Duff Sir Lyman Poore

Introduction to Duff Sir Lyman Poore

Sir Lyman Poore Duff (1865-1955), Canadian jurist and chief justice of the Supreme Court of Canada (1933-1944). He was born in Meaford, Canada West (now Ontario). He was educated at the University of Toronto and Osgoode Hall Law School in Toronto. He was called to the bar in Ontario, but moved in 1894 to Victoria, British Columbia, where he practiced law until his appointment to the Supreme Court of British Columbia in 1904. In September 1906 Prime Minister Wilfrid Laurier appointed Duff to the Supreme Court, and in March 1933 Prime Minister Richard B. Bennett named him chief justice of the Court. Duff was knighted the following year. His tenure of over 37 years on the Court is by far the longest in the history of the Supreme Court of Canada.

Duff's most famous decision was the Alberta Press case (1938), which determined whether legislation passed by Alberta's radical Social Credit government was valid. The legislation required that newspapers publish certain statements furnished by the government. Although Canada had no bill or charter of rights at that time, Duff found the provincial legislation unconstitutional. He argued that freedom of speech was necessary for the representative government that the Constitution of Canada required. Duff also handed down the 1940 Supreme Court decision known as the Privy Council Appeals Reference, which upheld the power of the Canadian government to abolish appeals to the United Kingdom's Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. The right to appeal to the Privy Council was not finally abolished until 1949, at which time the Supreme Court of Canada became the final court of appeal.

Contemporary opinion ranked Duff as the most able judge ever to serve on the Supreme Court. However, his close ties to the Liberal governments of the day caused controversy. The largest controversy occurred in 1942 when he presided over an inquiry into the government's decision to send untrained Canadian soldiers to Hong Kong during World War II (1939-1945); the soldiers immediately surrendered to the Japanese. Duff's report absolved the government of blame. Observers at the time, as well as later historians, condemned his report as a partisan whitewash. Duff retired from the Court in January 1944, after Parliament twice voted to extend his tenure beyond the retirement age of 75.” (1)

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This entry was last updated: August 24, 2014