An inside scoop into how an old moot was given new life. The Eureka Moment On a hot June summer day, as I was furiously working away on a legal memorandum that was poised to be blacklined into oblivion by one of my supervising partners, I decided to take a quick break in the Lax O’Sullivan Lisus Gottlieb LLP lunchroom. As I downed my third Diet Coke of the day, I received an email from the...
Liberal democracy as the synthesis The Vanguard of Illiberalism Buckles With the dawn of a new decade, it appeared that the sun of the liberal democratic order was finally setting, and the phoenix of populism was rising. Then came 2022. The failure of the Freedom Convoy It began in Canada, with the Freedom Convoy protests in early February. What was supposed to be a revolutionary moment of...
The events of 2022 have served to vindicate Francis Fukuyama and his now famous dictum on history Revisiting the End of History “What we may be witnessing is not just the end of the Cold War, or the passing of a particular period of post-war history, but the end of history as such … That is, the end point of mankind’s ideological evolution and the...
The liberal case for preserving the constitutional monarchy in Canada Death of a Sovereign On 8 September 2022, Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II (“QEII”), passed away at the age of ninety-six. Ascending to the throne in 1952 and being crowned a year later, QEII reigned for nearly seven decades, witnessing the world transition from World War II, to the Cold War, to the end of the millennium, and...
On July 1, 2021, Justice Rosalie Silberman Abella will retire from the Supreme Court of Canada (“SCC”). Justice Abella, the first Jewish woman and former refugee to sit on Canada’s highest court, will step down after 17 years at the Court, and 45 years as a judge. Before her appointment to the SCC, she served on the Ontario Family Court and Ontario Court of Appeal. In the coming months...
How Each Crisis that Engulfed 2020 was Predictable and Foreseen In 2007, Nassim Nicholas Taleb published his seminal piece, The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable, to great commercial success and critical acclaim. The book, among other things, told the story of a popular assumption that remained nestled in the minds of ‘Old World’ citizens until the late 17th century: that all swans...
How Canada’s Expropriation Laws Function to Preclude Compensation for Private Property Owners Flipping through my property law textbook, I was struck by the realization that, in certain situations, the Crown has the power to expropriate the land of private citizens without compensating its owners. After navigating through the legal topography of expropriation, several of my cursory concerns...
Why Chief Justice McLachlin’s Confidence in Hong Kong’s Courts Should Give Us Pause From London to Beijing Almost 23 years ago, the United Kingdom handed over control of their Hong Kong colony to the People’s Republic of China (PRC). As part of the transfer agreement, Hong Kong would become a Special Administrative Region (SAR) of the communist nation, but would be able to retain the...
What the courts of equity have to say about Taylor Swift’s contract dispute with Big Machine Records Welcome to Nashville Taylor Swift is one of the most powerful musicians in the world. In 2019, Forbes estimated the country starlet turned popstar boasted a net worth of approximately $360 million. On social media, Taylor holds an impressive 123 million followers on Instagram. Yet, a...
What HBO’s Watchmen can tell us about the relationship between law and justice. In the fall television season, HBO debuted their newest series Watchmen to great critical and consumer praise. The show is a continuation of the story depicted in the Alan Moore series of comics which ran in 1987 also titled “Watchmen.” The story of Watchmen — like its comic source material — takes place in an...