The Invisible Constitution in Comparative Perspective

Unwritten Constitutional Principles in Canada 

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point appeals to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council were abolished, 

and after proclamation of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms reveals that 

both the threat of reversal, in the first case, and constitutional amendment, in 

the second case, “legally constrained” Supreme Court justices.

35

This selected evidence points to the likelihood that strategic decision- 

making has, at the very least, an episodic presence in Canadian judicial deci-

sion-making. It is likely, then, to be one among several factors that drive judicial 

outcomes.

36

 Indeed, it is probably correct to say that judicial choices typically 

exhibit elements of the legal, strategic and even attitudinal, and that it is often 

hard to isolate any one of these elements.

37

 We should be hesitant, then, to 

characterize strategic decision-making as something other than “law.”

38

 Though 

some commentators view the Court’s performance in the Secession Reference 

as not constitutional law “in any conventional sense” or amounting to “extralegal 

amendment,”

39

 all that we need acknowledge here is that it represents a signif-

icant deviation from standard, and usually-to-be-expected, judicial technique. 

Strategic decision-making informed by unwritten constitutional principles, in 

other words, represents a novel departure from the typical Canadian constitu-

tional forms of argumentation.

40

 In which case, a strategic model of judicial 

behavior may aid in understanding judicial outcomes, particularly in those high 

profile disputes that have political salience.

41

 It also might help to explain when 

the Court will have recourse to unwritten constitutional principles.

35 

Susan W. Johnson, “The Supreme Court and Strategic Decision Making: Examining Justices’ 

Voting Patterns During Periods of Institutional Change” (2012) 42 American Review of Canadi-

an Studies 236.

36 

Emmett Macfarlane, Supra note 29, 185.

37 

Mark A. Garber, “Legal, Strategic or Legal Strategy: Deciding to Decide During the Civil 

War and Reconstruction” in Ronald Kahn and Ken I Kersch (eds.), The Supreme Court and 

American Political Development (Lawrence, KS: University of Kansas Press, 2006) 33, 48, 60.

38 

For one who does not, see Phillip  Bobbitt,  Constitutional Fate: Theory of the Constitution 

(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982) 61.

39 

Jamie  Cameron, “The Written Word and the Constitution’s Vital Unstated Assumptions” 

in Pierre Thibault, Benoit Pelletier and Louis Perret (eds.), Essays in Honour of Gerald A. 

Beaudoin: The Challenges of Constitutionalism (Montreal: Les Éditions Yvon Blais Inc, 2002) 

89, 108 and Sujit Choudhry, “Ackerman’s Higher Lawmaking in Comparative Constitutional  

Perspective: Constitutional Moments as Constitutional Failures?” (2008) 6 Int J Const Law 

193, 214.

40 

Choudhry, “Ackerman’s Higher Lawmaking in Comparative Constitutional Perspective”, 218.

41 

Though not exclusively in high profile disputes. A strategic account might explain any number 

of judicial outcomes. Moreover, any number of objectives (and not just judicial policy pref-

erences) can be served by strategic decision-making. See discussion in Epstein and Knight, 

“Walter F. Murphy: The Interactive Nature of Judicial Decision Making” in Nancy Maveety 

(ed.), The Pioneers of Judicial Behavior (Ann Arbor, MI: The University of Michigan Press, 

2002) 197, 200–1. In this paper, I argue that reliance upon unwritten principles can be under-

stood as a signal that the Court is acting strategically.

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