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“I just shake my head, because we aren’t the United States,” she says. “It’s not part of the Canadian tradition, perhaps because we’re slightly less political in our orientation. People here aren’t appointed because they represent a certain point of view.”

For example, when human rights hate speech laws came up for review in Whatcott, 20 years after they were upheld as valid limits on free speech, there was speculation McLachlin’s earlier dissent would become the majority view. It did not, and the provincial laws still stand. But when assisted suicide came up again, she led a unanimous court in striking down the ban, just as she advocated in dissent the first time.

Winning is not a judge’s goal, but there is a certain satisfaction in this for the chief.

“Only in a secondary sense, you know,” McLachlin says. “As a judge, and I’ve been a judge for a long time, I have always resolved to just try to judge the issues as honestly as I can, and not to think about things in too strategic a manner. My job is simply to listen to what the parties have to say, and to do my best to understand the position, the ramifications of deciding one way or the other, to think about what’s best for Canadian society on this particular problem that’s before us, and give it my best judgment after listening to, also, my eight other colleagues. So there’s a consensual element there.

“But if at the end of all that dialogue and discussion I still feel [in dissent], as I did for example in Rodriguez, the first case on assisted suicide, I had no regrets. I knew it was a very difficult question, a heart-wrenching question, and the process had been excellent. We had had enormously deep and anguished sometimes discussions, and it came out 5-4, and I said the process was good. I decided the way I thought but I respect my colleagues decision the other way. When it came back [in the recent Carter decision], I said I’m going to give it the same process and apply the same approach, and it came out differently.”