Société des Acadiens v Association of Parents

Last updated
Société des Acadiens v Association of Parents

Supreme Court of Canada 2.jpg

Hearing: December 4–5, 1984
Judgment: May 1, 1986
Full case nameSociété des Acadiens du Nouveau‑Brunswick Inc. and the Association des conseillers scolaires francophones du Nouveau‑Brunswick v Association of Parents for Fairness in Education, Grand Falls District 50 Branch
Citations [1986] 1 SCR 549
Court Membership
Chief Justice: Brian Dickson
Puisne Justices: Jean Beetz, Willard Estey, William McIntyre, Julien Chouinard, Antonio Lamer, Bertha Wilson, Gerald Le Dain, Gérard La Forest
Reasons given
Majority Beetz, joined by Estey, Chouinard, Lamer and Le Dain
Concurrence Dickson
Concurrence Wilson
McIntyer and La Forest took no part in the consideration or decision of the case.
Laws Applied
Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, ss 16, 19

Société des Acadiens v Association of Parents is a Supreme Court of Canada decision on minority language rights under section 19(2) of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms . [1] The majority of the Court held that in civil cases in the New Brunswick courts, the parties have the right to use either French or English in all submissions and pleadings. However, they do not have a right to have the matter heard by a judge who understands them in the language they choose to speak. It is sufficient if there is simultaneous translation. In addition to the majority decision, two other justices of the Court held that the parties did have the right to be heard and understood by the judge in the language of their choice, but on the facts of the case, that standard was met.

Supreme Court of Canada highest court of Canada

The Supreme Court of Canada is the highest court of Canada, the final court of appeals in the Canadian justice system. The court grants permission to between 40 and 75 litigants each year to appeal decisions rendered by provincial, territorial and federal appellate courts. Its decisions are the ultimate expression and application of Canadian law and binding upon all lower courts of Canada, except to the extent that they are overridden or otherwise made ineffective by an Act of Parliament or the Act of a provincial legislative assembly pursuant to section 33 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

A minority language is a language spoken by a minority of the population of a territory. Such people are termed linguistic minorities or language minorities. With a total number of 193 sovereign states recognized internationally and an estimated number of roughly 5,000 to 7,000 languages spoken worldwide, it follows that the vast majority of languages are minority languages in every country in which they are spoken. Some minority languages are simultaneously also official languages, including the Irish language in Ireland. Likewise, some national languages are often considered minority languages, insofar as they are the national language of a stateless nation.

The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, in Canada often simply the Charter, is a bill of rights entrenched in the Constitution of Canada. It forms the first part of the Constitution Act, 1982. The Charter guarantees certain political rights to Canadian citizens and civil rights of everyone in Canada from the policies and actions of all areas and levels of the government. It is designed to unify Canadians around a set of principles that embody those rights. The Charter was signed into law by Queen Elizabeth II of Canada on April 17, 1982, along with the rest of the Act.

Contents

Decision

Justice Beetz, writing for the majority, held that the language rights of section 19(2) were different from most other rights in the Charter as they were the result of a political compromise and so must be read restrictively. The right to be tried in court in French does not even imply a right to an interpreter. The only right to be understood would be provided by fundamental justice and sections 7 and 14 of the Charter rather than language rights. [2]

Jean Beetz Canadian judge

Jean-Marie Philémon Joseph Beetz,, c.r. was a Canadian lawyer, academic and judge from Quebec. He served as a puisne justice of the Supreme Court of Canada from 1974 to 1988.

Aftermath

The decision inspired criticism. Professors Leslie Green and Denise Réaume call it "troubling," noting the division of the Charter between rights to be read conservatively and liberally was not specific and so other rights besides the language rights were at risk of being conservatively read. [3] Moreover, they questioned the meaning of conservative readings and said that even with supposed generous readings of the Charter, it is expected that courts are not making law. [4]

Leslie John Green is a Scottish-Canadian scholar in the analytic philosophy of law, or jurisprudence as it is often called by academic lawyers. He is Professor of the Philosophy of Law and Fellow of Balliol College, Oxford University, and Professor of Law and Distinguished Faculty Fellow at Queen's University, Kingston.

