Prof. Jacob Ziegel - "There are better ways to investigate judicial conduct"

Thursday, November 8, 2012

In a commentary in The Lawyers Weekly, Prof. Jacob Ziegel argues that the Canadian Judicial Council’s inquiry procedures are unacceptably cumbersome ("There are better ways to investigate judicial conduct," Nov. 2, 2012). The full commentary is republished below.

There are better ways to investigate judicial conduct

Jacob Ziegel

Too Much 'Truthiness' in Judicial Activism Debate

Brenda Cossman
Wednesday, May 10, 2006

Truthiness refers to “the quality of stating concepts or facts one wishes or believes to be true, rather than concepts or facts known to be true.”  It is an idea coined and popularized by political satirist Stephen Colbert on the first episode of The Colbert Report.  The American Dialect Society named in the 2005 Word of the Year, and the New York Times declared it one of nine words that captured the spirit of 2005.

Its spirit is surviving well into 2006.

Just look at debates about judicial activism.  Just look at the recent tempest in a teapot around Saskatchewan Conservative MP Maurice Vellacott's criticism of Chief Justice Beverly MacLaughlin.

Let’s start with some facts (even though they may be of dubious value in a world of truthiness).  Here’s what Vellacott said to CBC reporter Christina Lawand:

“I don't think it is the role, whether left or right, conservative or whatever stripe it happens to be, to actually figure that they play the position of God."

"Beverley McLachlin herself said actually that when they step into this role all of a sudden there's some mystical kind of power comes over them by which everything that they ever decree then is not to be questioned."

Conference: Social Science Evidence in Charter Litigation

The David Asper Centre for Constitutional Rights Presents

Social Science Evidence in Charter Litigation:
Developments in 30 Years of Fact Finding

November 9, 2012
8:30 a.m.-4:00 p.m.

Flavelle House (78 Queen's Park),
Faculty of Law, University of Toronto

Supreme Court of Canada Justices are Unpredictable - Mostly, Part II

Benjamin Alarie
Wednesday, September 26, 2007

This is a follow-up to the previous post regarding the paper Andrew Green and I recently posted on SSRN.  The point of this post is to elaborate on the motivation for the paper and summarize our results.

Is Gender Really More Important than Appointing Prime Minister?

Benjamin Alarie
Wednesday, November 21, 2007

Professors Jame Stribopoulos and Moin Yahya recently published an article in the Osgoode Hall Law Journal entitled, Does a Judge's Party of Appointment or Gender Matter to Case Outcomes? An Empirical Study of the Court of Appeal for Ontario.  The abstract explains:

This study reveals that at least in certain categories of cases, both party of appointment and gender are statistically significant in explaining case outcomes.  Between these two variables, gender actually appears to be the stronger determinant of outcome in certain types of cases.  While these findings are cause for concern, this study also points toward a simple solution.  Diversity in the composition of appeal panels both from the standpoint of gender and party of appointment dampened the statistical influence of either variable.  In other words, in the case of gender, a single judge on a panel who is of the opposite sex from the others, or in the case of political party, a single judge appointed by a different political party, is sufficient to eliminate the potential distorting influence of either variable.  This finding suggests a need to reform how appeal panels are currently assembled in order to ensure political and gender diversity and minimize concerns about the potential for bias.

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