Methodology for Interpreting Constitutional Legislation: Crucially Different or Much the Same?
Bibliographic record
Abstract
This article considers whether the methodology for interpreting legislation that forms part of the Constitution of Canada is the same as or different from the methodology for interpreting other legislation. Former Chief Justice Dickson’s characterization of the interpretation of the Constitution as “crucially different from that of construing a statute” has had a significant effect on constitutional jurisprudence, but in what sense is it different and have these differences been overstated? This article begins by examining the features of constitutional legislation Dickson mentions and concludes they are neither unique to constitutional legislation nor found in all constitutional legislation. The article then considers constitutional decisions of Judicial Committee of the Privy Council and the Supreme Court of Canada interpreting and applying the Constitution Act, 1867 from the 19th century through to the 21st. On the basis of these decisions, the article concludes the elements of interpretive methodology Dickson identified, in relation to constitutional interpretation, apply to varying degrees, not only to constitutional texts, but also to non-constitutional legislation. The methodology for constitutional interpretation is essentially the same as that for interpreting other legislation. However, some constitutional legislation (notably provisions that have been frequently litigated) tends to attract particular elements of interpretive methodology and to that extent, it is distinctive. This article, and its focus on legislative interpretation, has its origins in an LLM thesis I prepared under the direction of Professor Archambault. It focused on the judicial review of delegated legislation, but it broadly ranged over many aspects of constitutional and administrative law that Professor Archambault prompted me to explore on my journey to provide a comprehensive picture of how the courts have supervised the exercise of delegated legislative power. I am deeply grateful for the expansive scope Professor Archambault allowed me and nourished with his guidance.
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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 | 0.140 | 0.151 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.008 | 0.007 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.007 | 0.081 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.025 | 0.028 |
| Open science | 0.006 | 0.007 |
| Research integrity | 0.008 | 0.015 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.002 |
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".