How Rosalie Abella’s personal history shaped her legal legacy

  • 📰 globeandmail
  • ⏱ Reading Time:
  • 116 sec. here
  • 3 min. at publisher
  • 📊 Quality Score:
  • News: 50%
  • Publisher: 92%

Law Law Headlines News

Law Law Latest News,Law Law Headlines

The daughter of Holocaust survivors will soon give up her seat on Canada’s Supreme Court. But her quest for global justice, over and above the rule of law, is far from finished

Justice Abella and her Supreme Court colleagues arrive in the Senate chamber ahead of the Speech from the Throne in March 2010.Canada does not have a simple demarcation line between liberal and conservative judges.

Justice Abella put two words in his mouth: “water it” – crystallizing her liberal viewpoint of the judge’s role in a constitutional democracy. “The law is there for the public, to serve the public, and to serve the public’s need for justice,” she says now. “And it’s true those are all malleable terms and that everybody’s view of what that means is different. But I believe there is nonetheless a way to approach law that makes it more accessible in substantive and procedural terms. And I’m for the more accessible.”, by German author Ingo Muller.

Mr. Sachs, too, was shaped by extraordinary world events. He had his right arm blown off and was blinded in one eye when South Africa’s security police planted a bomb in his car during apartheid. So he’s well-placed to offer insight into Justice Abella. In his view, she challenges the solemn demeanour, the rigidity, the formality and formalism, of many judges.

The young judge would soon help ensure “nature” could no longer affect a woman’s right to equality. In 1983, Liberal cabinet minister Lloyd Axworthy asked her to lead a one-woman royal commission on equality in employment. In a six-week period, she held 92 meetings in 17 cities with women, visible minorities, Indigenous peoples and disabled persons.

Substantive equality would become the foundation of the Supreme Court’s first equality ruling under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, in 1989. By chance, that ruling involved the same issue Justice Abella’s father had faced: a non-citizen who wished to practise law. The non-citizen won, and the court cited her definition of discrimination from her 1984 report.Still, what substantive equality requires in a particular case is, even three decades later, still in dispute.

“The result of all this is corrosive of the rule of law,” they wrote in a joint dissent, wielding the phrase she dislikes. Her parents had somehow managed to create an environment at once protective and open to the world around them. In Stuttgart, German was her mother tongue. It would be years before she understood how unusual that was for Holocaust survivors from Poland, and she asked her parents why they had raised them so. “They wanted us to feel we belonged,” she says.Her parents were determined to get on with life.

 

Thank you for your comment. Your comment will be published after being reviewed.
Please try again later.

A fascinating and rich story on so many levels. And my biggest take away? Justice Abella doesn't eat vegetables or exercise!

Great pix, Dave! (Story is good too! :))

The legal system is a colonial relic designed to exert de jure force over that which de jure powers are lacking. It has no foundation in law, and is an engine of injustice.

Lawyers are overpaid art students prone to overformalistic thinking with a monopoly on law that they have ruthlessly exploited for profit to the detriment of justice.

Great photo and person!

We have summarized this news so that you can read it quickly. If you are interested in the news, you can read the full text here. Read more:

 /  🏆 5. in LAW

Law Law Latest News, Law Law Headlines

Similar News:You can also read news stories similar to this one that we have collected from other news sources.

One country has embraced Bitcoin as legal tender — could it happen here?The Latin American nation may be a natural fit for Bitcoin, but Canada is another story If we're smart, then no Many business operate now without paying taxes, crypto shouldn’t be any different
Source: nationalpost - 🏆 10. / 80 Read more »

Dr. Murray Enkin was a forward-thinking obstetrician and champion of midwiferyA pioneer of evidence-based medicine, Dr. Murray Enkin rebelled against unnecessary medical interventions that deprived birthing mothers of their rights to autonomy and personal choice Rebelling against unecessary medical interventions is becoming more difficult.
Source: globeandmail - 🏆 5. / 92 Read more »