Rand's Legal Republicanism (Canada‪)‬

Justice Rand's judgment in Roncarelli v. Duplessis is best understood in light of recent political and legal theory that argues for the importance of the republican ideal of non-domination for in it he sets out an account of the rule of law that gives clear expression to that ideal, one founded in a more basic ideal of respect for persons. As Rand understood things, Roncarelli was a member of a disliked minority, who was singled out for persecution when he had done nothing more than exercise his rights as a free and equal subject of the law: Those who singled him out for persecution sought to achieve their ends through law. The author argues that since government under law is valuable because it helps to secure non-domination (the rule of law rather than the arbitrary rule of men), to use law to single out an individual for domination is, as Duplessis discovered, rather a complex business. No matter one's grip on power, one might find that one's ends simply do not count as public ends within a system of public law because such a system is predicated on respect for the persons who are subject to its authority.