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Unconstitutionality, Invalidity, and Charter Challenges

Inclusive legal positivism maintains that the existence and content of laws may, but need not, depend on standards of morality. As Wil Waluchow argues, inclusive positivism derives much of its plausibility through its explanation of Charter societies such as Canada. On his account, the fundamental rights of political morality contained in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms serve as ultimate criteria of the existence or validity of all laws in Canada, and thus form part of Canada’s rule of recognition. In this paper I challenge Waluchow’s inclusive positivist picture of Charter challenges. I argue instead that exclusive legal positivism, which maintains that resort to moral reasons may never figure in determinations of the existence or content of laws, better captures our ordinary understanding of the authoritative role of judges, constitutionality, and the traditional positivist conception of legal validity as a matter of social fact. Specifically, I argue that Joseph Raz’s notion of a directed law-making power, and not reliance on an inclusive positivist rule of recognition, best explains the duty of judicial review in Charter cases. Further, the fundamental rights of political morality recognized in the Charter are best understood as constitutional objectives, and not criteria of validity, which all subordinate laws in Canada ought to respect, yet may fail to do so in practice.