Rethinking the Constitution
Perspectives on Canadian Constitutional Reform, Interpretation and Theory
Published in October 1996
Book
Paperback/Softback
316 pages
978-0-19-541178-2 (ISBN)
Description
The interpretive enterprise of Charter review, and the symbolic politics it has generated have had consequences far beyond the purview of Canadian courts and the parties, to constitutional litigation. The problems that plagued constitutional reform in the late 1980's and early 1990's, and that resulted in the demise of the Charlottetown Accord as well as of the federal Progressive Conservative Party itself, seemed intimately related to the politics of judicial review. Was there a common thread linking the problems of Canadian constitutional reform, interpretation and theory? The contributors to this book believe that there was, and the essays throughout it addresses these themes with a view of rethinking them in the context of Canadian liberal constitutionalism.
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Content
Introduction: The Necessity of Rethinking the Constitution; PART I: CONSTITUTIONAL REFORM; 1. A Lament for British North America; 2. Trudeau's Moral Vision; 3. On the Virtues of a Limited Constitution: Why Canadians Were Correct to Reject the Charlottetown Accord; PART II: CONSTITUTIONAL INTERPRETATION; 4. The Supreme Court as the Vanguard of the Intelligentsia: The Charter Movement as Postmaterialist Politics; 5. The Language of Rights and the Crisis of the Liberal Imagination; 6. Rights and Wrongs in the Canadian Charter; 7. Strange Brew: Tocqueville, Rights and the Technology of Equality; 8. What's the Evidence?; 9. Disclosure After Stinchcombe; 10. Penumbras for the People: Placing Judicial Supremacy Under Popular Control; PART III: CONSTITUTIONAL THEORY; 11. Theoretical Perspectives on Constitutional Reform in Canada; 12. "Political Correctness" and the Constitution: Nature and Convention Re-examined; 13. Reconstructing Democracy: Orthodoxy and Research in Law and Social Science