Anmerkungen:
Nach Informationen von SSRN wurde die ursprüngliche Fassung des Dokuments May 7, 2004 erstellt
Beschreibung:
The central theme of this address is that judicial inaction with respect to poverty ought not to be mistaken as impartiality. While poverty has always existed, in Canada, we are confronting new circumstances which impact directly on the constitutional values courts are mandated to protect and which were not necessarily foreseen by the drafters of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms - namely unprecedented levels of homelessness and inadequate access to food. The speaker considers how judges can ensure that poor people are treated fairly by the justice system when they are dragged into it but also, and more fundamentally, how judges can ensure that poor people can participate as equals in the promise of a constitutional democracy, whereby courts might become a place poor people might actually choose to go to when other institutions fail to respect their rights, where they might receive a hearing they would otherwise be denied. The speaker explores how the Supreme Court of Canada has provided lower courts with a solid jurisprudential foundation through which the rights of poor people can be re-valued in the justice system, and through which the justice system can begin to play its proper role in considering challenges to fundamental human rights violations in Canada. However, the full nature of judicial responsibility in the area of poverty has not yet been written. It is up to judges in lower courts, who regularly deal with the direct interaction of poverty and the justice system, to apply the courts' role in a constitutional democracy more effectively to issues of poverty