The Effect of Alcohol on the Canadian Constitution ... Seriously

2011 ◽  
Vol 57 (1) ◽  
pp. 189-209
Author(s):  
Morris J. Fish

Alcohol has exerted a staggering influence on the Canadian constitution. It was a prominent feature of daily life in the young Dominion, much to both the delight and chagrin of many. The temperance movement exerted its own influence on both the federal and provincial legislatures. Without “alcohol” as a head of power, the legislatures claimed control over this seeming, social evil sometimes under “Peace, Order and Good Government”, “criminal law”, or “Trade and Commerce”; at other times under “Property and Civil Rights”, “Local Matters”, and so forth. Court challenges abounded; the result was, in part, the judiciary’s failure to walk a straight line toward a clear division of powers between the federal and provincial governments. But the result was also many of the doctrines of division of powers that still form part of Canadian constitutional law. Beyond its impact on the division of powers, alcohol was also at the root of Canada’s most important decision on the rule of law: Roncarelli—a decision argued and won by the late F. R. Scott.

Author(s):  
Michael C. Dorf ◽  
Michael S. Chu

Lawyers played a key role in challenging the Trump administration’s Travel Ban on entry into the United States of nationals from various majority-Muslim nations. Responding to calls from nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), which were amplified by social media, lawyers responded to the Travel Ban’s chaotic rollout by providing assistance to foreign travelers at airports. Their efforts led to initial court victories, which in turn led the government to soften the Ban somewhat in two superseding executive actions. The lawyers’ work also contributed to the broader resistance to the Trump administration by dramatizing its bigotry, callousness, cruelty, and lawlessness. The efficacy of the lawyers’ resistance to the Travel Ban shows that, contrary to strong claims about the limits of court action, litigation can promote social change. General lessons about lawyer activism in ordinary times are difficult to draw, however, because of the extraordinary threat Trump poses to civil rights and the rule of law.


2001 ◽  
Vol 50 (4) ◽  
pp. 849-876 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Grossman

Section 4 of the [Immigration Ordinance 1971] effectively exiles the Ilois from the territory where they are belongers and forbids their return. But the ‘peace, order, and good government’ of any territory means nothing, surely, save by reference to the territory's population. They are to be governed, not removed. … These people are subjects of the Crown, in right of their British nationality as belongers in the Chagos Archipelago. As Chitty said in 1820, the Queen has an interest in all her subjects, who rightly look to the Crown—today, to the rule of law which is given in the Queen's name—for the security of their homeland within the Queen's dominions. But in this case they have been excluded from it. It has been done for high political reasons: good reasons, certainly, dictated by pressing considerations of military security. But they are not reasons which may reasonably be said to touch the peace, order and good government of [the British Indian Ocean Territory].1


2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 379-398
Author(s):  
David Parra Gómez

Democracy is an instrument at the service of a noble purpose: to ensure the freedom and equality of all citizens by guaranteeing the civil, political and social rights contained in constitutional texts. Among the great principles on which this instrument rests is the division of powers, which consists, substantially, in the fact that power is not concentrated, but that the various functions of the State are exercised by different bodies, which, moreover, control each other. Well, the increasingly aggressive interference of the Executive and, to a lesser extent, the Legislative in material spheres that should be reserved exclusively for the Judiciary, violates this principle and, for this reason, distorts the idea of democracy, an alarming trend that, for some time now, are observed in European Union countries such as Hungary, Poland and Spain. Preventing the alarming degradation of European democracy, of which these three countries are an example, requires not only more than necessary institutional reforms to ensure respect for these principles and prevent the arbitrariness of the public authorities, but also a media network and an education system that explains and promotes these values and principles, that is, one that makes citizens aware of and defend constitutionalism. Keywords: Rule of law; Democracy; Separation of powers; judicial independence; Europe.


2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (10) ◽  
pp. 53-62
Author(s):  
Shoxrukhkhon Saidov ◽  

This article describes the specifics of the law-making process conducted by the prosecutor's office. The purpose and principles of the prosecutor's office's participation in this process have been studied scientifically and theoretically. Taking into account the high relevance of ensuring legality in the law-making process, opinions were expressed about the need for adequate regulation and organization of solving this task by the prosecutor's office at the level of law and legality. The participation of the prosecutor's office in law-making activities contradicts the needs of the population, the protection of human and civil rights and freedoms, ensuring the rule of law, promoting the formation of a unified legal space and improving legislation, ensuring consistency legal instructions, systematization of legislation, scientifically based analysis are aimed at reducing the influence of bureaucratic interests and preventing the inclusion of factors that generate corruption in normative acts and their projects


2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 34-41
Author(s):  
I. A. Tretyak

The article examines the main elements of constitutional and conflict diagnostics, which is a system of consistently applied methods, legal principles and presumptions, aimed at obtaining information about the causes, content, consequences and methods of preventing and resolving a constitutional conflict. Constitutional and conflict diagnostics is theoretically justified by the author as a new method of the science of constitutional law, which allows lawyers to study constitutional conflicts and constitutional norms of the conflictological type. The use of constitutional and conflict diagnostics will allow to establish and investigate the causal relationship between the formation of law, its normative expression and subsequent law enforcement, which will reflect the constitutional conflict. The author believes that the following methods are used in the course of diagnosing a constitutional conflict: dialectical, systematic, historical, statistical, methods of formal logic, formal-legal method, method of legal modeling, and other methods. The author also proposes to consider as the principles of such diagnostics: the principle of taking into account the specific historical situation, dialectical unity, systematic study of the conflict and the principle of the rule of law. The author suggests considering the following presuppositions used in the course of constitutional and conflict diagnostics: the presumption of the inevitability of constitutional conflicts, the presumption of the solvability of constitutional conflicts, and the presumption of the prevention of conflicts.


FIAT JUSTISIA ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Syaputra Syaputra

The Criminal Code as a legacy of Dutch colonialism could no longer follow the dynamism of community life. It is too rigid has obliterated the sense of justice which is the goal of the creation of the law itself. This is because the articles of the Criminal Code deemed unsuitable to the development of crime and offenses increasingly complex. In the draft Code of Criminal Law, as one of the reform effort is the formulation of offenses of corruption set out in Chapter XXXII starting from Article 688 to Article 702. With the formulation of the offense of corruption and offenses positions formulated in the draft Criminal Code will disregard the Law Combating Corruption although this law of particular importance because of the substance of the articles draft Criminal Code wants to make corruption has become common crimes and do not pass through handling extraordinary. Law on Corruption Eradication cannot apply even if there is the principle of lex specialis derogat lex generalis, because of the retroactive principle that applies in the draft Criminal Code so that the decision to force the law can still be applied retroactively when the rule of law that new does not regulate the offense of criminal, so punishment can be eliminated.Keywords: Offense Corruption , Corruption , Reform of draft Criminal Code


Author(s):  
Florent Guy ATANGANA MVOGO

Through the constitutional law of January 18, 1996, Cameroon endowed itself with a constitutional justice. The question is to what extent do the mechanisms of access to constitutional justice contribute to the democratic governance of the country? To analyse this fact, it appears that the mechanisms of access to constitutional justice in Cameroon are highly prohibitive and deny the rule of law and participatory democracy; all things that are resolutely situated at the antipodes of a democratic governance.


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