Judging the Judges

If you read only English-language print media, you may just barely recall a reference to La Bataille de Londres: Dessous, secrets et coulisses du rapatriement constitutionnel when it came out in April of this year. In this retelling of the patriation saga of 1978–82 Frédéric Bastien argues for the critical importance of the British side of the story, using new evidence gleaned from official sources in the United Kingdom. Much of it came from diplomatic correspondence obtained via freedom of information requests. The author’s sensational allegations about inappropriate behaviour by Chief Justice Bora Laskin during the Supreme Court’s consideration of the Patriation Reference of 1982 were front-page news for a day. The story then sank like a stone.

In the French-language media, the book’s allegations were treated as the Canadian equivalent of the Wikileaks scandal, with Bastien, cast in the role of Julian Assange. For weeks scarcely a day went by without some...