Lyman Duff

The Right Honourable Sir Lyman Duff GCMG PC QC
Lyman Poore Duff in 1910
8th Chief Justice of Canada
In office March 17, 1933 – January 7, 1944
Nominated by	Richard B. Bennett
Preceded by	Francis Anglin
Succeeded by	Thibaudeau Rinfret
Puisne Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada
In office September 27, 1906 – March 17, 1933
Nominated by	Wilfrid Laurier
Preceded by	Robert Sedgewick
Succeeded by	Frank Hughes
Personal details
Born	Lyman Poore Duff (1865-01-07)January 7, 1865 Meaford, Ontario
Died	April 26, 1955(1955-04-26) (aged 90) Ottawa, Ontario
Alma mater	University of Toronto, Osgoode Hall Law School

Sir Lyman Poore Duff GCMG PC QC (7 January 1865 – 26 April 1955) was the eighth Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada. He was the longest serving justice of the Supreme Court of Canada.

Early life and career

Born in Meaford, Canada West (now Ontario) to a Congregationalist minister, he received a Bachelor of Arts in mathematics and metaphysics in 1887, a Bachelor of Laws in 1889 from the University of Toronto and then entered Osgoode Hall Law School. He was called to the Ontario Bar in 1893.

From 1890 to 1895, he was a mathematics teacher at Barrie Collegiate Institute. He was a lawyer in Fergus, Ontario and moved to Victoria, British Columbia in 1895 to practise law. In 1895, he was made a Queen's Counsel.

Judicial and other appointments

Bust of the Rt. Hon. Sir Lyman Duff in the Supreme Court of Canada building.

In 1904, he was appointed a puisne judge of the Supreme Court of British Columbia. In 1906 was appointed a justice of the Supreme Court of Canada. He was appointed Chief Justice of Canada in 1933, succeeding to Chief Justice Anglin. On January 14, 1914, he was appointed to Her Majesty's Most Honourable Privy Council. Duff was the first Puisne Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada to be appointed to the Imperial Privy Council. In 1924 he was elected honorary bencher of Gray's Inn, at the recommendation of Lord Birkenhead.

In 1931, he served as Administrator of the Government of Canada between the departure of Lord Bessborough for England and the arrival of Lord Tweedsmuir. Duff took on the position, as the Chief Justice was unavailable. In 1933, Duff was promoted to Chief Justice. He was made a Knight Grand Cross of the Order of St. Michael and St. George the following year as a result of Prime Minister Richard Bennett's temporary suspension of the Nickle Resolution.

When Governor General Lord Tweedsmuir died in office on February 11, 1940, Chief Justice Duff became the Administrator of the Government. He held the office for nearly four months, until King George VI appointed Alexander Cambridge, 1st Earl of Athlone as Governor General on June 21, 1940. Duff was the first Canadian to hold the position, even in the interim. A Canadian-born Governor General was not appointed until Vincent Massey in 1952.

Duff also heard more than eighty appeals on the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, mostly Canadian appeals; however, he never heard Privy Council appeals from the Supreme Court of Canada while he served on the latter. The last Privy Council appeal heard by Duff was the 1946 Reference Re Persons of Japanese Race.

In 1942, Duff served as the sole member of a Royal Commission constituted to examine the Liberal government's conduct in relation to the defence of Hong Kong. The resulting report, which completely exonerated the government, proved to be controversial, and was seen by many as a whitewash.

Upon reaching the mandatory retirement age for judges in 1939, his term of office by three years by special Act of Parliament; in 1943, his term of office was extended for another year by Parliament. He retired as Chief Justice in 1944.

Impact

Sir Lyman Duff poses with his bust at its official unveiling, Sept. 5, 1947. In photo: (L.-R.:) J.L. Ilsley, J.C. McRuer, Sir Lyman Duff, John T. Hackett, K.C., W.L. Mackenzie King, Thibaudeau Rinfret.

Duff employed a conservative form of statutory interpretation. In a 1935 Supreme Court judgment, he detailed how judges should interpret statutes:

The judicial function in considering and applying statutes is one of interpretation and interpretation alone. The duty of the court in every case is loyally to endeavour to ascertain the intention of the legislature; and to ascertain that intention by reading and interpreting the language which the legislature itself has selected for the purpose of expressing it.

Duff has been called a "master of trenchant and incisive English," who "wrote his opinions in a style which bears comparison with Holmes or Birkenhead." A former assistant of Duff, Kenneth Campbell, argued that Duff was "frequently ranked as the equal of Justices Holmes and Brandeis of the United States Supreme Court," and Gerald Le Dain asserted that Duff "is generally considered to have been one of Canada's greatest judges." Other writers have taken a less favourable view, instead arguing that Duff's reputation is largely unearned; his biographer concluded that he was not an original thinker, but essentially a "talent student and exponent of the law rather than a creator of it."

More recent commentary has focused on Duff's legal formalism and its effect on Canadian federalism. Bora Laskin attacked Duff's decisions, arguing that Duff used circular reasoning and hid his policy-laden decisions behind the doctrine of stare decisis. As well, Lionel Schipper noted that, in reviewing Duff's judgments, it was:

apparent that he has given certain factors very little consideration in formulating his decisions. ... In constitutional cases, not only are the actual facts of the case significant but the surrounding social, economic and political facts are equally significant. A shift in these latter factors is as important in deciding a case as any other change in the facts. It is this consideration that Chief Justice Duff ignored.

External links

• Supreme Court of Canada biography
• Lyman Poore Duff fonds