http://www.slaw.ca/2009/11/08/honourable-frank-iacobucci-on-residential-schools/ Canada's online legal magazine Thu, 09 Feb 2012 23:12:15 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 http://www.slaw.ca/2009/11/08/honourable-frank-iacobucci-on-residential-schools/comment-page-1/#comment-708176 Professor Leslie Green Mon, 09 Nov 2009 02:42:52 +0000 http://www.slaw.ca/?p=13998#comment-708176 Sadly, former Justice Iacobucci does not appear realise that the brave words, 'It’s hard to compensate when a person loses liberty'--if meant seriously--have application in other contexts. To point out this elementary fact is not, obviously, to draw any moral equivalence between injustices: it is to insist only on what Herbert Wechsler rightly proclaimed, decades ago, should be an animating value of all constitutional adjudicaton: the development of general, neutral, principles. Former justice Iacobucci disowns Wechsler's view. He has agreed to chair an unprecedented and extraordinary 'review' of academic research at the Osgoode Hall Law School--something he would countenance in no other context. This is properly a matter only for the Senate of York University. The Osgoode Hall Faculty Association has protested his actions; the CAUT is conducting a review of his 'review'. It is indeed hard to compensate for a loss of liberty. But it is made a lot harder when former judges cannot even *notice* a loss of liberty when it is so close to home. If these are our liberty-experts, they do us--and themselves--no credit. Why should we trust them in fields more remote from their personal experience, if they cannot even get it right here? Sadly, former Justice Iacobucci does not appear realise that the brave words, 'It’s hard to compensate when a person loses liberty'–if meant seriously–have application in other contexts. To point out this elementary fact is not, obviously, to draw any moral equivalence between injustices: it is to insist only on what Herbert Wechsler rightly proclaimed, decades ago, should be an animating value of all constitutional adjudicaton: the development of general, neutral, principles. Former justice Iacobucci disowns Wechsler's view. He has agreed to chair an unprecedented and extraordinary 'review' of academic research at the Osgoode Hall Law School–something he would countenance in no other context. This is properly a matter only for the Senate of York University. The Osgoode Hall Faculty Association has protested his actions; the CAUT is conducting a review of his 'review'. It is indeed hard to compensate for a loss of liberty. But it is made a lot harder when former judges cannot even *notice* a loss of liberty when it is so close to home. If these are our liberty-experts, they do us–and themselves–no credit. Why should we trust them in fields more remote from their personal experience, if they cannot even get it right here?

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