law tradition is characterized by judge-made case law, which is the primary source of the law, instead of a massive code being the primary source of the law. The common law tradition is also characterized by reliance on the institution of trial by jury. Judges, rather than scholars, are the key figures who are revered in the common law legal tradition, and this is one of the key things that distinguishes the common law legal tradition from the civil law legal tradition. The common law legal tradition emphasizes judicial power, which explains why it has led to judicial review in the countries studied in this volume. It is the prevailing legal tradition in the four countries with the oldest systems of judicial review of the constitutionality of legislation: the United States, Canada, Australia, and India. Thus, judicial review of the constitutionality of legislation in these four countries is very much shaped by common law attitudes about the roles of judges.