Listening to the dialogue: An examination of the degree of public and media attention provided to the legislative responses to court decisions involving equality rights and sexual orientation

• Author(s) / Creator(s)

  • Billingsley, Barbara

• Introduction: Since the inception of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, legal and political scholars in Canada have grappled with the theory that judicial review under the Charter is part of a dialogue between the courts and the legislatures. According to the dialogue theory, once a court decides that a given statute unjustifiably violates the Charter, their ruling invites the relevant legislative body to \"devise a response that is properly respectful of the Charter values that have been identified by the Court, but which accomplishes the social or economic objectives that the judicial decision has impeded.\" Assuming this premise is true, dialogue theory is a compelling answer to the oft rendered populist complaint ofjudicial activism under the Charter. Specifically, the answer provided by the dialogue theory is that, far from tying the hands of elected lawmakers, court decisions that define Charter values merely serve as an impetus for legislatures to rethink and reformulate their objectives within the confines of the Charter.

• Date created

  2003

• Subjects / Keywords

  • Legislation--Canada
  • Homophobia--Canada
  • Judicial Review--Canada

• Type of Item

  Article (Published)

• DOI

  https://doi.org/10.7939/R3RJ4986X

• License

  © 2003 Barbara Billingsley. This version of this article is open access and can be downloaded and shared. The original author(s) and source must be cited.