Legal Research

Canadian Journalists Hunger for Gavels

By Simon Chester

Most Slaw readers will know that gavels simply aren’t part of the equipment of Canadian or British judges - however much they may feature in the popular iconography of the American judicial system.

Which meant that it seemed odd to see headlines like Gavel falls on Judge Cosgrove, by Tracey Tyler in the Toronto Star for April 1, (admittedly fixed in the electronic archive) or Gavel Slams Harper on Khadr in the free Toronto newspapers for April 24.

It’s a continual myth, as comments in the Blogosphere show and as Lloyd Duhaime’s online dictionary of Canadian law shows. Justice Alvin Hamilton has even written a book on Aboriginal Justice entitled: A Feather Not a Gavel: Working Towards Aboriginal Justice (Winnipeg: Great Plains Publications, c. 2001). As one Canadian student tells us:
A gavel is a hammer looking object that the judge uses for making the public quiet, a McGill journalist adds a gavel to a story on a student who interns for a judge or a social worker in the GTA says: Parents Have Input Until The Gavel Comes Down. Even Justice Frank Iacobucci had a gavel at the SCC and the BCSC talks about gavel-to-gavel coverage in R. v. Pilarinos, (2001), 158 C.C.C. (3d) 1, (2001), 88 C.R.R. (2d) 33.

Full post as published by Slaw.ca on April 28, 2009 (boomark / email).