“Quebec set to make unprecedented challenge to Nadon’s Supreme Court appointment.”

The Toronto Globe and Mail’s Sean Fine and Kim Mackrael have an article that begins, “The Quebec government says it will challenge the appointment of Justice Marc Nadon to the Supreme Court of Canada, in what legal scholars say appears to be a first in the court’s 138-year history.”

The background is pretty simple:

The Supreme Court Act mandates that three judges from the province sit on the court, but the Act contains no residency requirement for Quebec nominees. Justice Nadon practised law with a Montreal firm for 20 years before joining the Federal Court in 1993.

Justice Nadon stepped temporarily aside last week shortly before he would have heard his first case when Toronto lawyer Rocco Galati challenged his nomination in a filing in Federal Court. Mr. Galati alleged the appointment was illegal under the Supreme Court Act because Justice Nadon was appointed from the Federal Court of Appeal, and judges on the Federal Court’s two divisions are not expressly included among those who qualify to be on the Supreme Court.

Justice Nadon’s absence left the court with just two judges from Quebec.