Green also argued that when it comes to diminishing rights due to compromise and politics,

Most fundamental democratic rights, from Magna Carta to Declaration of the Rights of Man, from the Great Reform Act to the International Covenant, had seedy pasts. They were conceded reluctantly and only after protracted political battles and compromises in which ideology had greater power than political theory. Cynicism and scepticism about Canada's Charter is often bred of more attention to pedigree than to principle. Had Magna Carta been concluded under a system of representative government, the glare of lights and the whir of video-recorders, we would no doubt regard it too as a mere political compromise. [5]

This decision was eventually reconsidered in R v Beaulac , [1999] 1 S.C.R. 768 where the Court rejected the Beetz interpretation in favour of the case's minority decision of Dickson and Wilson.

<i>R v Beaulac</i>

R v Beaulac [1999] 1 S.C.R. 768 is a decision by the Supreme Court of Canada on language rights. Notably, the majority adopted a liberal and purposive interpretation of language rights in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, overturning conservative case law such as Société des Acadiens v. Association of Parents (1986). As the majority wrote, "To the extent that Société des Acadiens du Nouveau-Brunswick... stands for a restrictive interpretation of language rights, it is to be rejected."

Related Research Articles

Civil liberties or personal freedoms are personal guarantees and freedoms that the government cannot abridge, either by law or by judicial interpretation, without due process. Though the scope of the term differs between countries, civil liberties may include the freedom of conscience, freedom of press, freedom of religion, freedom of expression, freedom of assembly, the right to security and liberty, freedom of speech, the right to privacy, the right to equal treatment under the law and due process, the right to a fair trial, and the right to life. Other civil liberties include the right to own property, the right to defend oneself, and the right to bodily integrity. Within the distinctions between civil liberties and other types of liberty, distinctions exist between positive liberty/positive rights and negative liberty/negative rights.

Due process Requirement that courts respect all legal rights owed to people

Due process is the legal requirement that the state must respect all legal rights that are owed to a person. Due process balances the power of law of the land and protects the individual person from it. When a government harms a person without following the exact course of the law, this constitutes a due process violation, which offends the rule of law.

In Canadian and New Zealand law, fundamental justice is the fairness underlying the administration of justice and its operation. The principles of fundamental justice are specific legal principles that command "significant societal consensus" as "fundamental to the way in which the legal system ought fairly to operate", per R v Malmo-Levine. These principles may stipulate basic procedural rights afforded to anyone facing an adjudicative process or procedure that affects fundamental rights and freedoms, and certain substantive standards related to the rule of law that regulate the actions of the state. The degree of protection dictated by these standards and procedural rights vary in accordance with the precise context, involving a contextual analysis of the affected person's interests. In other words, the more a person's rights or interests are adversely affected, the more procedural or substantive protections must be afforded to that person in order to respect the principles of fundamental justice. A legislative or administrative framework that respects the principles of fundamental justice, as such, must be fundamentally fair to the person affected, but does not necessarily have to strike the "right balance" between individual and societal interests in general.

<i>R v Morgentaler</i>

R v Morgentaler, [1988] 1 SCR 30 was a decision of the Supreme Court of Canada which held that the abortion provision in the Criminal Code was unconstitutional because it violated a woman's right under section 7 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms ("Charter") to security of person. Since this ruling, there have been no criminal laws regulating abortion in Canada.

<i>Vriend v Alberta</i>

Vriend v Alberta [1998] 1 S.C.R. 493 is an important Supreme Court of Canada case that determined that a legislative omission can be the subject of a Charter violation. The case involved a dismissal of a teacher because of his sexual orientation and was an issue of great controversy during that period.

Section 7 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms is a constitutional provision that protects an individual's autonomy and personal legal rights from actions of the government in Canada. There are three types of protection within the section: the right to life, liberty and security of the person. Denials of these rights are constitutional only if the denials do not breach what is referred to as fundamental justice.

