Appointment of Justices of The Supreme Court of Canada
Justices of the Supreme Court of Canada are appointed by the Governor General-in-Council, a process whereby the governor general, the viceregal representative of the Queen of Canada, makes appointments based on the advice and consent of the Queen's Privy Council for Canada. By tradition and convention, only the Cabinet, a standing committee in the larger council, advises the governor general and this advice is usually expressed exclusively through a consultation with the prime minister. Thus, the provinces and parliament have no formal role in such appointments, sometimes a point of contention.
The Supreme Court Act limits eligibility for appointment to persons who have been judges of a superior court, or members of the bar for ten or more years. Members of the bar or superior judiciary of Quebec, by law, must hold three of the nine positions on the Supreme Court of Canada. This is justified on the basis that Quebec uses civil law, rather than common law, as in the rest of the country. The 3/9 ratio persists even though just 24 percent of Canada's population resides in Quebec. By convention, the remaining six positions are divided in the following manner: three from Ontario, two from the western provinces (typically one from British Columbia and one from the prairie provinces, which in turn rotates amongst the three, although Alberta is known to cause skips in the rotation, and one from the Atlantic provinces, almost always from Nova Scotia or New Brunswick.
The appointment of the most senior puisne justice to chief justice is a convention that has recently fallen into disuse. And there is also an attempt to appoint at least one justice straight from legal practice without having previously been a judge.
A Supreme Court Justice, as with all federal judges, may only sit on the bench until the age of 75 years.
In 2006, an interview phase by an ad hoc committee of members of parliament was added. Justice Marshall Rothstein became the first justice to undergo the new process. The prime minister still has the final say on who becomes the candidate that is recommended to the governor general for appointment to the court. The government proposed an interview phase again in 2008, but a general election and minority parliament intervened with delays such that the Prime Minister recommended Justice Cromwell after consulting the Leader of Her Majesty's Official Opposition.
Read more about this topic: Supreme Court Of Canada
Famous quotes containing the words appointment, justices, supreme, court and/or canada:
“Democracy substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)
“If the justices would only retire when they have become burdens to the court itself, or when they recognize themselves that their faculties have become impaired, I would grieve sincerely when they passed away, and you would not feel like such a hypocrite as you do when you are going through the formality of sending telegrams of condolence and giving out interviews for propriety’s sake.”
—William Howard Taft (1857–1930)
“... beauty, like ecstasy, has always been hostile to the commonplace. And the commonplace, under its popular label of the normal, has been the supreme authority for Homo sapiens since the days when he was probably arboreal.”
—Ellen Glasgow (1873–1945)
“I know one husband and wife who, whatever the official reasons given to the court for the break up of their marriage, were really divorced because the husband believed that nobody ought to read while he was talking and the wife that nobody ought to talk while she was reading.”
—Vera Brittain (1893–1970)
“What makes the United States government, on the whole, more tolerable—I mean for us lucky white men—is the fact that there is so much less of government with us.... But in Canada you are reminded of the government every day. It parades itself before you. It is not content to be the servant, but will be the master; and every day it goes out to the Plains of Abraham or to the Champs de Mars and exhibits itself and toots.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)