Two Supreme Court justices, enduring mental illnesses decades apart, show how far we’ve come GlobeDebate
David ButtDavid Butt is a Toronto-based criminal lawyer and former prosecutor.
In 1984, Gerald Le Dain was elevated to serve as a Justice on the Supreme Court. He was a brilliant man – an accomplished scholar, the dean of Osgoode Hall Law School, a killer constitutional lawyer in Canada’s highest courts. He was a far-sighted commissioner, too; he recommended the decriminalization of cannabis decades before it actually happened. Justice Le Dain was Pierre Trudeau’s final appointment to the Supreme Court, and he couldn’t have made a better pick.
That Justice Le Dain had nothing more than a highly treatable illness didn’t matter. That he retained his full intellectual vigour didn’t matter. That he had just completed one of the decade’s most significant pieces of judicial reasoning didn’t matter. He had to be gone, and the reasons why could not be made public, lest it taint the reputation of the Court.
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