Section 16 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms

Section 16 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms is the first of several sections of the Constitution dealing with Canada's two official languages, English and French. Section 16 declares that English and French are the official languages of Canada and of the province of New Brunswick.

Section 23 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms is the section of the Constitution of Canada that guarantees minority language educational rights to French-speaking communities outside Quebec, and, to a lesser extent, English-speaking minorities in Quebec. The section may be particularly notable, in that some scholars believe that section 23 "was the only part of the Charter with which Pierre Trudeau was truly concerned." Trudeau was the prime minister who fought for the inclusion of the Charter of Rights in the Constitution of Canada in 1982.

Section 17 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms is one of the provisions of the Charter that addresses rights relating to Canada's two official languages, English and French. While the section 17 right to use either language within the Parliament of Canada repeats a right already anchored in section 133 of the Constitution Act, 1867, section 17 also guarantees the right to use both languages in the legislature of New Brunswick, the only officially bilingual province under section 16 of the Charter.

<i>Singh v Canada</i>

Singh v Canada , [1985] 1 S.C.R. 177 is a 1985 case of the Supreme Court of Canada.

Jones v New Brunswick (AG) (1974), [1975] 2 S.C.R. 182 is a leading decision of the Supreme Court of Canada on the protection of language rights under the Canadian Constitution. The Mayor of Moncton, Leonard Jones, challenged the federal Official Languages Act, which made both French and English the official languages of the institutions of the federal government. Jones argued that the subject matter of the law fell outside the constitutional jurisdiction of the federal government.

Section 20 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms is one of the sections of the Constitution of Canada dealing with Canada's two official languages, English and French. Along with section 16, section 20 is one of the few sections under the title "Official Languages of Canada" that guarantees bilingualism outside Parliament, legislatures and courts. This also makes it more extensive than language rights in the Constitution Act, 1867. Section 20's specific function is to establish a right to English and French services from the governments of Canada and New Brunswick.

Section 19 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms is one of the provisions of the Constitution of Canada that addresses rights relating to Canada's two official languages, English and French. Like section 133 of the Constitution Act, 1867, section 19 allows anyone to speak English or French in federal courts. However, only section 133 extends these rights to Quebec courts, while section 19 extends these rights to courts in New Brunswick. New Brunswick is the only officially bilingual province under section 16 of the Charter.

Section 18 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms is one of the provisions of the Constitution that addresses rights relating to Canada's two official languages, English and French. Like section 133 of the Constitution Act, 1867, section 18 requires that all statutes and other records made by the Parliament of Canada must be available in both official languages. Section 133 places a similar obligation on the legislature of Quebec, and this is reaffirmed by section 21 of the Charter. Section 18 of the Charter places a similar obligation on the legislature of New Brunswick. New Brunswick is the only officially bilingual province under section 16 of the Charter.

<i>Duke v R</i>

Duke v R [1972] S.C.R. 917 was a decision by the Supreme Court of Canada on the Canadian Bill of Rights, concerning the right of an accused to make full answer and defence to a criminal charge.

The phrase law of the land is a legal term, equivalent to the Latin lex terrae, or legem terrae in the accusative case. It refers to all of the laws in force within a country or region, including statute law and case-made law.

<i>Société des Acadiens et Acadiennes du Nouveau-Brunswick Inc v Canada</i>

Société des Acadiens et Acadiennes du Nouveau-Brunswick Inc v Canada2008 SCC 15 is a Canadian constitutional law case, dealing with the language standards imposed by section 20(2) of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms on the Royal Canadian Mounted Police pursuant to their duties as New Brunswick's police force.

References

  1. ↑ Société des Acadiens v Association of Parents, [1986] 1 SCR 549.
  2. ↑ Para. 60-61.
  3. ↑ Green, Leslie and Denise Réaume, "Second-Class Rights? Principle and Compromise in the Charter," The Dalhousie Law Journal, vol. 13 (1990), p. 566.
  4. ↑ Green and Reaume, p. 569.
  5. ↑ Green, Leslie. "Are Language Rights Fundamental?" Osgoode Hall Law Journal vol. 25, no. 4, 1987, pp. 645-646.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.