Question: Please say a few words about how your degrees in philosophy helped your work as a scholar and as a chief justice.
Answer by Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin: "In two ways that are both fundamental and profound. When I entered my law studies I was enormously grateful for the fact that I had my undergraduate work in philosophy. I felt that for me it was the most fortuitous of things.
First reason is that my studies in philosophy and some of the great professors I had here at the University of Alberta instilled in me the importance of clear, logical thinking and expression. And that is exactly what you need in law. The techniques are very similar. If you're hired by someone to argue a case, you work out your propositions, you convince the judge why you should win. That's exactly what you do in the philosophy debate or class. And you have to learn how to think and write clearly, concisely and to express yourself in a clear and logical way.
That helped me enormously. Before I started studying philosophy, my mind was a bit of a mess. It was very muddy, and I felt that that discipline and all that constructive criticism that I got from people in the philosophy department really helped me to learn how to better marshall arguments, and to think through problems in a substantive sense as well. These things are never just formalistic; there are always two sides.
The second thing is that for any lawyer and particularly a judge, it's really, really valuable to have had acquaintance with some of the great thinkers of our particular western civilization, and other civilizations to the extent that you master them.
You realize the wisdom and the values that have been preserved over thousands of years, and that background informs how you understand the problems before you.
People come with particular problems to courts. At the Supreme Court of Canada, they are often profoundly difficult problems involving ethical choices and so on, and you need to understand where the strong feelings that are behind the different positions come from. And how they replicate to some extent, and are derived from and resonate with historical, philosophical positions.
So understanding that background, whether we're talking about Aristotle or the Judeo-Christian philosophers, or people more recent, really helps one as a lawyer, and as a judge to understand the problems and martial possible options and solutions.
So in those ways I believe my philosophy studies were extremely valuable to the work I have done as a lawyer and as a judge."