What is the current state of the law on constitutional amendments?

Northwest Territories, Canada


The following excerpt is from Sibbeston v. Canada (Attorney-General), 1988 CanLII 5673 (NWT CA):

The injunction of Holmes J. in Otis v. Parker, 187 U.S. 606 (1903), seems timely when we say that we have no hesitancy in confirming the integrity of the amending process found wholly within Part V of the Constitution Act, 1982; While the courts must exercise a judgment of their own, it by no means is true that every law is void which may seem to the judges who pass upon it excessive, unsuited to its ostensible end, or based upon conceptions of morality with which they disagree. Considerable latitude must be allowed for differences of view, as well for possible peculiar conditions which this court can know but imperfectly, if at all. Otherwise a constitution, instead of embodying only relatively fundamental rules of right, as generally understood by all English-speaking communities, would become the partisan of a particular set of ethical or economic opinions, which by no means are held semper ubique et ab omnibus.

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