When Judges Become Social Engineers

About this episode

Gavin and Stephen discuss the implications of judges acting as social engineers, using the Waterloo homeless encampment decision as a case study.

Send us Fan Mail When judges become social engineers, democracy starts to wobble. Gavin and Stephen examine the Waterloo homeless encampment decision as a major example of courts moving beyond traditional Charter review and into the realm of public policy design. What began as a dispute over a municipal bylaw and a public parking lot becomes, in their view, a much larger warning about judicially engineered social outcomes, the constitutionalization of housing policy, the weakening of el...

People in this episode

Hosts: Gavin, Stephen

Topics covered

• judicial activism
• social policy
• housing rights
• democracy
• court decisions

Keywords

• judges
• social engineering
• democracy
• housing policy
• court decisions

Mentioned in this episode

Places: Waterloo

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