Beverley McLachlin

Beverley McLachlin

Beverley McLachlin, born in 1943, Canadian jurist and chief justice of the Supreme Court of Canada (2000- ). She was born Beverley Gietz in Pincher Creek, Alberta. At the University of Alberta she received a bachelor's degree in 1965 and a law degree and a master's degree in philosophy in 1968. She practiced law briefly in Edmonton and Fort Saint John in Alberta before moving to Vancouver, British Columbia, where she taught law at the University of British Columbia for seven years.

She was appointed to the Supreme Court of British Columbia in 1981, to the British Columbia Court of Appeal in 1985, and then returned to the Supreme Court of British Columbia as chief justice in 1988. Six months later, in March 1989, Prime Minister Brian Mulroney named her as a puisne (associate) justice on the Supreme Court of Canada. At age 45, McLachlin was the youngest appointee to the Court in nearly 50 years. In January 2000 Prime Minister Jean Chrétien elevated her to chief justice of the Court, making her the first woman to head the highest court in Canada.

On the Court led by Chief Justice Antonio Lamer (served 1990-2000), she tended to side with the minority, writing more dissents and separate concurrences than anyone except Justice Claire L'Heureux-Dubé. She usually took an expansive rather than a restrained position on the application of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, showing a willingness to overturn laws that threatened the rights protected by the charter.

Her most controversial decision was R. v. Seaboyer (1991), which struck down the federal “rape shield” law that limited the extent to which the defense in a sexual assault case could ask questions about the victim's past. Although women's groups were outraged at the decision, McLachlin wrote that the legitimate concern for the victim's privacy could not override the defendant's right to a fair trial. In R. v. Zundel (1992) she set aside charges against Ernst Zundel, who had been convicted of “publishing false news,” for printing a pamphlet that denied that 6 million Jews had been killed in the Holocaust during World War II (1939-1945). McLachlin argued that the law in question violated freedom of expression. Her most important decision concerning equality rights under the charter was Miron v. Trudel (1995), which found that treating common-law couples differently from those who were legally married violated the charter. McLachlin will reach the Court's mandatory retirement age of 75 in 2018. (1)

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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