National Post View: You can’t choose your peers – National Post

May 22, 2015

In a ruling released Thursday, the majority of Supreme Court justices endorsed an eminently reasonable and practical position on Canadians’ right to trial by an independent and impartial jury of their peers. While it stands to reason such a jury should be reasonably “representative” of the community, that cannot be judged quantitatively, Justice Michael Moldaver wrote for the majority — i.e. on the demographic qualities of its actual composition. Rather, he argued, “the question is whether the state provided a fair opportunity for a broad cross-section of society to participate in the jury process.”

Justices Thomas Cromwell and Beverley McLachlin dissented, arguing it’s not a matter of “the state’s efforts,” but whether the list of potential jurors was quantitatively representative of the overall population, and if not, whether that was the state’s fault. In the case at hand, they felt the state — the government of Ontario — had fallen short in its efforts to call on that “broad cross-section of society.” And there is no question the situation was far from ideal.

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