Two Judges of the Supreme Court of Canada Set to Retire

Fresh off his victory of forming a majority government, Stephen Harper will have an opportunity to put his stamp on the Supreme Court of Canada (SCC). Justice Ian Binnie, 72, and Madam Justice Louise Charron, 60, are both set to retire from the country’s top court on August 30, 2011.

Binnie was born in Montreal and holds law degrees from both the University of Toronto and Cambridge University. He has been sitting on the top court since 1998. Before his appointment to the SCC, he was an associate Deputy Minister of Justice and a senior partner at the law firm McCarthy Tetreault.

Charron was born in Sturgeon Falls, Ontario and she earned her law degree from the University of Ottawa. She is a former assistant Crown attorney and district court judge. She served on the Ontario Court of Appeal since 1995 until her appointment to the top court in 2004. Charron is retiring from the SCC at the age of 60, well before the mandatory retirement age of 75.

With two new appointments to the top court, Harper’s decision could impact legal decisions for years to come. Harper, being a Conservative will most likely look to appoint individuals who are conservative in nature and those that favour the policies of Mr. Harper and his government. Harper’s appointment decision is very important as four of the current nine judges are set to retire by 2015, meaning that Harper will have appointed more than half of the Supreme Court of Canada before the end of his current term. The potential implications of this are profound as the country’s top court could become a conservative stronghold, simply reinforcing the plans of the Conservative government, which could potentially curtail the rights and freedoms enjoyed by us under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Of course, all of this is contingent upon the fact of who Mr. Harper appoints to the SCC.

It is highly likely that both new justices will be appointed from Ontario and that one will be a woman. Speculation in the legal community is that Ontario Court of Appeal judges Andromache Karakatsanis and Robert Sharpe are the front runners for the appointment to the country’s top court. Karakatsanis, a former public servant, of Greek descent is believed to take a deferential approach to legislation- which the Conservative government will no doubt approve of. However, Karakatsanis is also considered to be a candidate for the Chief Justice of Ontario when the position becomes available. Robert Sharpe is a leading academic, who is a former law dean at the University of Toronto. Both judges are bilingual, conservative in nature, and appear to be favoured by Conservative ministers and backbenchers.

Other potential candidates for the job include Mr. Justice Marc Rosenberg of the Ontario Court of Appeal, who many believe is the leading legal mind regarding criminal law in the country. However, he may not be appointed to the SCC because he is a critic of Conservative crime policies, which would be a loss to Canadian Jurisprudence as a whole. Madame Justice Gloria Epstein, also of the Ontario Court of Appeal could also potentially be appointed, however she is also considered to be in the mix for being a future Chief Justice of Ontario. Other names being thrown around included Federal Court of Appeal Judge David Stratas, a former Bay Street expert on constitutional matters and Judge MacPherson of the Ontario Court of Appeal who is a former dean of law at Osgoode Hall Law School at York University.

Other questions that remain as to whether or not the next justices will be questioned by a House of Commons Committee, a process that Harper used in 2006, but not in 2008 when appointing Thomas Cromwell. Time will only tell who Mr. Harper appoints to the nation’s top court, but either way his decisions on the appointments to the SCC will undoubtedly have a lasting outcome on legal decisions for years to come.