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3 - Appointment, discipline and removal of judges in Canada

from Part II

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 September 2011

H. P. Lee
Affiliation:
Monash University, Victoria
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Summary

I had not given much thought to judicial independence until I did a study for the Canadian Judicial Council in the mid-1990s on the subject. My report, A Place Apart: Judicial Independence and Accountability in Canada, examined a wide range of issues relating to judicial independence and accountability, including security of tenure, financial security, discipline, codes of conduct, administering the court system and appointments. Those topics were approached from a historical and comparative perspective. I will, of course, be drawing on that study, as well as several later articles, for this chapter on two important aspects of judicial independence: judicial selection and judicial conduct in Canada. First, some background.

What is the Canadian Judicial Council? The Council is composed of all the federally appointed chief justices and associate chief justices in Canada – at present thirty-nine in total – and was chaired at the time of my study by Chief Justice Antonio Lamer. The Council, which had been established by legislation in 1971 by the then Minister of Justice, John Turner, grew out of the annual conference of federal chief justices that John Edwards of the University of Toronto’s Centre of Criminology had established in 1964. The Council would, as was stated on second reading of the legislation, ‘provide a national forum for the judiciary in Canada, and . . . strive to bring about greater efficiency and uniformity in judicial services and to improve their quality’. It would also provide a new and better forum to investigate complaints against the federal judiciary, at the time handled by the Department of Justice, which could be followed by an ad hoc commission, such as the much criticized single-judge inquiry several years earlier into the conduct of Justice Leo Landreville.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2011

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References

Friedland, M. L.A Place Apart: Judicial Independence and Accountability in CanadaOttawa 1995Google Scholar
Deschênes, J.Masters in their Own House: A Study on the Independent Judicial Administration of the CourtsOttawaCanadian Judicial Council 1981Google Scholar
Friedland, M. L.My Life in Crime and Other Academic AdventuresOsgoode Society and University of Toronto Press 2007 383Google Scholar
Canadian Bar Association Task Force on Gender Equality in the Legal ProfessionTouchstones for Change: Equality, Diversity and AccountabilityOttawaCBA 1993Google Scholar
Morton, F. L.Judicial Appointments in Post-Charter Canada: A System in TransitionMalleson, K.Russell, P. HAppointing Judges in an Age of Judicial Power: Critical Perspectives from around the WorldUniversity of Toronto Press 2006 56Google Scholar
Dodek, A.Sossin, L.Judicial Independence in ContextTorontoIrwin Law 2010
Russell, P.The Judiciary in CanadaTorontoMcGraw-Hill Ryerson 1987 115Google Scholar
Willis, J.Methods of Appointing Judges – An Introduction 1966 3 Canadian Legal Studies216Google Scholar
Russell, P.Ziegel, J.Federal Judicial Appointments: An Appraisal of the First Mulroney Government’s Appointments and the New Judicial Advisory Committees 1991 41 University of Toronto Law Journal4CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Canadian Judicial CouncilEthical Principles for JudgesOttawa 1998Google Scholar
Inquiry Committee established to review the conduct of the Honourable Theodore MatlowReport of the Canadian Judicial Council to the Minister of JusticeOttawaCanadian Judicial Council 2008 33Google Scholar

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