Description

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As the first book dedicated to quasi-constitutional laws in Canada, this work provides a much-needed overview of the elements that unite the various rights-protecting laws that have received this designation from the Supreme Court of Canada. These laws comprise several categories of federal and provincial statutes, including human rights, access-to-information, privacy, language rights, and the traditional civil liberties, as well as a common law principle.

Quasi-constitutional Laws of Canada addresses the legal impact and theory of quasi-​constitutionality for both a professional and an academic audience. It provides a useful roadmap for practitioners who routinely work with these statutes by engaging with the defining legal characteristics of quasi-​constitutionality. This includes a special interpretative approach and the primacy of quasi-constitutional legislation over regular statutes. Academic readers will likewise be interested in the legal impact of quasi-constitutionality, since the ability to use quasi-constitutional statutes to declare conflicting legislation inoperable has received limited attention compared to orders of invalidity under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. This book addresses theoretical questions concerning the relationship of quasi-constitutional laws with both regular legislation and the Constitution, and it provides a comparative analysis situating quasi-constitutional laws in Canada within the development of the weak-form model of constitutionalism and judicial review in the Commonwealth.