Common law respecter and DPhil student @OxfordLawFac.
Oxford, England
Joined August 2012
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Kerry Sun retweeted
If you want to read one book that will guide you through the arguments that will be made in the very near future about the proper roles of courts and legislatures, this is it! Get @Mark_S_Harding's "Judicializing Everything?" today --in paperback!
Very excited to see that my book, Judicializing Everything?, is now available in paperback! Especially gratifying to see such generous endorsements from colleagues whose work I greatly admire and respect.
@GeoffSigalet @gerardjkennedy @utpress
Kerry Sun retweeted
Today @thenewdigest: the editors are delighted to publish today a guest essay by Chief Judge Reed O’Connor of the Northern District of Texas, on reason as the life and soul of the law. Judge O’Connor explains the “debt that the American legal tradition owes to the Catholic Christian tradition.”
Enjoy!
thenewdigest.substack.com/p/…
Kerry Sun retweeted
One your national post colleagues was chewed out by a legal association for criticizing a judicial decision. I’m just calling for the same concern about a piece that criticizes judges for …. Who they studied with.
Kerry Sun retweeted
The essay in question is offended non-progressive judges have, at times, been appointed to the bench.
It also singles out this terrific Yuan Yi Zhu (@yuanyi_z) column in the Post for criticism. More reason to subscribe to National Post.
nationalpost.com/opinion/yua…
Kerry Sun retweeted
Pleased to share this call for papers for a symposium on "Judicial Power and the Canadian Constitution", hosted by @MLInstitute's Judicial Foundations Project in Toronto, February 2027.
Feel free to reach out to @CopelanPeter, @GeoffSigalet, @yuanyi_z, or me with any questions!
The Macdonald-Laurier Institute’s Judicial Foundations Project is planning a one-day symposium on “Judicial Power and the Canadian Constitution,” tentatively scheduled for February 4, 2027, at Hart House, University of Toronto. We hope to bring together scholars, experts, and practitioners from across Canada, and potentially the wider Commonwealth, to reinvigorate interest in the development, scope, and exercise of judicial power in Canada.
@CopelanPeter @SunKerry @GeoffSigalet
Three sets of reasons, all largely agreeing on the principles of factual causation and remoteness.
Martin J. (dissenting in part) presents a sophisticated discussion and restatement of the doctrine of remoteness in negligence, at [180]-[207].
Supreme Court of Canada dismisses both appeals in Hemmings v. Padmore, 2026 SCC 34: factual causation and remoteness require separate analyses. Anesthesiologist remains liable & claims against the obstetrician and hospital remain dismissed. decisions.scc-csc.ca/scc-csc… #SCC
Kerry Sun retweeted
Migrant workers brutally killed two elderly British Columbians who employed them and now we are being told that it's against their Charter rights to jail them for 25 years without a shot at parole. What a disgrace.
Murder parole rules ‘unconstitutional’, B.C. judge rules
theglobeandmail.com/canada/a…
Kerry Sun retweeted
It's terrible that @mcgillu is making its students attend class with a rapist-murderer who also paralyzed a girl by beating her. It's unbelievable that he'd be welcomed as a law student, of all places. What a failure of judgment by @LawMcGill
cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/…
Kerry Sun retweeted
“I think too often schools just fail to provide students with anything that is or should inspire that sense of reverence, of awe,” says Caylan Ford (@caylanford), founder of the Alberta Classical Academy on Forum Dialogue with @TheNewsForum_.
MLI’s Managing Director Brian Lee Crowley (@brianleecrowley) sits with Ford to discuss how and why education should shape character and not only job skills, and why multicultural Canada still needs a shared civic culture.
One point of tension between the majority and dissent in R. v. Cope, 2026 SCC 32 —which this column aptly highlights — is the degree to which curial deference to a sentencing circle's recommendations amounts to a privatisation of a public function, namely, criminal sentencing.
1/
You know it's bad at the Supreme Court when it decides that indigenous offenders are entitled to have a council of co-ethnics lobby judges for lower sentences. We're quickly approaching a duty to consult... for criminal trials.
My column:
nationalpost.com/opinion/jam…
The Cope judgment seems to treat the crime as a kind of private wrong, being of particular concern to the Indigenous community to which the accused belonged [128]. The Cope dissent is sceptical, pointing out that the victim might be from a different community altogether [275].
2/
Kerry Sun retweeted
“This progressive pile-on against Bill 21 and the notwithstanding clause at the Supreme Court of Canada exposes dual myths of democratic pluralism and political disadvantage used to justify intervention in Supreme Court cases. Governments, public institutions, and federally funded advocacy organizations participated in a nearly week-long process in which 94 per cent of the non-attorney-general factums addressing section 33 sought new limits on the clause. In both form and substance, the Supreme Court engaged in a prolonged faux-committee hearing, adopting the role of the “super-legislature” it promised it would not become,” writes MLI Senior Fellow Dave Snow.
