La bonne foi et la common law : L’arrêt Bhasin c. Hrynew (Good Faith and the Common Law: The Supreme Court of Canada's Decision in Bhasin v Hrynew)
Bibliographic record
Abstract
French Abstract: Dans ce commentaire, j'inscris la decision de 2014 de la Cour supreme du Canada dans Bhasin c. Hrynew sur la bonne foi dans le droit des contrats dans le contexte general de la reflexion en common law sur le role des tribunaux. Correctement compris, Bhasin ne represente pas une rupture radicale avec le passe. Au contraire, il represente un developpement fonde sur des principes de la common law, de facon progressive. En effet, il serait plus exact de voir Bhasin comme developpant une obligation negative de ne pas agir de mauvaise foi plutot que comme une obligation positive d'agir de bonne foi. La reticence de Bhasin a imposer des obligations positives est tout a fait compatible avec la reticence de longue date des tribunaux de common law a exiger des individus qu'ils agissent d'une maniere particuliere. En consequence, il serait tout a fait errone de voir dans Bhasin une derive vers des modes de pensee civils sur les obligations contractuelles - le droit quebecois n'est invoque que pour appuyer la conclusion que le developpement propose de la loi ne perturberait pas la comprehension des parties aux relations commerciales. Au lieu de cela, Bhasin devrait etre vu pour ce qu'il est: un chef-d'œuvre de raisonnement progressiste fonde sur des principes, incrementaliste, qui vise a eviter un changement radical dans la loi. English Abstract: In this comment, I place the Supreme Court of Canada's 2014 decision in Bhasin v Hrynew on good faith in contract law in the broad context of common law thinking on the role of the courts. Properly understood, Bhasin does not represent a radical break with the past. Rather, it represents a principled development of the common law, in an incremental fashion. Indeed, it would be more accurate to see Bhasin as developing a negative obligation not to act in bad faith rather than a positive obligation to act in good faith. The reluctance in Bhasin to impose positive obligations is entirely consistent with the long-standing reluctance of common-law courts to require individuals to act in a particular way. Accordingly, it would be quite wrong to see in Bhasin a drift towards civilian modes of thinking about contractual obligations -- the law of Quebec is relied upon only to support the conclusion that the proposed development of the law would not upset the settled understandings of parties to commercial relationships. Instead, Bhasin should be seen for what it is: a masterpiece of principled, incrementalist common-law reasoning which seeks to avoid radical change in the law.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.003 | 0.005 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.024 | 0.015 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.012 | 0.003 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Research integrity | 0.012 | 0.013 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.007 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".