Antonio Lamer in Canada

Antonio Lamer

Antonio Lamer, born in 1933, Canadian jurist and chief justice of the Supreme Court of Canada (1990-2000). He was born in Montréal, Québec. Lamer received his law degree in 1956 from the University of Montréal, and the following year he entered private practice as a criminal defense lawyer. He was appointed to the Québec Superior Court in 1969 and served on the Law Reform Commission of Canada for seven years before being named to the Québec Court of Appeal in 1978. In March 1980 Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau named Lamer as a puisne (associate) justice of the Supreme Court. In July 1990, after ten years on the Court, he was elevated to chief justice by Prime Minister Brian Mulroney.

During the tenure of Chief Justice Brian Dickson (served 1984-1990), Lamer participated in cases responding to the 1982 enactment of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The charter gave the judiciary the responsibility to test laws passed by federal and provincial legislatures against the rights protected in the charter. During the ten years Lamer led the Court as chief justice, the Court continued to develop the jurisprudence relating to the charter, particularly regarding equality rights. However, Lamer did not deliver the major decisions concerning equality rights.

Lamer contributed to three distinct areas as chief justice. In the first, he developed expanded rights to counsel for those appearing in court through decisions such as R. v. Brydges (1990), R. v. Prosper (1994), and New Brunswick v. J. G. (1999). In the second area, Lamer helped define aboriginal rights under the Constitution Act of 1982 through decisions in the van der Peet trilogy of cases (1996) and in Delgamuukw v. British Columbia (1997). Third, Lamer helped uphold the concept of judicial independence the idea that the courts should be free from political and other outside pressures. He identified judicial independence as a basic constitutional principle in his decision in Reference re Remuneration of Provincial Judges (1997).

Lamer was aware of the extent to which the Court’s jurisprudence regarding the charter was leading the Court into controversy. Because of this, he spoke out frequently to express his concerns that judge-bashing by the press or academia could damage the judiciary. Lamer retired from the Court in January 2000. (1)

Resources

Notes and References

1. Encarta Online Encyclopedia

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Law is our Passion

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This entry was last updated: March 23, 2014

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