For people in the United States, we have never seen such an event:  a person is appointed to the Supreme Court and the Supreme Court itself is called upon to rule whether or not the nominee is eligible. But, the same is true for Canadians.  The ruling that is expected this Friday is simply unprecedented.

After sitting in limbo for months, Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s latest appointee to the Supreme Court of Canada, Justice Marc Nadon, will learn on Friday whether his prospective new colleagues deem him legally qualified for the job.

Justice Nadon, the first supernumerary (semi-retired) judge chosen for the Supreme Court, was tabbed in late September to fill one of the three Quebec seats, and sworn in a few days later.  But, he never heard a single case, because his appointment was quickly challenged in Federal Court by Toronto lawyer Rocco Galati, and then unanimously criticized by a Quebec National Assembly.  Justice Nadon immediately stepped aside, and the federal government asked the Supreme Court whether the appointment was legal.

For more on the story see this link to the Globe & Mail.  The story says, in part:

The ruling will have national-unity implications, at a time when Quebec is in the middle of a fraught election campaign. If the court rules that Federal Court judges are not legally qualified, it must also decide whether the federal government can rewrite the law without seeking provincial consent.

As a result, the case will be seen in Quebec “as a test of Harper’s brand of centralized federalism,” said Hugo Cyr, who teaches law at the University of Quebec at Montreal.

Carissima Mathen, a University of Ottawa law professor, said the case will be “tremendously exciting because the case has morphed beyond the initial question about statutory interpretation, to Quebec’s place in our legal system and to questions about constitutional amendments. It has the potential to be one of the most important decisions from the Supreme Court this year, and in the last several years.