Ted McWhinney

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Ted McWhinney

Edward "Ted" McWhinney, QC , LL.M , SJD , LL.D , JD (Yale) (born May 19, 1924) is a Canadian lawyer and academic specializing in constitutional and international law. He was a Liberal Party Member of Parliament from 1993 to 2000 for the electoral district of Vancouver Quadra.

[edit] Biography

Born in Sydney, Australia, McWhinney, a professor emeritus at Simon Fraser University, is an expert on the Canadian Constitution who is often called upon to advise the Canadian government. He has reportedly advised successive Canadian prime ministers since John George Diefenbaker, as well as several governors general.

He has held professorships at Yale, the Sorbonne, Toronto, McGill, Indiana, College de France, and at the Meiji University in Tokyo. He has been a legal consultant to the United Nations; constitutional adviser to the Premier of Ontario and to the Premier of Quebec; chief adviser to the Canadian government's Task Force on National Unity (the Pepin-Robarts Commission); Royal Commissioner of Enquiry to the Government of Quebec; Special Commissioner of Enquiry for the Government of British Columbia; special adviser to the Canadian delegation to the United Nations General Assembly, as well as constitutional and international law adviser to a number of foreign governments.

The author of 24 books (two of them in French and one in German), editor of 11 symposium volumes, and author of several hundred scientific articles, he is the first jurist from Canada to be elected to the century-old Institut de Droit International. He has been a member of the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague and is a member of the Institut Grand-Ducal of Luxembourg, and of the the Académie Internationale de Droit Comparé in Paris.

[edit] Legal theory

In 2005, in anticipation of the publication of his book, The Governor General and the Prime Ministers, Canadian media sources reported that McWhinney, a professor of constitutional law and former member of Parliament, had suggested that a future government of Canada could begin a process of phasing out the monarchy after the eventual demise of Elizabeth II of Canada "quietly and without fanfare by simply failing legally to proclaim any successor to the Queen in relation to Canada". This would, he claimed, be a way of bypassing the need for a constitutional amendment that would require unanimous consent by the federal parliament and all the provincial legislatures (Vancouver Sun, February 17, 2005). McWhinney's suggestion has not elicited a response from any Canadian governments or from other constitutional experts prior to the October 2005 publication of his book. John Aimers of the Monarchist League of Canada argued that McWhinney is assuming it would be politically possible to achieve such a change in the status of the Crown without input from the provinces, and that his proposal ignores what Aimers asserts are prescriptive clauses of the Constitution Act, 1867 such as Sections 9 and 17.[1] [2]. It also ignores the long-established principle that the accession proclamation is not ipso facto effective in making someone the Sovereign; it is the public annoucement of what has already occurred automatically by operation of law.