Foreign Affairs in the Canadian Constitution
The ability to make decisions impacting international affairs can be a thorny subject for a federal state like Canada. Provinces wield considerable powers, but does their legal authority extend beyond provincial borders? How is power over foreign affairs defined within the law? Foreign Affairs in the Canadian Constitution breaks new ground with a rigorous exploration of these questions.
Scott Fairley explores federal-provincial confrontations over foreign affairs, beginning with the free-trade debate of the 1980s and encompassing issues such as Quebec’s assertion of its capacity to enter into treaties in areas of supposedly exclusive provincial authority. He provides the backdrop to these controversies, tracing Canada’s evolution from self-governing semi-colonial status in 1867 to the autonomous nation-state it is today, and offers comparative analyses of legal approaches in other federal states, such as Australia and the United States.
Fairley proposes that over time, governmental practice and judicial interpretation have construed the foreign affairs power as a field of federal jurisdiction based on Canada’s written and unwritten constitution. This meticulously argued conclusion accords with basic principles of federalism while allowing us a better understanding of Canada as a unified nation-state within the community of nations.
Foreign Affairs in the Canadian Constitution is the authoritative book on the history and current state of foreign affairs law for policy-makers and public servants, practising private-sector and government lawyers, and scholars of Canadian law, history, and political science.
Fairley has provided a rich, historical, constitutional, and legal account of the evolution of the exercise of foreign affairs powers in their fullest sense. Few others in Canada could have written as comprehensively on this subject.
With feet in both scholarship and practice, Fairley has a lengthy and esteemed record as an academic lawyer. As such, his first-hand experience with many of the developments makes Foreign Affairs in the Canadian Constitution a rich and readable account of a complex subject.
H. Scott Fairley is a partner at Cambridge LLP, Toronto, with extensive experience litigating constitutional and international issues before all levels of Canadian courts, including the Supreme Court of Canada. He was formerly a tenured professor at the University of Windsor, and served as constitutional counsel to the Ontario Ministry of the Attorney General before entering private practice. Dr. Fairley holds two advanced degrees in law, an LL.M from New York University and an SJD from Harvard University. A past president of the Canadian Council on International Law, he has lectured widely and published over seventy articles, comments, and chapters in books. He is also the principal co-author of International Law, a title within the Canadian Encyclopedic Digest.
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