Judicial participation in high quality, relevant judicial education is critical to public confidence in the administration of justice. The Canadian Judicial Council (CJC) has, until recently, insisted that judicial independence requires exclusive judicial control over judicial education. However, a series of legislative initiatives directed at judicial education on sexual assault and intimate partner violence has complicated this understanding of judicial independence. We argue that government willingness to interfere is a political response to public dissatisfaction with the judicial treatment of gender-based violence. We suggest that this public dissatisfaction should trigger an institutional judicial reconsideration of what judicial independence requires in the judicial education context. Any reconsideration should focus on the key recommendations in the legislative amendments: 1) the need for increased transparency about judicial education, and 2) the importance of involving expert public stakeholders in the development of educational materials on the social context of gender-based violence. In our view, neither increased transparency, nor respectful collaboration with relevant public stakeholders pose a threat to judicial independence properly understood. Rather they are a necessary response to the complex relationships between judicial independence, judicial impartiality and judicial accountability in a legal system that takes women’s equality seriously.
This article is a follow-up to “Judging Sexual Assault: The Shifting Landscape of Judicial Education in Canada” (2019) 97:2 Canadian Bar Review 367. In that piece we analyzed proposed federal legislation on sexual assault education for federally appointed judges. That bill died on the order paper but two recent legislative interventions, in 2021 and 2023, amend the judicial education provisions in the Judges Act. Both received unanimous political support. In this article we focus on Bill C-3, which deals with sexual assault and social context, and “Keira’s Law” which deals with intimate partner violence and coercive control in ntimate and family relationships.