TOP COURT TAL E S BY PHILIP SLAYTON
As the Khadr ruling shows, the Supreme Court is not yet ready to stare down the executive branch and provoke a constitutional crisis.
T
he Supreme Court of Canada and the Supreme Court of the United States each recently tried to poke
a finger in the eye of the executive branch. In this country it was done, with tra-
ditional Canadian delicacy and restraint, in the case of Canada (Prime Minister) v. Khadr. The Khadr judgment, released at the end of January, is an example of what some have called a post-Charter of Rights dialogue between government and the judiciary. In this particular con- versation, the government easily shouted down the judges. In the United States, the poke in
the eye (also in January) happened in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. A divided U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that corporations have a constitutional right to spend money to support or oppose political candi- dates. In doing so, it struck down part of the well-established McCain-Feingold campaign-financing law. President Barack Obama criticized the Citizens United judgment in his Jan. 27 state of the union address. Justice Samuel Alito, who was present, mouthed "not true" as Obama was speaking, and was caught on camera doing so. Kaboom! Omar Ahmed Khadr is a Canadian
citizen detained at Guantanamo Bay (this is for the sake of those who have
for a crisis Not the time
been living on another planet for the last few years). Khadr was seized by the Americans in Afghanistan in 2002 when he was 15 and awaits trial on war crimes charges. It is alleged he was a member of al-Qaida and threw a gre-
16 Ap R il 2010 www. C ANAD i AN law ye rmag.com
nade that killed an American soldier. In 2003, agents from Canadian intelligence services questioned Khadr and shared the results of those interviews with U.S. authorities. In 2004, a Canadian official interviewed Khadr again, knowing he
DARCY MUENCHRATH
