The Right Honourable  Beverley McLachlin  PC MA LLB
Beverley McLachlin on November 20, 2007
17th Chief Justice of Canada
Incumbent
Assumed office  January 7, 2000
Nominated by	Jean Chrétien
Appointed by	Adrienne Clarkson (as Governor General)
Preceded by	Antonio Lamer
Puisne Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada
In office March 30, 1989 – January 7, 2000
Preceded by	William Rogers McIntyre
Succeeded by	Louis LeBel
Born	September 7, 1943 (1943-09-07) (age 66) Pincher Creek, Alberta
Birth name	Beverley Gietz
Spouse(s)	Roderick McLachlin (d. 1988), Frank McArdle (m. 1992)
Alma mater	University of Alberta
Profession	Lawyer

Beverley McLachlin, PC (born September 7, 1943) is the Chief Justice of Canada, the first woman to hold that position.

[edit] Early life

Born Beverley Gietz in Pincher Creek, Alberta, the eldest child of Ernest Gietz and Eleanora Kruschell, she received a BA and a MA degree in philosophy and an LL.B degree (winning the gold medal as top student and serving as Editor-in-Chief of the Alberta Law Review) from the University of Alberta. She was called to the Bar of Alberta in 1969 and to the Bar of British Columbia in 1971. She practised law from 1969 until 1975. From 1974 until 1981 she was an Associate Professor and Professor with tenure at the University of British Columbia.

She has one son from her first marriage to Roderick McLachlin. Her first husband died in 1988 and she remarried in 1992 to Frank McArdle.

[edit] Career as a judge

In 1981 she was appointed to the County Court of Vancouver and then to the Supreme Court of British Columbia. In 1985 she was appointed to the British Columbia Court of Appeal and in 1988 was appointed Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of British Columbia. She was appointed to the Supreme Court of Canada on March 30, 1989 and was made Chief Justice of Canada on January 7, 2000.

Upon being sworn in to the Supreme Court of Canada, she also became a Deputy Governor General of Canada together with the other justices of the Supreme Court.

When Governor General Adrienne Clarkson was hospitalized for a cardiac pacemaker operation on July 8, 2005, Justice McLachlin served as the Administrator of the Government and performed the duties of the Governor General, including giving royal assent to the Civil Marriage Act, effectively legalizing same-sex marriage in Canada. She relinquished that task when the Governor General returned to good health in late July.

She is the Chairperson of the Canadian Judicial Council, the Board of Governors of the National Judicial Institute, and the Advisory Council of the Order of Canada. She is a Member of the Queen's Privy Council for Canada. She was made a Commander of the Legion of Honor by the Government of France in 2008 ^[1][2]. On December 15 2006 she was appointed a Commander of the Venerable Order of Saint John ^[3].

She has been awarded over 21 honorary Doctor of Laws degrees and is the Honorary Patron of the Institute of Parliamentary and Political Law. She has also been awarded the Yes She Can Award from Balmoral Hall School in 2005 in Winnipeg, Manitoba.

[edit] Judgments

During her early years on the Supreme Court, she was characterized as a judge with libertarian leaning after her dissent in R. v. Keegstra, finding that the hate-speech criminal offences were unconstitutional, and her judgment in R. v. Zundel where she struck down the criminal offence of spreading false news. This was also seen to an extent in her decision of R. v. Sharpe where she upheld the child pornography criminal provisions, but limited it by excluding imaginative works that are for private use. During this, she also ruled that the laws should apply to fictional depictions, declaring that 'person' would include fictional people as well as real people.

Interpreting "person" in accordance with Parliament's purpose of criminalizing possession of material that poses a reasoned risk of harm to children, it seems that it should include visual works of the imagination as well as depictions of actual people. Notwithstanding the fact that 'person' in the charging section and in s. 163.1(1)(b) refers to a flesh-and-blood person, I conclude that "person" in s. 163.1(1)(a) includes both actual and imaginary human beings.

—Supreme Court of Canada, R. v. Sharpe, Paragraph 38^[4]

Among her more controversial decisions was her ruling in R. v. Seaboyer, where she struck down the rape shield law because it violated the right to a fair trial of those accused of sexual assault.

McLachlin has tried to force additional consensus in the Court's decisions, often times writing controversial decisions herself to forge that consensus. In doing so, she is widely recognized for "still writing lots of judgments in her own clear style."^[5]

[edit] See also

• List of Supreme Court of Canada cases (McLachlin Court)

[edit] Notes

[edit] External links

• Supreme Court of Canada - Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin
• The Canadian Encyclopedia - Beverley McLachlin
• Fundamental Freedoms: The Charter of Rights and Freedoms - Charter of Rights website with video, audio and the Charter in over 20 languages