MISC presents a panel discussion amongst some leading experts and commentators who have contributed to a new and important volume, collection The Notwithstanding Clause and the Canadian Charter: Rights, Reforms and Controversies (McGill-Queen's University Press). Edited by Peter Biro, the collection examines the NWC from all angles, considering who should have the last word on matters of rights and justice – the legislatures or the unelected judiciary – and what balance liberal democracy requires.

Is the Notwithstanding Clause really "a dagger pointed at the heart of our fundamental freedoms", as the late Senator Eugene Forsey warned?  It depends on whether its use ousts the court's jurisdiction to undertake judicial review of a protected law, says Peter Biro. "It is one thing, after all, for a law to operate notwithstanding its inconsistency with a Charter provision. It is another thing altogether for such an operation to occur in darkness."

Limiting the Notwithstanding Clause . . . While consensus across philosophical, ideological and partisan lines on the merits and demerits of the NWC is unlikely, there is an increasing acceptance of the idea that the preemptive use of the NWC should not preclude...