Monday, November 16, 2009

Lithwick on the SCC

Best piece I've seen on the Supreme Court of Canada in a long time was Dalia Lithwick's admiring, slightly envious American perspective in Slate online recently, covering the Khadr incarceration. She liked that you could watch the whole thing on TV. She saw Justice Rosalie Abella as "a cross between Celine Dion and Ruth Bader Ginsburg." She really liked how, in Ottawa's top court:
the justices include all sorts of quirky outliers, including women, people with French accents, and men with fantastic hair. (Canada is the kind of place in which Simon Potter, from Avocats Sans Frontiers, intervening in the case today for Khadr, speaks English with a Scottish accent yet argues his case to the justices in French.) It's mainly striking because Canada, for better or worse, is in a legal conversation with the rest of the world in a way the United States is not.
Not having Antonin Scalia there was a relief too.

Lithwick is generally interesting on US Supreme Court matters, and Scotusblog is extraordinary (if usually more than we want to know). Does any Canadian blog cover the SCC with anything like this kind of flair and seriousness?
 
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