Comparing Plato’s Conception of Harmony to a Supreme Court Decision
Updated: 3 hours ago
Author: Jordon Hildebrandt
In this Blawg, I will attempt to do a little philosophizing by comparing Plato’s conception of justice to a Supreme Court ruling in R v Myers[1]. The object of this exposition is to compare Plato’s conception of justice, that is, harmony, to a case from the Supreme Court that tries to bring agreement between s.5252 of the Criminal Code of Canada and s.11(e)[3] of the Charter. I will use this comparison to agree with Chief Justice Wagner’s decision as one that is harmonious, and thus, Good.
Plato’s Conception of Justice
Plato’s argument made out in The Republic is often misunderstood as him arguing for an “ideal city.” This view mischaracterizes what Plato is saying, as it removes his “city in speech” allegory from the overall argument about what justice is and how one can obtain it.[4] Plato uses the City in speech as a tool to aid in finding Justice. Instead of arguing through dense abstractions, Plato made a simple, large representation, the city, that he could use to find justice in and then impart into a smaller representation, the individual. His goal was to show how much happier the just individual was than the unjust person, thus proving Goodness is inherent in Justice.
Just as a city has differing classes/faculties, so does an individual. The argument is that a city that fosters harmony between its ruling, protecting, and manufacturing classes would be just. Thus, harmonization throughout a person’s reason, desire, and spirit faculties (tripartite soul) would create justice and happiness in the individual. Keeping this argument in mind, I want to analyze the Supreme Court’s ruling in R v Myers against it.
Justice in R v Myers
R v Myers produces a simple example of a small area of administrative law diverging from its
statutory obligations, thus diverging from the overseeing principles of the Charter, which guide
and shape our legal system to produce a most just result.[5]
The case concerns the state of pre-trial detention administration in Canada as laid out in s.525
of The Canadian Criminal Code (CCC), supplemented by sections 515(10), 520, and 521 of the
CCC. The current state is dissonant with the perceived intention of the legislature. Chief Justice
Wagner undertook the task of harmonizing the process throughout Canada, as it leaves open the
possibility for people being detained longer than necessary, and in some cases, pleading guilty to
offences they’re innocent of.[6]
The current approach leaves setting a pre-trial hearing at the discretion of Judges who uses an
“unreasonable delay standard” to determine if a hearing is necessary. [7] Within this approach,
Judges may implement a pre-trial hearing but are not required to do so. This process amounts to a judge, if he/she decides to, looking for the mythological unreasonable delay (aka, whatever the
judge thinks is reasonable on any given day) to decide if the accused should be released or not.
Without evidence pointing towards an unreasonable delay, the judge can choose not to hold a hearing, resulting in possible prolonged incarceration. This effect has a likely abhorrent result: prolonged incarceration increases induced guilty pleas, essentially laughing at the Charter’s requirement that only the morally culpable be punished. The Supreme Court resolved this issue by creating a new standard, bringing the administration of justice in line with the Charter by implementing guidelines that ought to be followed.
The siting justice, Wagner C.J., imposed a new approach under s.525. Instead of giving judges
discretion to decide if a pre-trial hearing is necessary, a judge must now set a hearing date following
30 days of detention for summary offences, 90 days of detention for indictable offences, or 90 days
detention in general.[8] This imposition is placed upon those who currently maintain custody over
the accused, usually the jailer.[9] The custodian must submit an application to a judge, immediately
following the required time limits after the accused was initially seen before a judge and detained.
Subsequently, the judge must submit an immediate date to review the detention10 and ask whether continued detention11 is justified in accordance with s.515(10) of the CCC, which lays out guidelines
for continuing detention. At the hearing, unreasonable delay is not a threshold to be used anymore, nor was it ever. The necessity of the detention in accordance with s.515(10) now takes
Endnotes:
1 R v Myers, 2019 SCC 18.
2 Criminal Code of Canada, R.S.C., 1985, c. C-46.
3 Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, s 11, Part 1 of the Constitution Act, 1982, being Schedule B to the
Canada Act 1982 (UK), 1982, c 11.
4 Antonis Coumoundouros, “Plato: The Republic”, online: Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
5 Myers, supra note 1 at para 22.
6 Ibid
7 Ibid at para 16.
8 Myers, supra note 1 at para 35.
9 Myers, supra note 1 at para 34.
10 Myers, supra note 1 at para 39.
11 Myers, supra note 1 at para 46.
12 Myers, supra note 1 at para 63.
