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Leonid Sirota Profile picture
Leonid Sirota
@DoubleAspect
Legal academic, Associate Professor @UniRDG_Law. Mostly public law, dabble in jurisprudence; blogger, also mostly on (Canadian) public law.
Sep 29, 2020 • 14 tweets • 6 min read
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/
Sep 28, 2020 • 9 tweets • 3 min read
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.
Sep 21, 2020 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
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.
Aug 9, 2020 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
I'm late to this, but ICYMI, please read this piece by @Justin_Ling for @the_lineca. Prisoners losing no more rights than is necessary is an important principle, and it is being violated. theline.substack.com/p/justin-ling-… 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.
Jul 30, 2020 • 15 tweets • 3 min read
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/
Jul 29, 2020 • 8 tweets • 2 min read
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/
Jul 11, 2020 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
There is that ― the former Chief Justice keeps talking about a "21st century justice system", but never once says what that actually looks like. But there's more, too. There's the fact that she was the head of the judicial branch for 17 years, and a member of the Supreme Court for 10 years before that, and a Chief Justice of a provincial superior court for a spell before that, yet writes in a "truth to power" voice.
Jul 10, 2020 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
Justice Gorsuch's majority opinion in McGirt v Oklahoma is a masterful and ringing demonstration of how textualism and (statutory) originalism uphold the Rule of Law and thereby protect the rights of the weak and check the insolence of the strong. d2qwohl8lx5mh1.cloudfront.net/kKj4BdK6PajTt4… Image Justice Gorsuch's writing for a majority in which he is joined by his left-leaning colleagues also reminds us that textualism, originalism, and the Rule of Law have no partisan affiliation. They protect us all, regardless of our politics and policy preferences.
Jun 25, 2020 • 13 tweets • 2 min read
Big question. I'll start a thread with a few disjointed thoughts. The short answer: Journals are useless, but they indispensable due a academia's collective action problem. Journals as physical or electronic objects, i.e. platforms on which a few articles appear several time a year, are useless. Who reads *journals*? People read articles, which they find through databases or word-of-mouse; they don't find articles by browsing journals.
Jun 14, 2020 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
My latest, arguing that the "architecture" the #SCC entrenched in the Senate Reform Reference consists of constitutional conventions, which are now part of Canada's legal, not (only) political constitution―in a break with Diceyan orthodoxy the SCC once embraced. Among other things, this paper begins the project of working out the relationship between originalism and the unwritten components of the constitution of Canada, drawing on @lsolum's work.
Jun 12, 2020 • 9 tweets • 4 min read
So essay by David Dyzenhaus is being circulated and praised; a have couple of critical thoughts. Short thread. NB: Prof. Dyzenhaus is a Schmitt expert, and I'm so not. You should the essay for what he says about Schmitt, and you'll learn a lot. But. 1/ aeon.co/essays/carl-sc… Prof. Dyzenhaus says "the conservative Federalist Society" "venerate[s] the executive political office at the apex of the state hierarchy". This is a drive-by smear. @FedSoc isn't conservative; it takes no positions on issues. Its members are both conservative and libertarian. 2/
Jun 2, 2020 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
If you've read @Honickman's and my op-eds a few months ago, you know I think protest is no excuse for dispensing with the Rule of Law. But as Lon Fuller said, the Rule of Law means reciprocity between the government and the governed. This reciprocity is being ruptured. 1/ "For my friends, everything; for my enemies, the law" is a fascist slogan; I don't remember if it was Franco's or Mussolini's. A law that only applies to one side, one group, is worse than useless; it is oppression. 2/3
Jan 5, 2020 • 4 tweets • 7 min read
Now that the 12 Days of Christmas symposium is over, here's a short thread to collect all the posts, in case you want to catch up on any you've missed. Day 1, @DwightNewmanLaw: doubleaspect.blog/2019/12/25/day…
Day 2, @KerriFroc: doubleaspect.blog/2019/12/26/day…
Day 3, @EmmMacfarlane: doubleaspect.blog/2019/12/27/day…
Day 4, Jonathan Maryniuk: doubleaspect.blog/2019/12/28/day…
Dec 21, 2019 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
Also ICYMI, @MarkPMancini's post on the #SCC's first post-Vavilov case: doubleaspect.blog/2019/12/20/can…. As with Vavilov itself, I disagree with Mark. @MarkPMancini Now, @MarkPMancini is quite right that the majority applies Vavilov as it is meant to be applied and that Abella J in dissent does disguised correctness review, for all her howls about reasonableness in Vavilov.
Oct 20, 2019 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
Today seems like a good day to dig out my posts written four years ago about why there is no (moral) duty to vote. (Short thread with links.) First, gratitude to those who won the franchise or defended it does not translate into a requirement that we exercise this right: doubleaspect.blog/2015/07/18/deb….
Oct 9, 2019 • 5 tweets • 4 min read
More extra-judicial repetition of rubbish myths on constitutional interpretation, this time by Lady Hale, the president of the UK Supreme Court (here: supremecourt.uk/docs/speech-19…). Image As, for example, Prof. Miller (as he then was) has shown, the "living tree" metaphor did little work in the Edwards case papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cf…. (See also @BenOliphant and moi: ssrn.com/abstract=27492….)
Sep 16, 2019 • 6 tweets • 3 min read
A little thread: Corolyn Strom's has been heavily fined by her professional regulator for saying things other Canadians say all the time, but with more credibility. She was also told to write an essay confessing her wrongs! She bravely refused. cbc.ca/news/canada/sa… 1/ Ms. Strom's story is a reminder that the administrative state doesn't just consist of rainbows, unicorns, and expert labour arbitrators. It is also the meddling state, the carceral state and, as here, the censorious state. 2/
Aug 20, 2019 • 6 tweets • 3 min read
This is the heart of the issue, I think. Proponents of existing regulations on "third party" interventions in election campaigns will say "you can do anything provided you register"; but many "third parties" don't want to go through burdensome registration & intrusive reporting. Are they just being lazy & capricious? I don't think so. The $500 threshold is exceedingly low. In New Zealand, the threshold for registration is $13,200 (that's about C$11,000), and detailed reporting requirements kick in at $100,000.
Aug 9, 2019 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Thread. (I don't quite agree with every point, but most.) In particular, I'm not sure it's the CJ's role to generate consensus. Collegiality, yes, but there can be collegial disagreement. But perhaps I am simply thinking the previous CJ overdid the consensus thing.
Apr 17, 2019 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
This canard would be funny if it weren't so sad that lawyers spreading it can't even be bothered to read their own by-laws. Section 22 of By-Law 4 says that the oath to the Queen is option. In fact, it has been since the early 90s! Here's section 22. Clear enough, I should think. The oath of allegiance was made optional precisely of concerns about conscientious objections (especially, at time at least, of Aboriginal would-be lawyers). And this is quite right! Image
Mar 28, 2019 • 9 tweets • 4 min read
Short (?) thread on Québec's #Bill21, "An Act respecting the laicity of the State". (The bill is available here: assnat.qc.ca/en/travaux-par…. By the way, @AssnatQc, you shouldn't force people to download PDFs to read bills!) The problems start with the title. "Laicity" a calque, not an accurate translation, of "laïcité". It means something else in English (namely: "the status or influence of the laity", per the OED).