Read here⬇️
macdonaldlaurier.ca/the-inte…
Kerry Sun retweeted
The Macdonald-Laurier Institute’s Judicial Foundations Project is planning a one-day symposium on “Judicial Power and the Canadian Constitution,” tentatively scheduled for February 4, 2027, at Hart House, University of Toronto. We hope to bring together scholars, experts, and practitioners from across Canada, and potentially the wider Commonwealth, to reinvigorate interest in the development, scope, and exercise of judicial power in Canada.
@CopelanPeter @SunKerry @GeoffSigalet
Kerry Sun retweeted
"In essence, Justice Murray found that drug users have a constitutional right, under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, to be exempted from federal possession and trafficking laws in B.C., so they may receive a 'safer supply.'"
theglobeandmail.com/opinion/…
Kerry Sun retweeted
Big 🤓 news: the Alberta Court of Appeal has found 4-1 that the federal government's reforms to the Impact Assessment Act, following the Supreme Court of Canada's decision in 2023 that it was largely unconstitutional, did not sufficiently address their overreach into federal jurisdiction.
Big win for Alberta and provincial rights.
albertacourts.ca/docs/defaul…
Kerry Sun retweeted
The Supreme Court ruled today that judges MUST "meaningfully engage" with the recommendations of a sentencing circle when sentencing indigenous offenders.
The court also upheld a lighter sentence for an indigenous man who severely beat his girlfriend. scc-csc.ca/judgments-jugemen…
Kerry Sun retweeted
Today @thenewdigest: we are delighted to publish a fascinating essay by @MaxSaintH on the legal dimensions of the prosecution and persecution of Christians during the Roman Empire.
Enjoy!
thenewdigest.substack.com/p/…
It’s remarkable and telling that the Advocates’ Society has condemned the application of what are, basically, techniques of Critical Legal Studies — as soon as those techniques are applied in the pages of a national newspaper against expansive judicial readings of the Charter.
It has come to my attention that I have been denounced by @Advocates_Soc for criticizing judicial decisions — and yes, individual judges.
Here's the thing. When someone, for example, spends her lawyerly career writing op-eds in favour of migration and calling herself an activist, and then becomes a federal judge, and from that seat allows all sorts of undesirables to remain in Canada on weak grounds, people are free to draw a connection from A to B.
When a judge, for example, spends his lawyer years advocating fiercely for more race-based law, and then later throws out gun charges of black men on his (unsupported) assertion that police were racist during their arrests, people are free to question whether he's really a fair adjudicator.
When a judge, for example, says that a ban on drug trafficking is unconstitutional, and then *applauds* vigilante drug dealers for their self-proclaimed safe supply program — applauds them for supporting the business of organized crime and feeding the addictions of street people — that's beyond the pale. You're worried about democracy being poisoned? Worry about the judge who threw out Parliament's law against selling heroin because she felt it was "common sense" that it was supported by science.
I agree that it's not right to criticize a judge personally for impartially applying the law and coming to an unpopular decision (which they may even privately disagree with). But when their professional history, or their conduct in court, suggests allegiance to a cause that they happen to be ruling softly on, it will get noticed.
Bringing the administration of justice into disrepute is a two-way street, you know.
Kerry Sun retweeted
The Advocates' Society's position rests on a petitio principii --they assume a premise that is not granted: namely that judges make decisions on the facts & the law. The question of whether she did in this case is properly in dispute, due to Ms. Sarkonak's excellent journalism.
It has come to my attention that I have been denounced by @Advocates_Soc for criticizing judicial decisions — and yes, individual judges.
Here's the thing. When someone, for example, spends her lawyerly career writing op-eds in favour of migration and calling herself an activist, and then becomes a federal judge, and from that seat allows all sorts of undesirables to remain in Canada on weak grounds, people are free to draw a connection from A to B.
When a judge, for example, spends his lawyer years advocating fiercely for more race-based law, and then later throws out gun charges of black men on his (unsupported) assertion that police were racist during their arrests, people are free to question whether he's really a fair adjudicator.
When a judge, for example, says that a ban on drug trafficking is unconstitutional, and then *applauds* vigilante drug dealers for their self-proclaimed safe supply program — applauds them for supporting the business of organized crime and feeding the addictions of street people — that's beyond the pale. You're worried about democracy being poisoned? Worry about the judge who threw out Parliament's law against selling heroin because she felt it was "common sense" that it was supported by science.
I agree that it's not right to criticize a judge personally for impartially applying the law and coming to an unpopular decision (which they may even privately disagree with). But when their professional history, or their conduct in court, suggests allegiance to a cause that they happen to be ruling softly on, it will get noticed.
Bringing the administration of justice into disrepute is a two-way street, you know.