Xref: utzoo can.francais:129 can.politics:2098
Newsgroups: can.francais,can.politics
Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!neat.ai.toronto.edu!lamy
From: lamy@ai.utoronto.ca (Jean-Francois Lamy)
Subject: Re: Bourassa and Bill 101
Message-ID: <89Jan13.232312est.38446@neat.ai.toronto.edu>
Organization: Department of Computer Science, University of Toronto
References: <88Dec21.113818est.9269@ois.db.toronto.edu> <2541@looking.UUCP> <836@mannix.iros1.UUCP> <17099@onfcanim.UUCP>
Distribution: can
Date: Fri, 13 Jan 89 23:22:59 EST

Laws have been enacted that limit individual rights and judgments have upheld
some of them and overturned others.  I used to think that that was one of the
very reasons we had a Supreme Court.  In the case of Bill 101 I've heard the
view that the intention of the legislator was to protect individual rights of
the anglophone minority in Que'bec in areas like education but that
commercial signs and publicity were not considered linked to individual
rights.  Whatever argument was used, the Supreme Court did not buy it, but
left the door open to restrictions (predominance of French would have been
acceptable, it seems).

Absolutes seldom are.

Jean-Francois Lamy               lamy@ai.utoronto.ca, uunet!ai.utoronto.ca!lamy
AI Group, Department of Computer Science, University of Toronto, Canada M5S 1A4