The Rule of Law

A parliamentarian' s warning from inside Canada' s democracy At a moment when democratic institutions face increasing strain, The Rule of Law: Religion, Nationalism, and Abuses of History gathers decades of parliamentary speeches and reflections that confront one enduring question: What sustains the rule of law? Drawn from service in the Senate of Canada, these speeches trace the fault lines of modern political life: nationalism and democracy, Quebec and constitutional change, foreign policy and moral responsibility, war crimes legislation, peacekeeping, NATO expansion, and Canada' s evolving place in the world. Moving between domestic debate and international crisis, the author returns repeatedly to a central concern: how fragile legal and democratic norms can become when history is misused and power goes unchecked. Both a record of public life and a meditation on governance, The Rule of Law: Religion, Nationalism, and Abuses of History offers readers an inside view of parliamentary debate at the end of the twentieth century — and a timely reflection on the precarious state of the rule of law in our own time.