Prescribed by Law/Une Règle de Droit

In Multani, the Supreme Court of Canada\u27s kirpan case, judges disagree over the proper approach to reviewing administrative action under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The concurring judges questioned the leading judgment, Slaight Communications, on the basis that it is inconsistent with the French text of section I. This disagreement stimulates reflections on language and culture in Canadian constitutional and administrative law. A reading of both language versions of section 1, Slaight, and the critical scholarship \u27reveals a linguistic dualism in which scholars read one version of the Charter and of the judgment and write about them in that language. The separate streams undermine the idea of a shared, bilingual public law. Yet the differences exceed language. The article identifies a legal culture of droit administratif québécois: that is, administrative law, practiced in French, within Quebec. That civilians working in French within Quebec approach public law differently than do others troubles the assumption that Canadian public law derives uniformly from British law