Downloads

Strayer Quotes

Perhaps one can venture the conclusion that the patriation scheme of that day could afford to be a bit weak on legal legitimacy because it was to be so richly endowed with political legitimacy.  This is, perhaps, a further illustration of the point I made earlier—that one can always cure a bit of legal anemia with a good dose of political legitimacy.

— Barry Lee Strayer, Patriation and Legitimacy of the Canadian Constitution, Cronkite Lecture No. 1 (1982), page 3-15

eBook

Patriation and Legitimacy of the Canadian Constitution by Barry Lee Strayer.  Free ebook coming soon.


Patriation and Legitimacy of the Canadian Constitution by Barry Lee Strayer.  Free ebook coming soon.

Memorable Quotations

Memorable Quotations

WAR ON CANADA

Lorraine E. Weinrib

Lorraine E. Weinrib

Who Dares Wins / Qui Ose Gagne
Flag Counter

“Anything Goes … Because So Few Know …”

In a surprisingly candid reflection in his article “Constitutional Reform of the Canadian Judiciary” in the Alberta Law Review  of 1969 (7 Alta. L. Rev. 103 (1969), Professor Peter Russell declares the very obvious basis on which the 1982 coup d’état was pulled off (including with his own collaboration).  Said Russell: “The opening phrase of the American Constitution, “We the people of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union …” provides the main clue to the basic difference between the status and role of the written constitution in our two countries.  Granted there is an element of political mythology.  “The opening phrase of the American Constitution, “We the people of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union …” provides the main clue to the basic difference between the status and role of the written constitution in our two countries.  Granted there is an element of political mythology in those initial words of the U.S. Constitution, but still it is a mythology with very real roots in the American political culture.  For certainly the United States’ Constitution is much more a product and a possession of the popular political conscience of that country than is the B.N.A. Act, with its colonial origins and Imperial trappings, of ours.  In practical terms this means that in Canada there is an insufficient common understanding — at the political level — of the content and purpose of the important provisions of the Constitution, with the result that almost anything goes because few people know.”  [Emphases added.]