Justice Colin Feasby (Alberta Court of King's Bench): Political Theory and Canada's Law of Democracy

Legal academics and political scientists question whether courts faced with democracy issues should be guided by political theory. In this CCS guest lecture, Justice Feasby argues that the text and structure of the Constitution force judges to confront different aspects of political theory. The real question, according to Justice Feasby, is what kind of theory (or theories) judges should adopt. He argues that an underlying theory of the state and three different democratic theories can be discerned from the Supreme Court of Canada’s democracy jurisprudence. These theories, sometimes in tension with one another, are manifested in different types of cases and different aspects of constitutional analysis.