William McIntyre, Former Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada has Passed Away

Ave Atque Vale: William McIntyre, 1918-2009

The former justice of the Supreme Court of British Columbia, the British Columbia Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court of Canada died earlier this week.

He was, in my opinion, an underappreciated jurist. His majority decision in Dolphin Delivery (in fact, a unanimous decision, subject only to a few quibbles from Beetz and Wilson JJ) has attracted considerable attention from tort law scholars in recent years. And few judges in his time ever tried to breathe life into Diefenbaker's Bill of Rights - as he did in his dissent at the Court of Appeal in R. v. Miller and Cockriell - for which he was later criticized (ironically, given the contrasting reputations of all the judges involved) by both Laskin CJ and Dickson J. (in R. v. Miller).

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