(Taking context-optional note of thought-provoking quotes)'What happened in Europe was the Holocaust, and people came to see that popularly elected representatives could not always be trusted to preserve the system's most basic values.'
-- U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg on why it was that after World War II many countries established courts able to strike statutes as unconstitutional. Ginsburg (top row above, 3d from left) advanced the view in remarks at an Ohio State University law symposium, quoted by The New York Times' Adam Liptak. In the same talk she twice noted the Canadian Supreme Court:
► 1st, as the court perhaps most cited in the world, perhaps because it, unlike her own Court, routinely cites the work of others; and
► 2d, as a 9-member bench comprising 4 women, including Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin (front row below, center), in contrast with her own 9-member bench, on which she is the only woman.
