This article reconsiders George Grant's account of the decision of the US Supreme Court in Roe v. Wade against legal restrictions on abortion to support his claim that liberal contractualism here raises but cannot resolve the ontological question of what makes justice our due, while questioning his treatment of this crisis as the final triumph of technological reason, and the Biblical idea of will, over the remnants of an ancient justice based on the Platonic notion of contemplation. What provokes liberalism to question equality of right is as much its denial of the Biblical account of family and creation as its denial of classical political philosophy.

This article examines the impact of two policy crises on the structure and behaviour of Canadian oil and gas interest groups. It first retests Glyn Berry's three propositions developed in 1974 after the first energy crisis, in light of the second energy crisis in 1979–1980. It then generates and examines two further propositions. The three propositions retested are: that interest group influence declines during a crisis; that if the crisis necessitates intensive federal-provincial bargaining, this tendency is accentuated, and that when facing a serious governmental threat the group under attack will seek to exert its influence as widely as possible. The article shows that the evidence from the second crisis supports the validity of the above propositions, but in addition two further hypotheses are examined and found valid. These are: that in post-crisis periods interest group influence is re-established, but that where crises broaden the scope of policy, interest groups are restructured so as to accommodate the broadened interests which both benefit from and are harmed by the crisis policy response. The interest groups examined are the Canadian Petroleum Association, the Independent Petroleum Association of Canada, the Canadian Association of Oilwell Drilling Contractors, and the Canadian Gas Association.

By way of a critical assessment of the leading authorities on the critics of the Judicial Committee, this article argues that the proper appreciation of what the law lords did to the terms of the BNA Act can be found in an understanding of their perception of their unique function. Supporters of the Judicial Committee's decentralization of the terms of the British North America Act have tended to rely on either G. P. Browne's book on the subject or Alan Cairns's article in this Journal (4 [1971], 301–45). The purpose of this article is to challenge those authorities and offer an alternative explanation.

The 1982 Charter gives the contemporary Supreme Court enhanced responsibilities in the overall Canadian constitutional system. These novel responsibilities require a jurisprudence appropriate to the new relations between courts and legislatures for which our past has ill-prepared us. In addition to the Charter and the host of citizen-state relations which are thus placed on the Supreme Court agenda, the 1982 Constitution Act, s. 52(1), establishes the supremacy of the constitution, which further underlines the growing significance of the judicial branch in our constitutional future. Are judges to be the midwives of constitutional evolution, seeking to adapt the constitution as an instrument of government to emerging conditions, or are they largely to eschew such a role by employing varying strategies and philosophies of self-control, such as adhering as closely as possible to a more technical task definition, deferring wherever possible to legislatures, resisting the lure of judicial creativity as inappropriate to their appointed status, and throwing the burden of constitutional adaptation on other more overtly political institutions of government?

I appreciate the opportunity Professor Vaughan's article provides to clarify some of my thoughts on the Judicial Committee and constitutional interpretation.

Vaughan and I are in agreement on two broad points. First, the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council read a theory of classical federalism into the BNA Act. This theory of divided sovereignty was expressed most clearly by Lord Watson in the Maritime Bank case. Secondly, the BNA Act's treatment of federalism is highly centralist, both in the division of powers and in the federal government's imperial powers over provincial governments. Both these points are contained in the following passage from my introduction: “In their anxiety to preserve a division of powers appropriate for “classical federalism” and thereby resist the strongly centralizing tendencies of the constitutional text, the Judicial Committee developed an acute sensitivity to the competing claims of the provinces and the federal government.” I think Professor Vaughan would agree with that statement.

We report on findings from alternative ways of assessing the meaning given to “left” and “right” by respondents in the 1984 National Election Study. Approximately 40 per cent of the sample supplied definitions of the concepts; in comparison, about 60 per cent stated their feelings toward left-wingers and right-wingers and described their political orientations using a seven-point left/right rating scale. Left signified socialism or communism for about one-half of those who supplied definitions, and dislike for left-wingers seemed to be associated with these conceptions of left. Right, which was much more highly regarded than left, signified conservatism for one-quarter of those who defined the term. We also factor analyzed respondents' self-ratings on the left/right scale along with their answers to 15 attitude statements. Left was weakly associated with support for labour's use of the strike weapon. In a criterion group of respondents who had completed university and who had ventured definitions of left and right, self-ratings correlated with factors tapping attitudes toward the military and toward economic disparity and social welfare. As expected, respondents' ratings of themselves on the left/right scale were more similar to their ratings of their preferred parties than to their ratings of other parties. The relationship between self-ratings and ratings of preferred parties generally varied directly with the strength of party identification. We conclude with some observations about the political utility of political labels such as left and right.

Prior to the 1984 Canadian federal electoral campaign, public opinion polls were predicting a Liberal victory. During the period of the campaign, the polls predicted a Conservative victory. What was it that produced this change among the electorate? This article attempts to respond to this question on the basis of an exploratory study carried out in the riding of Sudbury. The study shows that the focus of the election was less on the campaign platforms of the different parties than on the impossible mission facing the Liberal party and especially its leader.

At the end of 1983, after a long and bitter political struggle, the Swedes adopted a system of wage earner funds. The five regionally-based funds are directed by boards dominated by employees. Using funds transferred to them by government, they invest in Swedish companies, primarily by buying shares on the stock market. The fund scheme will enable employees collectively to own about 10 per cent of Swedish business by 1990. They could control far more. Only experience can determine the impact of this new form of social ownership. But possibly the Swedes have found a socially and democratically appealing means of retaining the advantages of a market system while integrating social and economic forces.

This note traces the reasoning behind Riker's addenda to Duverger's law, which exempts Canada and India from its general determinism. Characteristics common to Canada and India, but not to other countries using the plurality electoral system, are examined. The study finds that the uniqueness of those two federal nations employing the simple-majority system lies in the dominance of one national party, the weakness of the conventional alternative governing party, and the persistence of ideological parties of the left.