Important Articles Dropped From Print

Here are a couple of links to interesting pieces that editors (in their infinite wisdom) decided didn’t need to appear in the print versions of either the Globe and Mail or Canadian Lawyer.

Martha McCarthy was asked to comment on the five years that have elapsed since the Ontario Court of Appeal’s Halpern decision.

Philip Slayton talks about how little we actually know about the judges of the Supreme Court of Canada. He observed from a conversation in a Yaletown bar that it was easier for two Canadian lawyers to list members of the U.S. Supreme Court than those of our very own highest court. Philip decided to conduct a modest experiment to pick a female justice of the SCC and see what one could easily find out about her from the public record. The piece shows how far we have to go.

Martha ends her piece thus:

When we argued the case before the Ontario Court of Appeal, then-chief justice Roy McMurtry interrupted my co-counsel, and said something like, “You are asking us to go further than any other country has gone to date, aren’t you?” Joanna [Radbord] stood back from the lectern. She paused, and took a deep breath. I began scribbling answers for her. She didn’t need them. The room was still. She simply said, “Yes, Chief Justice. And that’s why I’m proud to be a Canadian.”

Today, five years later, as the judgment continues to change lives here and internationally, I simply say: Indeed. How proud we all should be that the Canadian vision of equality and freedom has life and meaning. And wings.