Bora Laskin

Bora Laskin

Bora Laskin (1912-1984), Canadian jurist and chief justice of the Supreme Court of Canada (1973-1984). He was born in Fort William (now Thunder Bay), Ontario. He attended the University of Toronto, earning a bachelor's degree in 1933 and a master's degree in 1935. He received his law degree from Osgoode Hall Law School in Toronto in 1936 and a master's degree in law from Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the following year. Admitted to the bar in 1937, he taught law from 1940 to 1965 at the University of Toronto and Osgoode Hall Law School. Widely recognized as one of Canada's leading legal scholars, he published Canadian Constitutional Law, the first casebook on that subject, in 1951. He was appointed to the Ontario Court of Appeal in 1965. In March 1970 Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau appointed Laskin as a puisne (associate) justice on the Supreme Court, and only three years later Trudeau elevated him to chief justice of the Court, bypassing five senior justices to do so.

The son of Russian Jewish immigrants, Laskin was the first non-Christian justice and the first one not of French or British descent. His writings before joining the Court argued for judicial activism and a centralist vision that favored the federal government over the provinces. These concerns set the theme for his activity on the Court. For many years, however, he was frequently forced into frustrated dissent by a Court that followed the less-activist approach of Justice Ronald Martland.

Laskin was one of the most controversial chief justices in the Court's history. One Québec justice, Louis-Philippe de Grandpré, resigned in 1977 in protest against the Court's “mindless centralism.” Two of Laskin's decisions dealing with natural resources, CIGOL v. Saskatchewan (1978) and Central Canada Potash v. Saskatchewan (1979), broadly interpreted the central government's regulatory and taxing powers. The decisions so outraged the provinces that they were reversed in the Constitution Act of 1982. In another decision supporting the central government against the opposition of the provinces, the Anti-Inflation Reference (1976), Laskin upheld the use of federal emergency wage and price controls under the “peace, order and good government” clause of the Constitution of Canada. (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