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In other words, how sharper than a serpent’s tooth is an ungrateful Harper judicial appointee.

And this was hardly the first time that Harper-named judges have been seen to stick it to the PM and government which appointed them, just a particularly delicious illustration of it.

Mr. Harper has appointed seven of the nine Supreme Court judges, yet that court almost routinely has thumbed its nose at his government’s tough-on-crime laws. The government has also elevated more Liberal-appointed Ontario Superior Court judges to the appeal court than it has bumped up Conservative-appointed ones.

It goes on and on: If this government has been trying to appoint the rabidly conservative to the courts, it has utterly failed. That may be because Mr. Harper et al just aren’t very good at winnowing out who is philosophically aligned with them (which is, by the by, surely the spoils owed the electoral victor) or, more likely, because as Andrew Stobo Sniderman wrote in Maclean’s magazine three years ago, the truth is that “Judges tend to defy partisan characterization.”

So what to make then of the recent whingeing from the criminal defence bar that the Harper government, in this instance Justice Minister Peter MacKay, is appointing too many prosecutors and not enough defence lawyers?

This was in relation to a sheaf of 22 new superior court appointments across the country last month. Of the 22, a total of eight were prosecutors.

First of all, the single largest group – nine — were from the civil side of things, litigators with specialities in labour law, bankruptcy, tax and the like.

But more to the point, being a prosecutor doesn’t begin to equate with being a Charter-loathing troglodyte. I am unaware of a speck of evidence that it does. As it happens, I know and have seen in action several of those appointees: They may of course be frothing-at-the-mouth law-and-order freaks, but nothing they have ever done or said would suggest that.

And history teaches that they’ll all do just as they please anyway, just as George R. Strathy does. Huzzah: Nothing to see here, people. Move along now.

National Post

cblatchford@nationalpost.com