ABSTRACT Although the Canadian legal system has many virtues, it has at least one major weakness – its judicial appointments and promotion systems. The paper begins by identifying six key values that need to be considered in order to assess the legitimacy of a judicial appointments process – independence, impartiality, representativeness, transparency, accountability and efficiency. In the following sections, through the use of three case studies of appointments to the Supreme Court of Canada, the superior courts of Nova Scotia and a promotion to the Federal Court of Canada, we demonstrate that Canada has failed to live up to these values. We conclude by suggesting that recent reforms to the judicial appointments processes by the current government are an improvement, but that more radical reforms are essential to enhance public confidence in the integrity of Canada’s judicial appointments and promotion systems.

中文翻译：

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加拿大司法的致命弱点：加拿大司法任命的道德规范

摘要 尽管加拿大的法律制度有很多优点，但它至少有一个主要弱点——司法任命和晋升制度。本文首先确定了需要考虑的六个关键价值，以评估司法任命程序的合法性——独立性、公正性、代表性、透明度、问责制和效率。在以下各节中，通过对加拿大最高法院、新斯科舍省高等法院的任命和加拿大联邦法院的晋升三个案例研究，我们证明加拿大未能实现这些价值观。最后，我们建议现任政府最近对司法任命程序的改革是一种改进，