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OTTAWA — Last April 22, Justice Morris Fish announced he was resigning from the Supreme Court of Canada at the end of the spring session.

More than six months later, his eight colleagues on the country’s highest court convene this Tuesday to hear an important constitutional reference on one of the Conservative government’s legacy policies: Senate reform.

Fish’s vacated Quebec seat on the bench will sit empty.

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The repercussions of that vacancy are profound.

An unprecedented legal challenge has been mounted by a Toronto constitutional lawyer to the appointment of Marc Nadon, the semi-retired Federal Court of Appeal judge picked by Prime Minister Stephen Harper to replace Fish.

The Conservative government has responded with its own reference to the top court on the appointment’s constitutionality, and simultaneously rewrote a section of the Supreme Court Act — a clarification, says the government — buried in a 300-plus page budget implementation bill.