Legislative Context in Sentencing: A Closer Look at R v Sharma

Abstract

This short paper argues that the Sharma majority’s methodological clarification vis-a-vis section 15 is consistent with how courts understand legislative design choices in Canadian law and is a necessary first step to understanding the legal effect of an impugned law. Properly understood, the clarification should not lead to a problem of double deference. Rather, it is an encapsulation of an age-old idea: that “it is the most natural and genuine exposition of a statute to construe one part of the statute by another part of the same statute, for that best expresseth the meaning of the makers.”