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History General

Myth of the Sacred

The Charter, the Courts, and the Politics of the Constitution in Canada

by (author) Patrick James, Donald E. Abelson & Michael Lusztig

Publisher
McGill-Queen's University Press
Initial publish date
Sep 2002
Category
General
  • eBook

    ISBN
    9780773570573
    Publish Date
    Sep 2002
    List Price
    $110.00

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Description

At its core this myth embodies the Trudeauian ideal of Canadian society - one that features a constitution that empowers impartial judges at the expense of politically motivated legislators; one that allows each individual to enjoy a uniform range of rights, freedoms, and means of belonging to the larger Canadian society; and one that seeks to ensure the primacy of the national government rather than the provincial. Trudeau called his vision the Just Society. But justice is an illusive and amorphous concept. Defining it, much less institutionalizing it, is fraught with risk. In modern liberal democracies, justice is typically understood as the product of some mix of liberty and equality, process and substance, with the amount of each component varying according to taste. It is not unusual for political actors to seek to institutionalize their own formulas for justice, but it is also not reasonable to expect these formulas to go unchallenged. Such a challenge represents the dominant theme of this volume. Contributors include Donald E. Abelson, Tom Flanagan (University of Calgary), Patrick James, James B. Kelly (Brock University), Michael Lusztig, Christopher P. Manfredi (McGill University), Hudson Meadwell (McGill University), Anthony A. Peacock (Utah State University), Mark Rush (Washington and Lee University), and Shannon I. Smithey (Kent State University).

About the authors

Patrick James' profile page

Donald E. Abelson is professor and chair, political science, and co-director, Centre for American Studies, The University of Western Ontario. He is the author of Do Think Tanks Matter? Assessing the Impact of Public Policy Institutes.

Donald E. Abelson's profile page

Michael Lusztig is professor of political science at Southern Methodist University.

Michael Lusztig's profile page