Mandates, Legal Foundations, Powers and Conduct ofCommissions of Inquiry

Indeed, it may be just as difficult to disentangle law and politics as it is to separate religious and sexual passions. While law has traditionally been presented as more value-neutral than politics, in either its academic or applied form, the inaccuracy of this view of law is becoming widely recognized. Value choices have always been a vital aspect of legal adjudication and the arrival of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms in 1982 has forced judges to be more overt about this aspect of their job.' The separation of law and politics is more a matter of mythology than fact and nowhere is that more apparent than in the operation of public inquiries. The question that I have been asked to address is what kind of child has been born of this classically Canadian union of law and politics.