The Charter Revolution And The Court Party PDF Download

The Charter Revolution presents an updated synthesis of the argument that Ted Morton and Rainer Knopff advanced throughout the 1990s, namely that the rise of judicial power in public policymaking following the enactment of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms has put too much power in the hands of interest groups, especially those on the left, and thereby threatens the democratic fabric of Canada. These interest groups (gay and lesbian rights organizations, feminist groups, poverty activists and civil libertarians, among others) use Charter litigation to further their policy agendas, and because of this, are said to constitute the “Court Party.” This “Party,” according to Morton and Knopff, has succeeded in advancing its policy agenda, because several key actors in the judicial process sympathize with its goals and support its efforts. These actors include most notably, the law clerks of the Supreme Court of Canada, federal bureaucrats in charge of funding activist litigation, and law professors. Together, this alleged cabal has hijacked the Supreme Court and transformed it into a venue for advancing unpopular left causes to exclusion of public participation and public scrutiny. As this brief description suggests, The Charter Revolution is part partisan screed, part scholarly research and part meditation on the relationship between the political and judicial branches of government. However, the partisan screed surfaces time and time again to undermine the authors' timely and challenging account of judicial policy under the Charter. Following the organization of the book, I consider the main thrust of the authors' argument relating to the Court Party, the “jurocracy,” the state connection and the legal intelligentsia. I conclude by examining the position of this book in the literature on judicial power under the Charter in Canada.