Section 33 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, also known as the NOTWITHSTANDING CLAUSE, is one of the Constitution’s most controversial and least well understood provisions. By invoking the notwithstanding clause, the government can insulate a law from the strongest order a court can issue, which is to strike down the law because it infringes a Charter right or freedom.
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…
Section 33 has no place in a liberal democracy. It ought to be repealed Peter’s article for the National Post The notwithstanding clause is a dangerous and altogether unnecessary tool…
The Greek poet, Aeschylus famously observed that in war, truth is the first casualty. Peter L. Biro FRSA argues that, in the wake of the Trump presidency and of the democratic backsliding that has been in process throughout the West, in the war on truth, the first…
A Lawyer’s Introduction to the Fall and Potential Rise of Liberal Constitutional Democracy: Peter L. Biro’s special address to Ryerson University’s Faculty of Law in its Inaugural Year
Steve Paikin speaks to the editor and contributors of the new book, “Constitutional Democracy Under Stress: A Time for Heroic Citizenship.” They discuss the fragile state of democracies around the world, the existential threats they face, and the “civic serum” needed to cure what ails them.
Listen to Peter in conversation with Royal Society of Arts CEO, Matthew Taylor, on this influential podcast on ideas, BRIDGES TO THE FUTURE, as they discuss LIBERAL DEMOCRACY’S SOCIAL COHESION DEFICIT…
Listen to Peter’s engaging conversation with Stephen Hurley on the state of western democracy, leadership, citizenship and civil society in the aftermath of COVID-19, the global protests for racial justice and the problem of democratic backsliding in liberal…
Greetings from Section 1 in this deeply uncertain, destabilizing time. The pandemic has, if nothing else, exposed the cracks in our political economy and put into question many of the core principles on which our way of life – particularly in the west – is…
Why “SECTION 1”? Because liberal constitutional democracy is everywhere under siege. Because the values that underpin freedom and democracy are being undermined or repudiated outright in so-called democratic societies throughout the world. Because, as so many…
