FEATURE STORY
‘Quintessential commo celebrated at Que
The Honourable Thomas Cromwell, Law’76, LLD’10 (middle), at the Queen’s Law at 60 symposium in his honour with panelists and coeditors of the forthcoming commemorative Supreme Court Law Review volume: (l-r) Owen Rees, Law’02; Stephen Aylward; Professor Lisa Kerr; Professor Stephen Coughlan; Michele Leering, PhD student; the Honourable John Evans; Pam Hrick, Law’13, and Dean Bill Flanagan.
At a symposium held in his honour, recently retired Supreme Court Justice Thomas Cromwell, Law’76, LLD’10 (Mus’73) received heaps of praise, as well as some playful criticism, from friends and colleagues. The symposium, inspired by the upcoming publication of In Furtherance of Justice: The Judicial Life of Thomas A. Cromwell, a commemorative volume of the Supreme Court Law Review, was one of the events held on September 9 to help celebrate the Faculty of Law’s 60th anniversary. Event host Dean Bill Flanagan introduced the panel of speakers and thanked Pam Hrick, Law’13, one of Cromwell’s former clerks who, in addition to co-editing the special publication with Stephen Aylward, also helped organize the symposium. The first presenter, Professor Stephen Coughlan of Dalhousie, spoke about Cromwell, the person. “He is the best argument for the simulation hypoth18 QUEEN’S LAW REPORTS ONLINE
esis [of reality],” Coughlan joked, because “his string of accomplishments is so implausible that it makes him sound like a badly written fictional character,” which an author may use as a form of wish-fulfilment. In addition to his achievements and humanitarian interests, Coughlan highlighted Cromwell’s modesty. “Despite being a musician, he would never blow his own horn.” The Honourable John Evans, a former Federal Court of Appeal judge now with Goldblatt Partners, was next called on to discuss Cromwell’s impact on administrative law. Evans noted that Cromwell’s reasons “seem to move very easily between lucid expositions of general principles to grounded appreciation of the particular context in which those principles were being applied.” He briefly paused his praise to respectfully highlight one 2011 decision, Canadian Human Rights Commission v. Canada, which he calls “incongruent”