Posted on 01/03/2004 12:36:30 PM PST by freeforall
University of Western Ontario and well-known among lawyers as one of the most prominent legal commentators in Canada. Everyone who still appreciates our national heritage of freedom under law should ponder his latest book, aptly titled, The Most Dangerous Branch: How the Supreme Court of Canada Has Undermined Our Law and Our Democracy.
With this title, Martin ironically alludes to the assurance by Alexander Hamilton in the Federalist Papers on June 14, 1778, that the people had nothing to fear from the powers conferred on the judiciary by the proposed Constitution of the United States. He wrote: "The judiciary, from the nature of its functions, will always be the least dangerous to the political rights of the Constitution; because it will be least in a capacity to annoy or injure them."
In offering this assurance, Hamilton said he assumed that judges would respect the separation of legislative, executive and judicial powers in the Constitution. He quoted the warning by the Baron de Montesquieu in L'Esprit des Lois: "There is no liberty, if the power of judging be not separated from the legislative and executive powers."
Likewise, Sir William Blackstone warned in his magisterial 1765 Commentaries on the Laws of England that liberty, "cannot subsist long in any state, unless the administration of common justice be in some degree separated both from the legislative and also from the executive power. Were it joined with the legislative, the life, liberty, and property, of the subject would be in the hands of arbitrary judges, whose decisions would be then regulated only by their own opinions, and not by any fundamental principles of law; which, though legislators may depart from, yet judges are bound to observe."
Martin contends there is no longer any separation of legislative, executive and judicial powers in Canada. "The Supreme Court of Canada now exercises all three sorts of power," he charges, "and, on the basis of Montesquieu's analysis, must be regarded as despotic."
Canadian judges used to feel bound to set aside their personal opinions for the purpose of upholding the law as defined by statutes and judicial precedents. This is no longer the case. Under the pretence of upholding the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, our arbitrary judges have become a law unto themselves. They do not shrink from unilaterally amending even the most basic laws, such as the venerable legal rule that defined marriage as the voluntary union for life of one man and one woman.
"Every police constable is expected to act within the law and so are judges of the Supreme Court of Canada," Martin observes. "In practice, however, the judges behave as if they possess unlimited power and are not subject to any legal constraints. They amend the Constitution at will, rewriting it or inventing new principles, as if the Constitution were their private possession or plaything."
How has the Supreme Court of Canada gotten away with usurping legislative power? Part of the explanation is that most law professors do not object. Martin is one of only a few dissenters. He states: "Canadian university law professors have largely abandoned any pretence at being scholars and have turned themselves into propagandists -- propagandists for the ruling clique and the orthodoxy."
Likewise, federal ministers and most other lawyers, inside and outside of politics, relish the increased power that the Supreme Court of Canada has conferred on the legal profession. Most of these same lawyers and Liberal politicians also overtly or covertly share the politically correct, post-modernist and feminist ideology that animates most of our top judges.
What can be done to curb the judicial subversion of democracy and the rule of law in Canada? Absolutely nothing, Martin suggests, so long as most Canadians remain complacent.
"Absolute power, in Lord Acton's aphorism, corrupts absolutely and the Supreme Court is now absolutely corrupt," he concludes. "This distressing situation will exist only so long as Canadians continue to tolerate it, and Canadians are probably the most tolerant people on Earth. There is no virtue in tolerating the intolerable."
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Write Rory at The London Free Press, P.O. Box 2280, London, Ont. N6A 4G1 or fax 519-667-4528 or E-mail.
Copyright © The London Free Press 2001,2002,2003
Sounds a bit formiliar don't it?
That is sadly true. There is no limit to their usage of concocted alibis to oppress us now and justify themselves doing so. Hitler used similar concocted alibis to take jobs away from JEws, then to isolate them, then to put the yellow star, then to cart them to labor camps and then to gas them.
You haven't been keeping uptodate on what the illegal aliens are demanding from us have you?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.