When Canadians allow fundamental issues of public policy -- such as abortion, euthanasia, or whether possession of child pornography should be a crime -- to be decided by courts, rather than by Parliament, they are shrugging off the perhaps now irksome burden of self-government. At bottom, democracy is anti-authoritarian, not because it arrives at correct, or even principled, conclusions, but because it imposes on everyone the burden of thinking and deciding for oneself. How much easier to allow the nine philosopher-kings on the Supreme Court of Canada to think and decide for us.

- Ian Hunter