Canadian Lawyer

w w w . C A N A D I A N L a w y e r m a g . c o m A P R I L 2 0 1 7 17 who's done an amazing job and is getting recognized more and more, I notice.") Some jurisdictions offer even more extensive disclosure of judges' assets than the United States. My favourite is India. The Supreme Court of India website has remarkable details about the assets of sitting and former judges and their spouses, all disclosed, the website says, "voluntarily" (actually, not so voluntarily — in 1997, the judges by formal resolu- tion agreed to disclose their finances to the chief justice, and in 2009, after hot debate, agreed to disclose them publicly). So, for example, we learn that Chief Justice Jagdish Singh Khehar owns a Cielo car, a Beretta pistol, two pairs of gold cufflinks, some real estate including a six-bedroom house and various bank accounts (he does not appear to own stocks and bonds). Some of the justices have quite extensive portfolios of individual securities. Justice R. Banumathi, one of very few women who have sat on the court, does not own a car, but her husband has a Honda Activa scooter. This brings me to the Supreme Court of Canada. There are no formal finan- cial disclosure requirements for Supreme Court justices. None. We don't know if Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin owns a pistol or Justice Rosalie Abella's husband has a scooter. The system relies completely on judges, on their own initiative, either disclosing to the parties anything that might be a problem and seeking their agreement to their continuing or disquali- fying themselves. This is also true in the United Kingdom and Australia. Where does a judge seek formal guid- ance? The Canadian Judicial Council, in a pamphlet entitled Ethical Principles for Judges, offers some non-binding anodyne advice along the lines of "a judge should not preside over a case in which he or she has a financial or property interest that could be affected by its outcome or in which the judge's interest would give rise in a reasonable, fair minded and informed person, to reasoned suspicion that the judge would not act impartially." This hardly helps in a specific case. It is quite rare for a Supreme Court judge to recuse himself (the most recent example, I think, was Justice Marshall Rothstein's recusal in the 2014 Nadon reference, and that had nothing to do with money). I have not been able to find one case in Supreme Court history of explicit recusal for finan- cial reasons (if someone knows of one, please let me know). If a judge is left to twist in the wind, what about the citizenry? Where do we look for assurance that a judge has no financial conflict of interest? We must rely, faute de mieux, on the integrity and efficiency of judges and their staff. And, to be clear, in the past such reliance has proven sufficient. There is no scandal or crisis needing resolution. But today, with traditional demo- cratic institutions including the judiciary under attack in the western democracies, is it enough? I don't think so. Let's dispel any lingering doubt. Why not require full formal financial disclosure? It's the Caesar's wife thing. Philip Slayton is immediate past president of PEN Canada. He is working on a book about freedom in Canada. Because business issues are legal issues. So if you want to get ahead in business, get the degree that gets you there faster. ONE YEAR – PART - TIME – NO THESIS FOR L AWYERS AND NON - LAWYERS law.utoronto.ca/ExecutiveLLM GPLLM Global Professional Master of Laws [Get a Master of Laws] ntitled-1 1 2015-02-25 8:38 AM

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