page_title: Lyman Duff
section_title: Impact
hierarchical_section_title: Lyman Duff / Impact
caption_attribution_description: Unveiling ceremony of bust of Sir Lyman P. Duff at the Supreme Court Building. (L.-R.:) James Lorimer Ilsley, James Chalmers McRuer, Sir Lyman Duff, John T. Hackett, K.C., William Lyon Mackenzie King, Thibaudeau Rinfret
context_page_description: Sir Lyman Poore Duff, GCMG, PC was the eighth Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada. He was the longest serving justice of the Supreme Court of Canada.
context_section_description: Duff employed a conservative form of statutory interpretation. In a 1935 Supreme Court judgment, he detailed how judges should interpret statutes:
  The judicial function in considering and applying statutes is one of interpretation and interpretation alone. The duty of the court in every case is loyally to endeavour to ascertain the intention of the legislature; and to ascertain that intention by reading and interpreting the language which the legislature itself has selected for the purpose of expressing it.
  Duff has been called a "master of trenchant and incisive English," who "wrote his opinions in a style which bears comparison with Holmes or Birkenhead." A former assistant of Duff, Kenneth Campbell, argued that Duff was "frequently ranked as the equal of Justices Holmes and Brandeis of the United States Supreme Court," and Gerald Le Dain asserted that Duff "is generally considered to have been one of Canada's greatest judges." Other writers have taken a less favourable view, instead arguing that Duff's reputation is largely unearned; his biographer concluded that he was not an original thinker, but essentially a "talent student and exponent of the law rather than a creator of it."
  More recent commentary has focused on Duff's legal formalism and its effect on Canadian federalism. Bora Laskin attacked Duff's decisions, arguing that Duff used circular reasoning and hid his policy-laden decisions behind the doctrine of stare decisis. As well, Lionel Schipper noted that, in reviewing Duff's judgments, it was:
  apparent that he has given certain factors very little consideration in formulating his decisions. ... In constitutional cases, not only are the actual facts of the case significant but the surrounding social, economic and political facts are equally significant. A shift in these latter factors is as important in deciding a case as any other change in the facts. It is this consideration that Chief Justice Duff ignored.
caption: Sir Lyman Duff poses with his bust at its official unveiling, Sept. 5, 1947.  In photo: (L.-R.:) J.L. Ilsley, J.C. McRuer, Sir Lyman Duff, John T. Hackett, K.C., W.L. Mackenzie King, Thibaudeau Rinfret.
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