Rights, 'Dialogue' and Democratic Objections to Judicial Review

Abstract

Since its inception the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms has been criticised as undemocratic. It gave a small coterie of politically unaccountable judges the power to override the policy preferences of the people’s representatives. What’s more, the justification for this rested on the vagaries of rights, about which even the converted cannot reach agreement. Granted: parliamentary politics are not perfect. But, as John Ely famously argued, ‘we may grant until we're blue in the face that legislatures aren't wholly democratic, but that isn't going to make courts more democratic than legislatures.’ Peter Hogg and Allison Bushell have recently responded that this majoritarian objection to judicial review has been exaggerated – at least in the context of Canadian democracy. They claim that an empirical study of Charter cases and their legislative sequels falsifies the belief that the Supreme Court inevitably has the last word on rights. Judicial review is not a veto over politics but the beginning of a ‘dialogue’ about rights between courts and legislatures.

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