The Invisible Constitution in Comparative Perspective

David Schneiderman

18.2. Embrace

It is by now commonplace to explain the Court’s opinion in the Secession 

Reference with reference to legitimacy concerns.

42

 It is less common, however, 

to link the identification of unwritten constitutional principles to the judicial 

strategy that was in play.

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 These, typically, are treated as less controversial and 

play a subsidiary role in the legitimacy narrative, as compared to the consti-

tutional duty to negotiate and the Court’s withdrawal from any supervisory 

role in furtherance of that duty.

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 I argue that the unwritten constitutional 

principles revealed in the Secession Reference were a response to legitimacy 

concerns then facing the Court and which no longer are present. Judges and 

scholars from Quebec mistook these signals as genuinely novel legal develop-

ments rather than strategic responses intended to get the Court out of a jam. 

Though operating within a legal frame, the Court sought out a method to 

resolve legal problems that looked suspiciously situational. Rather than the 

age, rigidity, or prolixity of the constitution as factors driving the Supreme 

Court down this path, I argue that legitimacy concerns, which periodically 

42 

Sujit Choudhry and Robert Howse, “Constitutional Theory and the Quebec Secession Ref-

erence” (2000) 13 Canadian J of Law and Jurisprudence 143; Vuk Radmilovic, “Strategic Le-

gitimacy Cultivation at the Supreme Court of Canada: Quebec Secession Reference and 

Beyond” (2010) 43 Canadian J of Political Science 843; David Schneiderman, “Introduction” 

in David Schneiderman (ed.), The Quebec Decision: Perspectives on the Supreme Court Ruling 

on Secession (Toronto: Lorimer, 1999); Robert Young, “A Most Politic Judgment” in David 

Schneiderman (ed.), The Quebec Decision: Perspectives on the Supreme Court Ruling on Se-

cession (Toronto: Lorimer, 1999).

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A recently discovered exception is Jean Leclair “Constitutional Principles in the Secession 

Reference” in Nathalie Des Rosiers, Patrick Macklem and Peter Oliver (eds.), The Oxford 

Handbook on the Canadian Constitution 1010 (Oxford:  Oxford University Press,  2017). 

Choudhry and Howse, “Constitutional Theory and the Quebec Secession Reference” (note 42)  

purport to be providing an account of the Secession Reference that is internal to law, but their 

explanation draws upon the motifs of context and legitimacy, the kinds of considerations that 

drive strategic accounts external to law. On internal and external influences, see Ronald Kahn 

and Ken I Kersch, “Introduction” in Ronald Kahn and Ken I. Kersch (eds.), The Supreme 

Court and American Political Development (Lawrence, KS: University of Kansas Press, 2006) 

1, 17–18.

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Radmilovic, for instance, provides a strategic account of the Secession Reference  but de-

scribes the Court as having “moderated” its activism in “Strategic Legitimacy Cultivation 

at the Supreme Court of Canada” (note 42) 858. Gaudreault-Desbiens argues that meta- 

principles fell within “constitutional parameters already known or suspected” in Jean-François 

Gaudreault-Desbiens, “Quebec Secession Reference and the Judicial Arbitration of Conflict-

ing Narratives about Law, Democracy, and Identity” (1999) 23 Vermont L Rev 793, 828. I argue, 

by contrast, that the Court exaggerated the degree to which the Constitution is unwritten so 

as to provide cover for its innovative constitutional strategy of devising a new constitutional 

duty to negotiate.

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