Constitutions as Living Trees: An Idiot Defends

Abstract

In this article, I defend Charters of Rights and the practices of judicial review to which they normally give rise against a number of objections one encounters in public and academic discourse, most notably in the work of Jeremy Waldron. In answering Waldron and his fellow critics, I develop a "living tree" or "common law" conception of Charters and show how it can be used successfully to answer their most powerful criticisms.

Keywords: constitutions, Waldron, judicial review