Creeping Americanization: Canadian Constitutional Practice and the Influence From South of the Border

David Schneiderman, University of Toronto Faculty of Law, has published ‘Introduction’ to Red, White, and Kind of Blue? The Conservatives and the Americanization of Canadian Constitutional Culture in Red, White, and Kind of Blue? The Conservatives and the Americanization of Canadian Constitutional Culture (University of Toronto Press, 2015). Here is the abstract.

Situated between two different constitutional traditions, those of the United Kingdom and the United States, Canada has maintained a distinctive third way: federal, parliamentary, and flexible. Yet in recent years it seems that Canadian constitutional culture has been moving increasingly in an American direction. Through the prorogation crises of 2008 and 2009, its senate reform proposals, and the appointment process for Supreme Court judges, Stephen Harper’s Conservative government has repeatedly shown a tendency to push Canada further into the US constitutional orbit. Red, White, and Kind of Blue is a comparative legal analysis of this creeping Americanization, as well as a probing examination of the costs and benefits that come with it. Comparing British, Canadian, and American constitutional traditions, David Schneiderman offers a critical perspective on the Americanization of Canadian constitutional practice and a timely warning about its unexamined consequences.

Download the Introduction from SSRN at the link.