DOING IT "OUR WAY"?

(With apologies to Paul Anka.) Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin's throne speech glossed over one of his most controversial proposals: public parliamentary hearings on Supreme Court nominees. Martin first mentioned the idea of giving parliament a chance to vet nominees in October of 2002 (see the Globe and Mail's article here). The Toronto Star's editorial page thinks that such hearings would be an unwise americanization of the nominations process. Currently, the Prime Minister selects judges to sit on the high court.

Is Martin's plan a good idea? Like any institutional change, it is likely to have rippling effects that are unforseeable. Critics of the plan argue that the Canadian judiciary's reputation as an impartial body would be harmed by open, public dialogue about the views of judges on controversial topics of the day -- the predictable result of political scrutiny at the crossroads of deeply divisive cultural and political issues like gay marriage. Perhaps. I don't know about public opinion data on Canadian views about their high court, but if it is anything like American public opinion data, the court probably has a great deal of room to enter into controversial issues and still retain a reserve of latent public support. That said, I suppose that the novelty of the proposed vetting process could itself increase the salience of the court; although it's difficult to compare across political systems, a new forum could in fact be more effective at politicizing the Canadian judiciary than the continuance of the public forum in the U.S., because more people might tune in and pay attention.