The Patriation and Quebec Veto References: The Supreme Court Wrestles with the Political Part of the Constitution

The Supreme Court’s decision in the Patriation Reference was a landmark in the jurisprudential analysis of the role of constitutional conventions in the law of the Constitution. The Court’s majority adopted Ivor Jennings’ test for identifying constitutional conventions. The two crucial components of that test are: (1) acceptance by the players involved that they are bound by a rule; and (2) the principle underlying the rule. In the Patriation Reference, applying Jennings’ test, the majority found that there was a constitutional convention requiring a substantial measure of provincial consent for requests by the federal Parliament to the U.K. Parliament to amend Canada’s Constitution in matters affecting provincial powers. That ruling ensured substantial provincial participation in working out the terms on which Canada’s Constitution would be patriated. However, in the subsequent Quebec Veto Reference, the Court ignored the fundamental agreement on which Confederation was based and considerations of principle, and found that there was no constitutional convention requiring Quebec’s consent to amendments affecting its rights and powers. The result was the breaking of the bond of trust on which Canada was founded and frustrating years of mega-constitutional politics

The Patriation and Quebec Veto References: The Supreme Court Wrestles with the Political Part of the Constitution

The Supreme Court’s decision in the Patriation Reference was a landmark in the jurisprudential analysis of the role of constitutional conventions in the law of the Constitution. The Court’s majority adopted Ivor Jennings’ test for identifying constitutional conventions. The two crucial components of that test are: (1) acceptance by the players involved that they are bound by a rule; and (2) the principle underlying the rule. In the Patriation Reference, applying Jennings’ test, the majority found that there was a constitutional convention requiring a substantial measure of provincial consent for requests by the federal Parliament to the U.K. Parliament to amend Canada’s Constitution in matters affecting provincial powers. That ruling ensured substantial provincial participation in working out the terms on which Canada’s Constitution would be patriated. However, in the subsequent Quebec Veto Reference, the Court ignored the fundamental agreement on which Confederation was based and considerations of principle, and found that there was no constitutional convention requiring Quebec’s consent to amendments affecting its rights and powers. The result was the breaking of the bond of trust on which Canada was founded and frustrating years of mega-constitutional politics

Importance of composition and hygroscopicity of BC particles to the effect of BC mitigation on cloud properties: Application to California conditions

Black carbon (BC) has many effects on climate including the direct effect on atmospheric absorption, indirect and semi-direct effects on clouds, snow effects, and others. While most of these are positive (warming), the first indirect effect is negative and quantifying its magnitude in addition to other BC feedbacks is important for supporting policies that mitigate BC. We use the detailed aerosol chemistry parcel model of Russell and Seinfeld (1998), observationally constrained by initial measured aerosol concentrations from five California sites, to provide simulated cloud drop number (CDN) concentrations against which two GCM calculations – one run at the global scale and one nested from the global-to-regional scale are compared. The GCM results reflect the combined effects of their emission inventories, advection schemes, and cloud parameterizations. BC-type particles contributed between 16 and 20% of cloud droplets at all sites even in the presence of more hygroscopic particles. While this chemically detailed parcel model result is based on simplified cloud dynamics and does not consider semi-direct or cloud absorption effects, the cloud drop number concentrations are similar to the simulations of both Chen et al. (2010b) and Jacobson (2010) for the average cloud conditions in California. Reducing BC particle concentration by 50% decreased the cloud droplet concentration by between 6% and 9% resulting in the formation of fewer, larger cloud droplets that correspond to a lower cloud albedo. This trend is similar to Chen et al. (2010b) and Jacobson (2010) when BC particles were modeled as hygroscopic. This reduction in CDN in California due to the decrease in activated BC particles supports the concern raised by Chen et al. (2010a) that the cloud albedo effect of BC particles has a cooling effect that partially offsets the direct forcing reduction if other warming effects of BC on clouds are unchanged. These results suggests that for regions like the California sites studied here, where BC mitigation targets fossil fuel sources, a critical aspect of the modeled reduction is the chemical composition and associated hygroscopicity of the BC particles removed as well as their relative contribution to the atmospheric particle concentrations

The Supreme Court\u27s First One Hundred Charter of Rights Decisions: A Statistical Analysis

This study presents a descriptive statistical analysis of the Supreme Court of Canada\u27s first one hundred Charter of Rights decisions (1982-1989). Charter appeals now constitute one-quarter of the Court\u27s annual caseload. The Court has abandoned the judicial self-restraint that shaped its pre-Charter civil liberties jurisprudence. It has upheld rights claimants in 35 percent of its decisions and declared nineteen statutes void. Seventy-five percent of the Court\u27s Charter work dealt with legal rights and criminal justice, but more provincial statutes were declared invalid than federal. After an initial period of consensus, the Court divided into identifiable voting blocs, with wide discrepancies between different Judges\u27 support for Charter claims. In three respects-composition of docket, success rate, and nullification of statutes- the Canadian Supreme Court closely resembled its American counterpart

The Supreme Court\u27s First One Hundred Charter of Rights Decisions: A Statistical Analysis

This study presents a descriptive statistical analysis of the Supreme Court of Canada\u27s first one hundred Charter of Rights decisions (1982-1989). Charter appeals now constitute one-quarter of the Court\u27s annual caseload. The Court has abandoned the judicial self-restraint that shaped its pre-Charter civil liberties jurisprudence. It has upheld rights claimants in 35 percent of its decisions and declared nineteen statutes void. Seventy-five percent of the Court\u27s Charter work dealt with legal rights and criminal justice, but more provincial statutes were declared invalid than federal. After an initial period of consensus, the Court divided into identifiable voting blocs, with wide discrepancies between different Judges\u27 support for Charter claims. In three respects-composition of docket, success rate, and nullification of statutes- the Canadian Supreme Court closely resembled its American counterpart