Anglin Court
The Anglin Court was the period in the history of the Supreme Court of Canada from 1924 to 1933, during which Francis Alexander Anglin served as Chief Justice of Canada. Anglin succeeded Louis Henry Davies as Chief Justice following Davies' death, and held the position until his resignation on February 28, 1933.
The Anglin Court, much like all iterations of the Supreme Court prior to 1949, was largely overshadowed by the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, which served as the highest court of appeal in Canada, and whose decisions on Canadian appeals were binding on all Canadian courts. The Anglin Court's decisions were overturned in several high-profile cases, including the Persons case, and the Aeronautics Reference.
The Anglin Court continued to face many of the same criticisms as its predecessors, the Ritchie Court, Strong Court, Taschereau Court, Fitzpatrick Court, and Davies Court, including the concerns about the quality and partisan nature of the appointments, and the growing political role of the justices.
Membership
The Supreme Court Act, 1875 established the Supreme Court of Canada, composed of six justices, two of whom were allocated to Quebec under law, in recognition of the province's unique civil law system. Early appointments to the Court reflected an unwritten regional balance, with two justices from Ontario and two from the Maritimes. The western provinces were not represented until the early twentieth century.Appointment of Chief Justice Anglin
Chief Justice Louis Henry Davies died on May 1, 1924, at the age of 78. Although he had planned to retire in 1921, a dispute over his pension's value delayed his departure. On September 16, 1924, Francis Alexander Anglin was appointed as the seventh Chief Justice of Canada. Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King did not initially favour Anglin for the position. He repeatedly offered the position to prominent Quebec lawyer Eugène Lafleur, even enlisting Governor General Lord Byng to persuade him, but Lafleur declined each time.At the time of appointment, Anglin was the third most senior justice on the Court. He was elevated over John Idington, whose declining mental capacity led to his eventual removal in 1927 after Parliament introduced a mandatory retirement age of 75. Also senior was Lyman Duff, widely regarded as the Court's most capable jurist. However, his close association with Robert Borden's Conservative government and rumours of alcoholism made his appointment politically untenable. Duff's biographer, David Ricardo Williams, argues that alcoholism was not the true reason for his exclusion; rather, King sought to strengthen Liberal support in Quebec, where Duff's role on the wartime conscription appeals board had been unpopular. However, historian Ian Bushnell disputes this position. Anglin himself had written to the Department of Justice opposing Duff's promotion, and the tension between them persisted throughout Anglin's tenure as Chief Justice.
King's decision to appoint Anglin may have been influenced by an earlier encounter with the justice. In 1911, while serving as Minister of Labour, King interfered with a case before the Supreme Court that touched upon his grandfather's reputation. He and his cousin privately wrote to one of the justices, providing information not on the record that later surfaced in litigation. Historians Snell and Vaughan have suggested that Anglin's dissent in that case, favourable to King's position, may have influenced his appointment as Chief Justice in 1924.
Membership of the Court
Justices from the Davies Court who continued into the Anglin Court included John Idington of Ontario, Lyman Duff of British Columbia, and Pierre-Basile Mignault and Albert Malouin of Quebec.On September 16, 1924, Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King appointed Edmund Leslie Newcombe of Nova Scotia to the Supreme Court at the age of 65, filling the vacancy created by Chief Justice Davies's death. Newcombe had been called to the bar in 1883, practised as a litigator, taught insurance law at Dalhousie Law School, and served as Deputy Minister of Justice for thirty-one years. Although the Deputy Minister's role was primarily administrative, Newcombe frequently appeared as counsel before both the Supreme Court and the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. Historian Ian Bushnell notes that Newcombe was not a strong representative of the Maritimes, having resided in Ottawa for at least three decades before the appointment. Snell and Vaughan note that, although he was rejected for the Chief Justiceship due to his Conservative affiliations, he nonetheless enjoyed strong support within King's Liberal cabinet for appointment as a puisne justice. The appointment was generally well received, though Chief Justice of Ontario William Mulock privately criticized Newcombe for his lack of practical legal experience and that he displayed an excessively dogmatic approach to law.
