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41 Queen's L.J. 73 (2015-2016)
Defeat and Ambiguity: The Pursuit of Judicial Selection Reform for the Supreme Court of Canada

handle is hein.journals/queen41 and id is 91 raw text is: Defeat and Ambiguity: The Pursuit of Judicial Selection Reform for the Supreme Court of Canada Erin Crandall* The more important a court, the more controversial its judicial selection system tends to be. This is especially true for Canada's Supreme Court. The prime minister's nearly unchecked power over judicial selection has been the focus of longstanding complaint. Yet, despite a general acceptance that change is needed, formal reform-either constitutional or statutory-has proven elusive. This article discusses the question of why Canada has been unsuccessful at reforming the Supreme Court's system ofjudicial selection. It analyzes the unsuccessful efforts at constitutional change undertaken from the 1970s to 1990s and compares these attempts at reform to the judicial selection system of the High Court of Australia over the same time period. This article also considers how the longstanding ambiguity concerning the Supreme Court's constitutional status has affected more recent efforts a t reform, a nd the consequences forfuture reform after the Court's affirmation of its constitutional entrenchment in Reference re Supreme Court Act, ss 5 and 6. I Assistant Professor, Department of Politics, Acadia University. Thanks to Christopher P Manfredi, Jacob T Levy, Matthew Hennigar, Jeffrey A Sachs and the anonymous reviewers of this journal who all offered helpful feedback on earlier versions of this project. A special thanks goes to Richard Albert who provided the opportunity to be part of this issue. Part of this research was supported by the Fonds de recherche du Qu6bec: Soci6t6 et culture (FRQSC) in the form of a post-doctoral fellowship. E. Crandall

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