Introduction While they have human bosses, most employees work for corporations, which are legal fictions with no physical existence. That renders employers technically vulnerable to their own employees who might want to take advantage of them. It is both impossible and undesirable to scrutinize every employee during every minute on the job. There are many […]
Privacy in Judicial Decisions
March 5, 2019 By Peter Bowal
Everything secret degenerates, even the administration of justice; nothing is safe that does not show how it can bear discussion and publicity. – Lord Acton (1834-1902) Introduction The legal protection of personal information that is collected and held by government is a relatively recent social development. It did not take long for government bodies to […]
Removing Names from Judicial Decisions: the Globe24h.com Case
March 5, 2019 By Peter Bowal
Where there is no publicity there is no justice. Publicity is the very soul of justice. It is the keenest spur to exertion and the surest of all guards against improbity. Nova Scotia v MacIntyre , Supreme Court of Canada, quoting Jeremy Bentham The “open courts” principle is as old as the common law. The […]
A Year of Holidays
Introduction The Christmas and New Year holiday season is a good time to reflect generally on work and legally enforced rest. This article is about the law of holidays, the legislated observance, and payment of holidays by employers across the country for the benefit of their workers. There is substantial overlap of holidays in Canada. […]
No Judicial Role in Religious Disputes: Jehovah’s Witnesses v Wall
Introduction A perennial criticism of the Canadian judiciary is its excessive activism. Many think that the courts have helped fashion Canada into a nanny state and the Supreme Court of Canada is the most interventionist of the nanny courts. The recent case of Highwood Congregation of Jehovah’s Witnesses v Wall deals with whether a court […]
