Introduction – 2019 Constitutional Cases at the Supreme Court: Up Close and in Person

From the vantage point of Summer 2020, 2019 seems almost a mirage. The conditions created across Canada by government and individual responses to COVID-19 were all but unimaginable when 2019 drew to a close, and the legal issues that preoccupy those interested in constitutional and public law now revolve around rapidly evolving rules and policies designed to protect public goods like health and health care. Questions of profound significance to constitutional lawyers, such as the location of limits on state powers, the appropriate roles and relative competencies of courts and governments, the place of state law in creating the good life, and how to think about the nature of a public/private divide, are all in play on a daily basis in late Summer 2020. Yet, many of us do not have time to reflect on them, caught up as we are in the complexities of work life and family life during the COVID-19 pandemic