Preface to the second edition
Author | Hamish Stewart |
Pages | 15-16 |
xv
PREFACE
to the Second Edition
About a year after the appearance of the first edition of this treatise,
the Supreme Court of Canada released its decision in Canada (Attor-
ney General) v Bedford,1 and about a year after that came Carter v Can-
ada.2 In these decisions, the Court revisited issues that it had dealt
with under section 7 of the Charter some decades before, but reached
startlingly different results. Provisions of the Criminal Code relating to
sex work and to physician-assisted dying that had previously survived
Charter scrutiny were now, the Court unanimously said, unconstitu-
tional because they affected the life, liberty, and security of persons
who were trying to comply with the law in a manner that did not com-
ply with the principles of fundamental justice. These decisions were
surprising for several reasons: the Court’s treatment of its own preced-
ents; its unanimity; its receptiveness to the possibility of justifying a
violation of section 7 under section 1 of the Charter; and its will ingness
to intervene quite vigorously in contested matters of social policy. By
themselves, these two decisions required a new edition of this treatise;
but other aspects of section 7 law have continued to develop as well. In
this revised edition, I have tried to t ake into account developments to
the end of July 2018.
In preparing the revision, I have incurred many debts of gratitude.
First and foremost, I thank James Schneider (JD, University of Toronto,
1 Canada (Attor ney General) v Bedford, 2013 SCC 72.
2 Carter v Canada(Attorney General), 2015 SCC 5.
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