Lots of confusion, following #SCC's decision in Frank, about where long-term expatriates will be voting, and whether they can just pick any riding they like. The answer is already in the Canada Elections Act, s 223(1)(e). 1/n
This provision already dictates where short-term expats, Canadian diplomats and soldiers and members of their families, and some others vote. There's zero evidence of it having caused problems. 2/3
I see some tired canards about originalism being trotted out again―by people who don't seem to have read any originalist scholarship published in the last 15, or even 25, years or spoken to anyone who has. These arguments are older than I am, but here's a response. A thread. 1/
Here's @rolandparis saying originalism is uniquely American, and single-mindedly partisan:
. Neither is true. (Btw, even if originalism were somehow American, that wouldn't make it wrong.) 2/
As @BenOliphant and I have shown at considerable length, Canadian cases, both those decided by the JCPC and those decided by the SCC, including under the Charter, rely on various forms of originalist reasoning: papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cf…. 3/
A quick thread on this, in response to people saying that a right to bear arms is the product of the American rebellion against Britain and alien to the British an Canadian traditions. Sorry, but you are just wrong. 1/
Let's start with Blackstone, who says that the right to have arms for self-defence is a natural right of the subject. (Source: oll.libertyfund.org/titles/2140#Bl…) Of course, this right is subject to legal regulation, like all rights, but that doesn't make it not a right.
Next, let's look at the Bill of Rights 1688, to which Blackstone refers. (Source: legislation.govt.nz/act/imperial/1….) This qualifies the natural right in the anti-Catholic and classist way of the Glorious Revolution, but preserves it for the majority of the subjects. 3/
ICYMI: @MarkPMancini and I respond to bad faith attacks on a scholar. The constant distortion of other people's statements, even hyperbolic or poorly articulated ones, for partisan point-scoring and outrage needs to stop. doubleaspect.blog/2020/09/21/of-…
Also ICYMI, just last week I wrote about a similar case with the opposite partisan valence: doubleaspect.blog/2020/09/15/con…. This isn't just a problem when the other side does it. Your side does it too, and that's just as wrong.
And please spare me the tone-policing. A world in which only moderate, caveated, "professional" sentiments can be expressed, a world from which cantankerousness and hyperbole are banished would be hell.
A couple of quibbles with @Justin_Ling: (1) the ding on free speech advocates for ignoring this issue may be fair, but I wonder how much of a priority for prison advocates it is either. It's a real blind spot, and it deserves better than point-scoring.
And (2), I'd have liked to see a bit more of a discussion about practicalities. Even prisoners seem to accept need for monitoring communications. But can this be done well and at a manageable cost? Rights have costs, sure, but still.
Not going to respond to individual tweets, but here's a thread on @RunnymedeSoc, @CDNConstFound and demands for "transparency" about its funding sources. NB: These are my own thoughts. I obviously don't speak for Runnymede or the CCF.
People claim that they need to know where Runnymede's and the CCF's money comes from, because that supposedly would help them form a view of these organisations' activities. I think this is rubbish. 2/
All Runnymede events are advertised. They are public. They are free to attend, except for the annual conference. Many are recorded (and more should be). All the panels at the annual conference are recorded. 3/
This is insightful (and occasionally delightful: the bar exam as a "tabbed scavenger hunt"―chapeau!). The problem in legal academia though is ideological perversion of the (sound) idea of teaching the law's context, and its destruction of black letter law. 1/
Granted, law exists in context and that context can enrich legal education, help lawyers develop legal arguments, and put their particular talents to better use for society as a whole. But what context are we talking about? 2/
For too much of the academy, including it would seem my alma mater, whose job advert prompted yesterday's discussion, the only context worth studying is that which is described by various left-wing (especially "critical") theories. 3/