TORONTO, March 27, 2002 (LSN.ca) - U.S. judge Robert H. Bork, the former solicitor general of the United States and President Ronald Reagan’s nominee for the Supreme Court, delivered a free public lecture at the University of Toronto yesterday. Speaking at the at the annual Barbara Frum Memorial Lecture, Justice Bork addressed a dangerous trend in the North American judicial system - a growing tendency of courts to make law, and the implications of this for a democratic system.
In an opinion piece on the same issue published in the National Post yesterday, Justice Bork wrote: “Judicial review based on constitutionally protected rights and liberties did not become a feature of government in Canada until the adoption of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms in 1982.” He noted also that by that time the dominating view of the cultural left or “New Class” was firmly established. He continued, “The Supreme Court of Canada’s activism, which began with the Charter, at once responded to the values of the New Class. The Court has continued on that path ever since.”
He notes that judicial activism in the US and Canada are similar “because the same liberal intelligentsia dominates the jurisprudence of both countries.” Notably he said that “Although the Canadian Court seems the more sensible of the two in cases on freedom of speech and religion, in other cases, notably those relating to abortion and homosexuality the Court is strikingly activist.”
Justice Bork warns that judicial activism leads to the erosion of democratic government. In a brilliant one paragraph summary he writes: “The adoption of the Charter, however, emboldened judges and introduced the era of judicial activism. For the first time, the judiciary vigorously used its authority to strike down laws that infringed on what the judges themselves considered fundamental rights not mentioned in the Charter. It was then that the powers of self-government gradually began to give way to the reality of judicial governance.”
(with files from Pro-Life E-News)