CONSTITUTIONAL PARALYSIS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23499, 13 May 1938, Page 16

CONSTITUTIONAL PARALYSIS

“ Constitutional laws, like any other laws, get out of date,” said Professor J. L. Brierly, in & recent broadcast talk. “ When a constitition is drafted, it is sheer impossibility to foresee the future conditions in which it will have to be applied. Let me tell you of a very serious situation which has just arisen in Canada. Canada, as a member of the International Labour Office, has made certain treaties dealing with labour matters; but the courts have held that the matters dealt with fall within the sphere of the provinces to regulate, and not Canada as a whole, and she now finds it impossible legally to carry these treaties into effect. Such a situation could not have been contemplated when the Constitution was framed, because at that date Canada was a colony with , no treaty-making powers. Yet now that she is a nation, she find herself paralysed in the exercise of one of the essential attributes of nationhood, by a document which it is not quite impossible. but certainly immensely difficult, to change. This international disadvantage of federal systems is, perhaps, their most serious disadvantage to-day when international relations play so vastly increased a part in the life of States.”