If you are starting law school this fall at the University of Alberta, you’ll have a celebrity of sorts in your class.
Helena Guergis, the former MP who unsuccessfully sued Prime Minister Harper and the Conservative Party of Canada, is starting law school this year according to the Toronto Star,
Her first year of legal studies in Edmonton begins less than two weeks after a judge tossed out most of a $1.3 million conspiracy and defamation lawsuit she filed against Prime Minister Stephen Harper, the Conservative Party and others after she was expelled from caucus in 2010.
No word yet as to whether she plans to get extra credit during law school for the appeal she’s supposedly planning.
I think Prof. Anatole French’s analysis on Guergis’ lawsuit result is very interesting:
“To the lay person, this would mean that illegal behaviour as part of a Prime Minister exercising his/her privileged authority is not subject to the rule of law.”
I hope that law school gives her a better background to the process, policies and principles her government was actively trying to re-shape in their own interest. As far as her lawsuit, she might have got a raw deal and the judge did say she could pursue the private eye and some others for defamation, but the PM has perhaps the only truly unfettered discretion there is in appointing and axing cabinet members.
The comment attributed to some ‘Prof. Anatole French’ is interesting because a search on the net didn’t find any such professor. The name and quote only seem appear on the personal blog of a fired uottawa prof who is himself being sued for defamation. That blog claims that the Anatole French works for ‘Law Society of Up Canada University,’ which doesn’t exist. Kinda fishy, and probably not the most reliable source for legal insight.