On this day in ...... 1969 (40 years ago today), the Supreme Court of Canada issued its 6-3 decision in The Queen v. Drybones, a landmark in the law relating to the rights of native peoples and in the constitutional jurisprudence of Canada. The judgment arose out of a challenge to the 1967 arrest in Yellowknife, Northwest Territories (right), of Joseph Drybones, and of his subsequent conviction under a statute that forbade Indians from being intoxicated off of a reserve. (map credit) The Supreme Court invalidated the statute as unconstitutional -- a result predicated on its 1st-ever (and apparently its only) holding that its had the power to strike federal legislation offensive to the 1960 Canadian Bill of Rights. Canada's legislature consequently repealed the offending statute.
