CONSTITUTIONAL ROUNDTABLE
presents
Mary Eberts
Constitutional Litigator-in-Residence
David Asper Centre for Constitutional Rights
University of Toronto
Wishful Thinking: The Supreme Court of Canada Looks at
Canadian Democracy in the Charter Era
Tuesday, November 18, 2014
12:30 - 2:00
Solarium (room FA2), Falconer Hall
84 Queen's Park
In its decisions on the Charter of Rights, the Supreme Court of Canada relies on certain assumptions about Parliament, its characteristics and capacities, in order to draw boundaries between what is appropriate for the Court to do and what should be left to Parliament. I have often been struck by the dissonance between what is actually going on in today’s Parliament, and the characteristics attributed to Parliament by the Supreme Court. In this presentation, I explore some of this dissonance between what is, and what is said to be, and the effect it is having on implementation of Charter rights. I also inevitably ask the question whether it is possible or desirable to introduce more realism into the Court’s conception of Parliament.
MARY EBERTS received her legal education at Western and the Harvard Law School, and is a member of the Bar of Ontario. She joined a Bay St. law firm after several years of teaching at the Faculty of Law, University of Toronto, and was a partner at that firm until opening a small firm specializing in Charter and public law litigation. From this base in Toronto, she has appeared as counsel to parties and interveners in the Supreme Court of Canada, Courts of Appeal and Superior Courts in Ontario and other provinces, the Federal Court and Court of Appeal, and before administrative tribunals and inquests in Ontario and other provinces. She was active in securing the present language of section 15 of the Charter, and was one of the founders of the Women’s Legal Education and Action Fund (LEAF). Since 1991, she has been litigation counsel to the Native Women’s Association of Canada (NWAC). Mary held the Gordon Henderson Chair in Human Rights at the University of Ottawa in 2004-2005 and the Ariel Sallows Chair in Human Rights at the College of Law, University of Saskachewan in 2011 and 2012, where she taught courses in test case litigation. Recognition of her work includes the Law Society Medal, the Governor-General’s Award in Honour of the Persons’ Case, the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Medal and several honourary degrees.
A light lunch will be provided.
For more workshop information, please contact Nadia Gulezko at n.gulezko@utoronto.ca.
