Ронкарелли против Дюплесси: Канаданың құқық үстемдігіне қатысты маңызды сот шешімі

Roncarelli v. Duplessis, [1959] S. C. R. 121, was a landmark constitutional decision of the Supreme Court of Canada. The court held that in 1946 Maurice Duplessis, both Premier and Attorney General of Quebec, had overstepped his authority by ordering the manager of the Liquor Commission to revoke the liquor licence of Frank Roncarelli, a Montreal restaurant owner and Jehovah's Witness who was an outspoken critic of the Roman Catholic Church in Quebec. Roncarelli provided bail for Jehovah's Witnesses arrested for distributing pamphlets attacking the Roman Catholic Church. The Supreme Court found Duplessis personally liable for $33,123.56 in damages plus Roncarelli's court costs. A significant decision on civil liberties in the pre Charter era, Roncarelli became known as one of the central cases in the constitutional theory later called the "Implied Bill of Rights." Justice Morris Fish would describe it as "Canada's most important decision on the rule of law."

The Jehovah's Witnesses began to aggressively evangelize and seek converts among Catholic French Canadians in the mid 1940's. Methods included home services, public lectures, and distributing pamphlets and selling periodicals such as The Watchtower and Awake! door to door. These were unpopular with the Catholic majority. Meetings were broken up, and members were beaten, ordered out of town, or even thrown out of the province. Protestant groups had traditionally limited themselves to winning converts among the English speaking minority, and Jehovah's Witnesses aggressively attacked other faiths as paths to damnation, particularly Roman Catholicism, so they became the target of Quebec's powerful Catholic Church. In 1945, Maurice Duplessis acting as both Premier and Attorney General of Quebec, had provincial and municipal authorities take action against what they considered seditious and offensive behaviour, resulting in the arrest of groups of Jehovah's Witnesses in Montreal for distributing pamphlets and literature. A Montreal city bylaw had been enacted in 1945 requiring a licence "for peddling any kind of wares" to curtail their activity. This carried a fine of $40 or 60 days imprisonment. The accused pleaded 'not guilty", maintaining that under the Quebec Freedom of Worship Act they were ministers of the Gospel and could visit homes and distribute literature without a permit. The police arrested over a thousand young Jehovah's Witnesses between 1944 and 1946. Roncarelli used his wealth to secure bail bonds for the accused, eventually furnishing bail for Jehovah's Witnesses about 390 times putting up a total surety of $83 000. The defence and lawyers for the city and province agreed to proceed with a test case, but the large numbers of bonds led to a backlog of cases. Roncarelli was awarded $33,123.53 in damages as well as costs in the Court of Queen's Bench and the Supreme Court of Canada. Roncarelli's son maintained that it was also a significant moral victory in his father's struggle against the system. Roncarelli's legal counsel throughout were A. L. Stein and Professor Frank Scott.

Cartwright wrote a dissenting judgement which argued that it was within the power of the commission to refuse to grant Roncarelli a permit, as the act only fettered the commission by delineating circumstances under which the granting of a permit was forbidden and circumstances in which the cancellation of a permit was mandatory. Cartwright argued that as the Commission was an administrative tribunal, not a judicial one, it was "a law unto itself" and did not need to base its decision on anything more than policy and expediency. Cartwright went on to argue that even if the Commission were to be considered quasi judicial, in which case procedural fairness guarantees would apply, that still would not entitle the plaintiff to monetary damages.