Judicial Declarations: The Honourable François Rolland

The Honourable François Rolland

The Honourable François Rolland

The Chief Magistrate

Former Chief Justice
Superior Court of Quebec

Biography

Chief Justice François Rolland joined the Quebec Bar in 1975 and practiced as a lawyer with the firm Martineau Walker (now Fasken, Martineau, Dumoulin), of which he became a partner in 1983. He practiced mostly in the areas of civil and commercial litigation. He chaired the litigation section of his firm for many years and was actively involved in the management of his firm having been the vice-chair of its Executive Committee and chair of its Professional Practices Committee.

On May 7, 1996, François Rolland was appointed judge of the Superior Court of Quebec, District of Montreal. Mr. Justice François Rolland was then appointed Chief Justice of the Quebec Superior Court on September 23, 2004. Until his appointment as Chief Justice, he was responsible for the Court’s Implementation Committee of the new provisions of the Quebec civil procedure in civil matters and he was a member of the Court’s Implementation Committee for the new rules regarding to judicial settlement conference.

Chief Justice Rolland has been a governor of the National Justice Institute from 2001 to 2006 and one of the founders of the Canadian Judges’ Forum, under the auspices of the Canadian Bar Association (CBA). Until his appointment as Chief Justice, he was a member of the Board of Directors of the Quebec Superior Court judges’ conference and member of council of the Canadian Association of Superior Court Judges. Chief Justice Rolland has also been an active member of the International Bar Association.

Conferences

Unrepresented litigants and legal information

The Honourable François Rolland

On the “Rule of Law”

“In public regulation of this sort there is no such thing as absolute and untrammelled ‘discretion’, that is that action can be taken on any ground or for any reason that can be suggested to the mind of the administrator; no legislative Act can, without express language, be taken to contemplate an unlimited arbitrary power exercisable for any purpose, however capricious or irrelevant, regardless of the nature or purpose of the statute. Fraud and corruption in the Commission may not be mentioned in such statutes but they are always implied as exceptions. ‘Discretion’ necessarily implies good faith in discharging public duty; there is always a perspective within which a statute is intended to operate; and any clear departure from its lines or objects is just as objectionable as fraud or corruption.”

— Mr. Justice Ivan Cleveland Rand writing in the most memorable passage in Roncarelli v. Duplessis, [1959] S.C.R. 121 at the Supreme Court of Canada, page 140.

Random Quote

Fears are mounting that the psychiatrist Anatoly Koryagin is near to death in the notorious jail of Christopol in central Russia. Letters that have reached the West from his wife and a friend indicate that he is so weak that unless he is given expert medical care he could die at any time. Dr. Koryagin has been in prison for the last four years for actively opposing the political abuse of psychiatry. The abuse takes the form of labeling dissidents as mad and forcibly treating them with drugs in mental hospitals. ― Peter B. Reddaway, "The Case of Dr. Koryagin", October 10, 1985 issue of The New York Times Review of Books

A Word on Caricature

“Humor is essential to a successful tactician, for the most potent weapons known to mankind are satire and ridicule.”

— “The Education of an Organizer”, p. 75, Rules for Radicals, A Practical Primer for Realistic Radicals by Saul Alinsky, Random House, New York, 1971.

I am no fan of Saul Alinsky's whose methods are antidemocratic and unparliamentary. But since we are fighting a silent war against the subversive Left, I say, if it works for them, it will work for us. Bring on the ridicule! And in this case, it is richly deserved by the congeries of judicial forces wearing the Tweedle suits, and by those who are accurately conducting our befuddled usurpers towards the Red Dawn.

— Admin, Judicial Madness, 22 March 2016.