The former justice of the Supreme Court of British Columbia, the British Columbia Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court of Canada died earlier this week.
He was, in my opinion, an underappreciated jurist. His majority decision in Dolphin Delivery (in fact, a unanimous decision, subject only to a few quibbles from Beetz and Wilson JJ) has attracted considerable attention from tort law scholars in recent years. And few judges in his time ever tried to breathe life into Diefenbaker's Bill of Rights - as he did in his dissent at the Court of Appeal in R. v. Miller and Cockriell - for which he was later criticized (ironically, given the contrasting reputations of all the judges involved) by both Laskin CJ and Dickson J. (in R. v. Miller).
Apparently, Trudeau appointed him to the SCC on the strength of Miller. He then turned out to be the most conisent pole of opposition to Dickson and Wilson's left-liberal conception of the Charter.
(Of course, we in Canada do not have unseemly ideological reasons for appointing people to the SCC, unlike a certain country I could name.)
Posted by: Gareth Morley | June 18, 2009 at 11:21 AM