The Canadian Charter's Transformative Aspirations
Supreme Court Law Review (2nd), Vol. 19, pp. 17-37, 2003
11 Pages Posted: 30 Jun 2008
Date Written: January 1, 2003
Abstract
One can appreciate the Charter's transformative character by studying the resolution of the intense political debate that precipitated its adoption. What emerges from this engagement is not a Charter chained to Canadian legal history. Rather, one encounters a modern Bill of Rights designed to adapt to Canada the mode of higher law, rights protection that has become the hallmark of liberal democracy in the aftermath of the Second World War. This model now operates in many national settings, nurtured by the development and operation of supra-national human rights protecting instruments. Far from departing from or denying democratic values, this model has become the blueprint for new and reconstructed liberal democracies. It is especially strong in contexts where weaker forms of democratic governance deteriorated into racist, and even genocidal, totalitarianism. It offers an organic, dynamic mode of rights protection, which is receptive to active government, respectful of diversity and pluralism, and detached from any traditional conservative moral code based on shared culture, history, religion, or ethnicity.
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