Judging on the marginsby pwills on 16 March 2023 Sports are full of advanced statistics today: they are ways of trying to quantify the messy feelings we have when we watch them. How do we know Lionel Messi is so good? Because he’s constantly in the top right of the graphs. Why not apply the same approach to understanding judges and courts? Using the… Continue reading Judging on the margins
(Un)constructive expropriation lawby pwills on 11 February 2022 Next week, the Supreme Court is hearing a case concerning whether refusing to approve a development permit constituted “constructive expropriation” in Nova Scotia. In this post, I suggest the court should jettison the entire idea of constructive expropriation.
Disclaimer: everyone’s wrongby pwills on 18 January 2022 Note to readers: I’m currently at the stage of “knows enough to be dangerous” on this topic. I’ve done some research to back up my views here, but not enough to be confident that there are no significant errors. If you spot one and think I’m super wrong, please, please tell. At the same time,… Continue reading Disclaimer: everyone’s wrong
Electoral reform needs better PR: Childhood addendumby pwills on 22 October 2021 This is a brief addendum to the previous discussion about electoral reform. As I noted in Part III, s 3 of the Charter grants a right to vote to “[e]very citizen”, but not every citizen can vote. Most notably, citizens under 18 cannot vote. I’m going to discuss two less infringing alternatives than giving children… Continue reading Electoral reform needs better PR: Childhood addendum
Electoral Reform needs better PR (Part III)by pwills on 18 October 2021 [This the third of a three-part Post. In Part I, I proposed an alternative electoral system that provides locally proportional representation (LPR). LPR works by weighting legislators’ votes in the legislature according to the number of votes they received in the election. In Part II, I discussed the possibility of defining ridings based on criteria… Continue reading Electoral Reform needs better PR (Part III)
Electoral Reform needs better PR (Part II)by pwills on 29 September 2021 [This is the second of a three part post. In Part I, I proposed an alternative electoral system to provide locally proportional representation (LPR). LPR works by weighting legislators’ votes in the legislature according to the number of votes they received in the election. In Part III, I’ll discuss the courts’ role in all this.… Continue reading Electoral Reform needs better PR (Part II)
Electoral reform needs better PR (Part I)by pwills on 25 September 2021 Introduction What better way is there to spend the aftermath of an election than to wring one’s hands about the difference between the parties’ seat count and the popular vote they received? It is, after all, as pure a form of ineffectual handwringing as one could wish: any form of proportional representation (PR) seems as… Continue reading Electoral reform needs better PR (Part I)
Reserving s. 33 for the right momentby pwills on 30 August 2021 TL;DR The notwithstanding clause (s 33) is back in use in provincial legislatures, and so is in the news, in law journals, and in the courts. Prominent by its absence is Parliament. In this piece, I suggest Parliament could (and should!) play a greater role in governing the use of the notwithstanding clause. Specifically, I… Continue reading Reserving s. 33 for the right moment