We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
To save content items to your account,
please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies.
If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account.
Find out more about saving content to .
To save content items to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org
is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings
on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part
of your Kindle email address below.
Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations.
‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi.
‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
In a 1985 speech to the Canadian Bar Association, Chief Justice Dickson emphasised the importance of an independent and impartial judiciary in maintaining and protecting the rule of law. For Dickson, the rule of law required not only that the judiciary should be the exclusive arbiter of disputes, but that the judges should ‘not depart from their proper function of law interpretation and application’ and their ‘primary task of deciding cases and dispensing justice’. Dickson stressed his increasing concern ‘about certain extra-judicial activities which could tend to politicise the role of judges and detract from their impartial and independent status’. He specifically cautioned judges against accepting requests to serve on public inquiries and royal commissions.
Recent experience has demonstrated that Dickson’s advice has not always been followed. Canadian governments at both the federal and provincial levels have increasingly looked to sitting judges to occupy non-judicial roles. Sitting judges have not been shy to accept these appointments, particularly to public inquiries. In recent years, inquiries such as Walkerton, Somalia, Gomery, Arar, Cornwall, Goudge, the Computer Leasing Scandal and the Oliphant Inquiry have occupied not only the headlines, but also considerable time and energy of sitting Canadian judges.
Recommend this
Email your librarian or administrator to recommend adding this to your organisation's collection.