A faithful chronicler of the higher madness.

Catholic Insight readers will need no introduction to the work of my friend and fellow London-based journalist, Rory Leishman. As perhaps the most rigorous and dogged critic out there of the mischievous madness perpetrated by Canada's higher courts, it may come as a surprise to some readers to discover that Leishman wasn't always so leery of the sort of judicial innovations which have so markedly set our courts adrift.

In the preface to his new book, Against Judicial Activism, published this spring by McGill-Queen's University Press, Leishman forthrightly confesses that in 1981, "I was one of the more enthusiastic supporters of the proposed Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms." One page later he further upsets readers' certainties by admitting, "I used to be no less enthused about Canada's expansive human rights codes."

In his typically generous way Leishman credits his intellectual conversion to the skeptical prescience of another London-based C.I. columnist, UWO law professor emeritus, Ian Hunter. While Hunter did indeed forecast the maelstrom of legalistic innovations that lay ahead, what uniquely redounds to Leishman's credit is the sheer tenacity with which he has charted and denounced every obtuse and convoluted twist and turn that has brought Canadian law to its current state of utter incoherence.

Leishman sets out in sometimes dizzying detail the sorry saga of Canada's judicial and legislative unmooring from time-honoured Judeo-Christian traditions of jurisprudence over the 24 years since the Charter was first signed into law. The Charter alone did not wreak the sort of chaos Leishman chronicles in his book.

Rather, it is the perceived need for constant interpretation and reinterpretation of the Charter's intent that has chucked the fox into the hen house. Undermining the authority of Parliament and the provincial legislatures to make and determine laws, the courts have also on occasion seen fit to strike down or amend older laws.

"Today the Supreme Court of Canada reigns supreme over the legislative as well as the judicial process," Leishman writes. "Time and again over the last 20 years, unelected judges on this court have issued guidelines on legislative policy to the democratically elected representatives of the people of Canada in what is supposed to be the legislative branch of government. On occasion, the court has circumvented the democratic process altogether by changing the law on its own."

In addition to chronicling the actions of a rogue Supreme Court, Against Judicial Activism takes on the Alice-in-Wonderland-cum-Star-Chamber world of Canada's provincial human rights commissions with their notorious tribunals. In pursuit of an erratically held utopian ideal of universal equality, these tribunals routinely override certain Charter rights such as freedom of speech and religion. The tribunals are so tilted in favour of the complainant that even the most legally erudite respondent can have no confidence of a fair hearing.

As a Londoner I took particular interest in Leishman's riveting account of the 1997 hearing that ruled Mayor Dianne Haskett and the City of London had discriminated against Richard Hudler and the Homophile Association of London Ontario (HALO) in refusing to issue a gay pride proclamation. I don't believe it is just my proximity to this case that makes it the most compelling of the dozens of surreal doozies cited in Against Judicial Activism.

Rather, it is Haskett's steadfast integrity in the face of legal tyranny. A fully trained lawyer herself and head of one of London's most prestigious firms, Haskett played the hand she had been dealt brilliantly. Calling the tribunal's decision "unfair" and "wrong in fact and law," our former mayor never caved in, never issued an apology and never gave the proclamation. She wanted to appeal the ruling to a higher court--and what a spectacular donnybrook that would have been. But when the rest of City Council caved in to the demands and left her hanging all alone, Haskett stepped away from her duties as mayor for three weeks in protest, and channeled her salary in absentia to cover her portion of the fine. The money she hadn't earned paid off the fine she didn't deserve. Sadly but understandably, Haskett stepped down after her second term as mayor and moved to the United States.

Against Judicial Activism is unlikely to become a bestseller in a country where most citizens blandly regard the Charter as some great defining accomplishment on the order of building our national railway. But the mere fact that such a courageously contrarian view of our political and legal status quo found a willing publisher at all is itself a very good sign that this particular tide may have advanced as far as it can. If indeed that tide has stalled or is even about to turn back, history will at least partially thank the tireless anti-advocacy of Rory Leishman for such a development.