Canadian rights: a jurisprudential Canadian “style”?

The essay starts off by analysing the stratified and mixed nature of the Canadian system of legal sources concerning rights before 1982. It then offers an overview of judicial adaptation to the new rigid source of protection of such rights, namely the Canadian Charter of Fundamental Rights and Freedoms. It then addresses the influence of federalism on the interpretation of fundamental rights. With respect to this point, it argues that Federalism is in some way the preferred lens through which Canadian courts look at rights to decide their content, core, limits and to balance them against other rights or principles. Ultimately, it explores the techniques judges employed in interpreting fundamental rights upon the enactment of the Charter