The Rule of the Courts

Adopting a Canadian Style Legislative Override to Reconcile American Judicial Review...

has succeeded in gutting diversity programs designed to provide opportunity to students from historically excluded groups and has illegally gained control of school curricula by improperly threatening to withhold federal funds to non-compliant schools. 17 This state of affairs would be unthinkable in today’s Canada. For someone who chose the U.S. over Canada as a young man, the lamentable fact is that when I took up residency in the U.S. in 1997, national cohesion and the rule of law appeared far stronger in the U.S. and although overall human development was higher in Canada, the U.S. appeared to be closing the gap and was certainly a more lucrative option for those, like myself, who anticipated being in the top quintile of households in terms of income. As of today, it is the U.S. and not Canada that is the laggard amongst mature democracies in terms of both national cohesion and rule of law. While U.S. income per head remains considerably higher than Canada and most other mature democracies, living standards are typically quite lower for the vast majority, and, the country has, in the intervening generation, gone from being a middle class republic governed by the rule of law, to a dysfunctional democracy that is governed to satisfy the economic interests of high net worth households and corporations alone. 18 Although this diver gence between the U.S. and Canada has many causes, some explanation for the divergence can be found in the countries’ court systems and how each country appoints judges that adjudicate cases and controversies. Why might the U.S. Supreme Court, which, unlike its Canadian coun terpart, has blanket judicial review power, failed to act to restore a proper sense of equilibrium? While educated Canadians are completely aware of 17 Trump Administration Threatens to Withhold Funding from Schools with DEI Programs, The Guardian (Apr. 3, 2025), https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/apr/03/trump universities-dei-funding 18 See e.g. U.S. Added Over 1,000 Millionaires a Day Last Year, UBS Says, Reuters (June 18, 2025), https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/us-added-over-1000-millionaires day-last-year-ubs-report-says-2025-06-18/ (last visited Dec. 30, 2025) (reporting that the United States accounted for nearly 40% of the world’s millionaires, adding more than 379,000 new millionaires in 2024, or over 1,000 per day).

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