Editing Lyman Duff (section)

==Impact==
[[Image:LymanDuffBust.jpg|thumb|right|Duff poses with his bust at its official unveiling on September 5, 1947. In the photo (from left to right): [[James Lorimer Ilsley|J.L. Ilsley]], [[James Chalmers McRuer|J.C. McRuer]], Duff, John T. Hackett, K.C., Prime Minister [[W.L. Mackenzie King]] and Chief Justice [[Thibaudeau Rinfret]].]]

Duff employed a conservative form of [[statutory interpretation]]. In a 1935 Supreme Court of Canada judgment, he detailed how judges should interpret statutes:

{{quote|
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.<ref>{{cite CanLII|litigants=The King v. Dubois|link=|year=1935|source=CanLII|num=1|pinpoint=381|parallelcite=[1935] SCR 378|date=1935-05-13|courtname=auto|juris=}}</ref>
}}

Duff has been called a "master of trenchant and incisive English," who "wrote his opinions in a style which bears comparison with [[Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.|Holmes]] or [[F. E. Smith, 1st Earl of Birkenhead|Birkenhead]]."<ref>{{cite journal |author= W.H. McConnell|year= 1968|title= The Judicial Review of Prime Minister Bennett's 'New Deal|journal= [[Osgoode Hall Law Journal]]|volume= 6|pages= 39–86|publisher= [[Osgoode Hall Law School]]|doi= 10.60082/2817-5069.2376|doi-access= free}} at 51</ref> A former assistant of Duff, Kenneth Campbell, argued that Duff was "frequently ranked as the equal of Justices Holmes and [[Louis Brandeis|Brandeis]] of the [[United States Supreme Court]]".<ref>Campbell 1974, at 243</ref> [[Gerald Le Dain]], an academic and later a judge on the Supreme Court, asserted that Duff "is generally considered to have been one of Canada's greatest judges."<ref>Le Dain 1974, at 261.</ref> 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 "talented student and exponent of the law rather than a creator of it."<ref>{{Cite book
| url = https://books.google.com/books?id=Q5telT6zFRUC
| title = Captive Court: A Study of the Supreme Court of Canada
| last = Bushnell
| first = Ian
| date = 1992-10-08
| publisher = McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP
| isbn = 9780773563018
| language = en
}}</ref>

More recent commentary has focused on Duff's [[legal formalism]] and its effect on [[Canadian federalism]]. A later successor [[Chief Justice of Canada]], [[Bora Laskin]] attacked Duff's decisions, arguing that Duff used [[circular reasoning]] and hid his policy-laden decisions behind the doctrine of ''[[stare decisis]]''.<ref>{{cite journal |author= Bora Laskin |author-link= Bora Laskin |year= 1947|title= 'Peace, Order and Good Government' Re-Examined|journal= Canadian Bar Review|volume= 25|pages= 1054|publisher= [[Canadian Bar Association]]}}, at 1069-70.</ref> As well, Lionel Schipper noted that, in reviewing Duff's judgments, it was:

{{quote|
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.<ref>Schipper 1956, at 11</ref>
}}