Conflict of interest has been a leading issue in the Canadian legal profession over the last three decades, and it shows no sign of abating. No other issue has so consistently and dramatically dominated both the practice of law and its regulation in Canada. This article describes the conceptual and political battles that have been fought over conflicts of interest in Canada during this time. These battles reveal deeper ontological divisions about the practice of law in Canada. The clash over (...) conflicts of interest exposes competing conceptions of what it means to be a lawyer in Canada in the twenty-first century and how the legal profession should be governed. The conflicts of interest debate increasingly centres on the duty of loyalty owed by lawyers to their clients. (shrink)

Although the Canadian legal system has many virtues, it has at least one major weakness – its judicial appointments and promotion systems. The paper begins by identifying six key values that need to be considered in order to assess the legitimacy of a judicial appointments process – independence, impartiality, representativeness, transparency, accountability and efficiency. In the following sections, through the use of three case studies of appointments to the Supreme Court of Canada, the superior courts of Nova Scotia and a (...) promotion to the Federal Court of Canada, we demonstrate that Canada has failed to live up to these values. We conclude by suggesting that recent reforms to the judicial appointments processes by the current government are an improvement, but that more radical reforms are essential to enhance public confidence in the integrity of Canada’s judicial appointments and promotion systems. (shrink)

Volume 21, Issue 1, July 2018, Page 89-92.

This article is currently available as a free download on ingentaconnect.

This article is currently available as a free download on ingentaconnect.