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Well, hold your horses. There are a couple of problems with this line of reasoning, which has become ever more popular in certain legal and left-leaning circles.

The first lies in our notion of what a “conservative” judge is. In the U.S., there is a clear delineation between conservative and liberal judges, and an informal affiliation between them and their respective parties. In Canada, judicial ideology is present, but far more nuanced. And whatever worldview a judge might bring to the bench, she remains bound by precedent and the facts of the case at hand.

“Judges might be conservative in one area of law and liberal in other areas of the law. That typifies the evidence we have about ideology and judges,” said Emmett Macfarlane, a University of Waterloo professor and author of Governing from the Bench: The Supreme Court of Canada and the Judicial Role. “In Canada, you can discern patterns in specific areas, but you can’t use how one judge rules on one thing and predict how they’re going to rule in another area.”

No one knows this better than Harper. “His” Supreme Court has been using the Charter to thwart Conservative legislation like it’s going out of style (see: prostitution, mandatory minimums, assisted dying, etc.). Thus, our notion of what it means to be “conservative” has lately been grounded in a particular judge’s relationship with the Charter.

And while progressives have taken to trumpeting the rights guaranteed in that document — freeing the way most notably for abortion and gay marriage rights — those on the right have objected on the grounds that some of these rulings impinge on parliamentary supremacy. In other words, many conservatives argue that giving judges more and more authority to decide laws ultimately takes power away from the people we elect and hands that power to appointed jurists who can’t be voted out of office.