Rules of Construction, Stare Decisis, and the Doctrine of Precedent are of Limited Value Because of the Charter

Prior to her appointment to the Supreme Court of Canada, current Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin wrote:

The Charter means that judges are called upon to answer questions they never dreamed they would have to face, such as the right to abortion, the right to work after sixty-five and the right to practice one’s profession as one wishes. To make matters more difficult, the Charter has deprived judges of their traditional methods of answering the questions that are put before them. Rules of construction, stare decisis and the doctrine of precedent are of limited value when one is not only confronted by new issues, but required to make fundamental value choices in deciding them.

--Emmett Macfarlane, introduction to Governing from the Bench: The Supreme Court of Canada and the Judicial Role, Law and Society (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2013), 11.