On October 1, 1924, King appointed Thibaudeau Rinfret of Quebec to the Court at the age of 45, following the resignation of Albert Malouin. Rinfret had been considered for the same vacancy eight months earlier when Malouin was appointed. Called to the bar in 1901, Rinfret was a Liberal who had unsuccessfully contested a seat in the 1908 federal election. He later taught comparative law and public utilities at McGill University and was appointed to the Quebec Superior Court in 1922.
In 1927, Parliament amended the Supreme Court Act to expand the Court from six to seven justices and to introduce a mandatory retirement age of 75. The King government had advocated for such a change since at least 1924, repeatedly urging Justice John Idington to retire due to concerns over his declining capacity, a request he appeared to resist. Idington ultimately left the bench on March 31, 1927, when the amendments came into force, ending his tenure through operation of law.
On April 2, 1927, John Henderson Lamont of Saskatchewan was appointed to the Supreme Court at the age of 61, filling the vacancy created by Idington's departure. Lamont's appointment followed sustained lobbying from Prairie politicians seeking regional representation on the Court. The only previous justice from the region, Albert Clements Killam, had served for just a year and a half.
Lamont began his legal career in Toronto, where he practised for four years before moving west to Prince Albert in 1899, later serving as Crown Prosecutor. He was elected as a Liberal Member of Parliament in 1904, and, following the creation of Saskatchewan in 1905, he resigned from Parliament to became the province's first Attorney General. In 1907, he was appointed to the Court of King's Bench for Saskatchewan, and in 1918 was elevated to the Court of Appeal after the court's judicial functions were split. His 1927 appointment formally established the tradition of regional balance in the Court's composition by reserving one seat for the Prairie provinces.
On May 18, 1927, Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King appointed Robert Smith of Ontario to the newly created seventh seat on the Supreme Court at the age of 67. Smith was called to the bar in 1885 and had previously served as a Liberal Member of Parliament. In 1922, he was appointed to the High Court Division of the Supreme Court of Ontario, owing to both his legal ability and Liberal party connections. Two years later, he was transferred to the Appellate Division. His appointment to the Supreme Court was grounded in his professional competence, his respected standing at the Ontario bar, and political advocacy from his son, Arnold Neilson Smith, who had been elected to the House of Commons in 1926. Smith sought to negotiate a special pension as a condition of his appointment, but ultimately accepted only a vague government assurance that his retirement would be provided for.
On January 14, 1930, King appointed Lawrence Arthur Dumoulin Cannon of Quebec to the Court at the age of 52, succeeding Pierre-Basile Mignault, who had reached the new mandatory retirement age and stepped down on September 30, 1929. The appointment had been delayed by Minister of Justice Ernest Lapointe, who hoped to coordinate it with the selection of a new Chief Justice of Quebec. Before Cannon's appointment, the position was offered to Louis St. Laurent and possibly Louis-Philippe Demers. Cannon was called to the bar in 1899, practised in Quebec City, and was active in municipal and provincial politics as a Liberal, serving on the Quebec City Council and in the Legislative Assembly of Quebec. In 1927, he was appointed to the Appeal Division of the Court of King's Bench of Quebec.
On September 21, 1932, Prime Minister R. B. Bennett appointed Oswald Smith Crocket of New Brunswick to the Supreme Court at the age of 64, filling the vacancy created by the death of Edmund Leslie Newcombe on December 9, 1931. Bennett had struggled to find a suitable candidate from New Brunswick, even writing to Premier Charles Dow Richards that there was "no one in New Brunswick fitted by training and experience to become a member of the Court." Though a personal friend of Crocket, Bennett hesitated because Crocket's judicial experience was limited to the trial level, with no appellate background. Crocket had been called to the bar in 1891, served as a Conservative Member of Parliament, and was appointed to the Supreme Court of New Brunswick, King's Bench, in 1913. Historians Snell and Vaughan regard his appointment as a weak one, describing Crocket as inflexible and deeply traditionalist, an approach that would later cause friction with Chief Justice Duff.