Half plus one and democratic principle: New Quebec news

Abstract

This paper gives news of the last jurisdictional decision relating to the secessionist process of Quebec. Decision due to the jurisdictional body of the Superior Court of that Canadian Province, in the constitutional prosecution of a Law of the National Assembly of Quebec, known as “Loi 99”, which constituted a fully-fledged answer to the well-known Federal Government’s Clarity Act. Answer whose most notorious aspect is given by the determination in that Act that the majority needed to affirm approved by the citizens of Quebec the option of leaving Canada in a possible new referendum, is that of half plus one of the valid votes cast. The contribution of this comment to the decision of the Superior Court of Quebec consists in showing that it is not the product of an abstract reasoning about the democratic principle that it has been able to make, but of the very specific context that is given by the aforementioned Clarity Act which, in turn, it brought about the famous Advisory Opinion (or Report) issued by the Supreme Court of Canada at the request of the Federal Government after the very tight result of the second referendum on Quebec’s secessionist pretension.