Most Slaw readers will know that gavels simply aren’t part of the equipment of Canadian or British judges – however much they may feature in the popular iconography of the American judicial system.
Which meant that it seemed odd to see headlines like Gavel falls on Judge Cosgrove [1], by Tracey Tyler in the Toronto Star for April 1, (admittedly fixed in the electronic archive [2]) or Gavel Slams Harper on Khadr in the free Toronto newspapers for April 24.
It’s a continual myth, as comments in the Blogosphere show [3] and as Lloyd Duhaime’s online dictionary of Canadian law [4] shows. Justice Alvin Hamilton has even written a book on Aboriginal Justice entitled: A Feather Not a Gavel: Working Towards Aboriginal Justice (Winnipeg: Great Plains Publications, c. 2001). As one Canadian student tells us [5]:
A gavel is a hammer looking object that the judge uses for making the public quiet, a McGill journalist [6] adds a gavel to a story on a student who interns for a judge or a social worker in the GTA says: Parents Have Input Until The Gavel Comes Down [7]. Even Justice Frank Iacobucci had a gavel at the SCC [8] and the BCSC talks about gavel-to-gavel coverage in R. v. Pilarinos [9], (2001), 158 C.C.C. (3d) 1, (2001), 88 C.R.R. (2d) 33.