Reflective Essay: The Charter Of Rights

The Charter of rights gives the judiciary power to decide on constitutional issues like the legalization of same sex marriages, prostitution and physician assisted suicide. The parliament rarely interferes in the decisions taken by the courts, whether they agree the way the courts decide the issue or not. In my opinion the parliament should take an active role in settling these controversies and giving guidance to the country because the parliament is a group of elected representatives, representing the interest of the citizens in a country. Issues directly affecting the citizens should involve the representatives of the citizens and when the courts decide on such cases in a way that the citizens do not agree with, the representatives that is the parliament should be able to affect the outcomes to favor the citizens. Certain tools can be used by the parliament in cases where there is a disagreement with the court rulings on rights cases. First thing one should note is the power the judiciary has to ensure its freedom from the influence of the legislature and this power is known as the judicial review. This is the power given to the judiciary to mandate its decision when it perceives another branch of government is against …show more content…
The current example where section 33 was almost used was in 2005, on the case of legalization of same sex marriage, in this case opponents of the same sex marriage called on the parliament to use the section 33 to prevent the judiciary from legalizing this kinds of marriages. Steven Harper, whose party was opposed to same sex marriages, as the party leader was careful to rule out the use of the notwithstanding clause as this would have made it easy for rival parties to paint his party as enemies of the