Binnie (William) Ian Corneil in Canada

Binnie (William) Ian Corneil

Ian Corneil Binnie, born in 1939, Canadian jurist and puisne (associate) justice of the Supreme Court of Canada (1998- ). He was born in Montréal, Québec, and received his bachelor’s degree from McGill University in 1960. He earned law degrees at Cambridge University in England in 1963 and the University of Toronto in 1965. In 1988 he returned to Cambridge and received a master’s degree in law. Admitted to the Ontario bar in 1967, he practiced general litigation in Toronto, specializing in administrative law, aboriginal law, and commercial litigation. From 1982 to 1986 he served as associate deputy minister of justice for Canada. He was parliamentary counsel for the hearings on the Meech Lake Accord, the unsuccessful attempt to amend the Constitution of Canada to recognize Québec as a distinct society within Canada. He represented Canada in international disputes with the United States and France. In January 1998 Prime Minister Jean Chrétien appointed him to the Supreme Court.

Binnie delivered relatively few decisions in his first terms on the bench, possibly because he had no judicial experience before his appointment to the court. Perhaps his most significant decision was R. v. Marshall (1999), a case involving aboriginal treaty rights. In that case Binnie found that the Mi’kmaq people on the east coast of Canada had a right, established in an earlier treaty, to fish and catch lobster out of season and without a license. The finding provoked considerable opposition from both conservation groups and nonaboriginal fishers. Two months later, the Court unanimously dismissed an application for a rehearing of the case, but in doing so they significantly moderated Binnie’s earlier decision. Binnie will reach the Court’s mandatory retirement age of 75 in 2014. (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