Section 7 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms provides that “[e]veryone has the right to life, liberty and security of the person and the right not to be deprived thereof except in accordance with the principles of fundamental justice.” This book sets out what these principles are and outlines the place of section 7 in the constitutional order; how courts decide whether a particular legal principle is so fundamental that it merits recognition under section 7; the conditions under which section 7 will apply to a legal dispute; the legal norms that have been recognized, or rejected, as principles of fundamental justice under section 7; and the very limited circumstances in which an infringement of section 7 will be justified under section 1. The book is underlined by the view that the principles of fundamental justice are important to the legal order of a free and democratic society.

Hamish Stewart is a professor of law at the University of Toronto, where he has taught criminal law, the law of evidence, and legal theory since 1993. Before attending law school, he studied economics, receiving his BA from the University of Toronto in 1983 and his PhD from Harvard University in 1989. He received his LLB from the University of Toronto in 1992, clerked at the Ontario Court of Appeal in 1992–93, and was called to the Ontario Bar in 1998. He is the principal author of Sexual Offences in Canadian Law (2004) and has published more than fifty scholarly papers in criminal law, evidence, legal theory, and economics. He recently contributed the Evidence title to Halsbury’s Laws of Canada (2010). He is the general editor of Evidence: A Canadian Casebook, 3d ed (2011) and an associate editor of the Canadian Criminal Cases.

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