Introduction: la fin de Oakes?

Twenty years after the Supreme Court of Canada's famous decision in R. v. Oakes (1986) interpreting the limitation clause of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, the meaning, role, and normative foundation of the analysis for justifying the limits of constitutional rights remain controversial. The critical essays in this volume interrogate the central question raised by this limitation clause: what general conditions must be satisfied before a constitutional right's limit constitutes a reasonable limit prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society?