Charter Dialogue Revisited: Or "Much Ado About Metaphors"

Abstract

This article is a sequel to the 1997 article "The Charter Dialogue Between Courts and Legislatures (Or Perhaps The Charter of Rights Isn't Such A Bad Thing After All)." In the present article, the authors review various academic critiques of their "dialogue" theory, which postulates that Charter decisions striking down laws are not the last word, but rather the beginning of a "dialogue," because legislative bodies are generally able to (and generally do) enact sequel legislation that accomplishes the main objective of the unconstitutional law. The authors also examine the Supreme Court of Canada's dicta on the "dialogue" phenomenon, and update the data on which their 1997 article was based. They conclude that the dialogue phenomenon is alive and well and that the critique of the original article is largely "much ado about metaphors."