Foreign Affairs in the Canadian Constitution

The ability to make decisions impacting international affairs can be a thorny subject for a federal state like Canada. Provinces wield considerable constitutionally assigned powers, but do those extend to Canada's dealings with other nations. How is power over foreign affairs defined within the law. Foreign Affairs in the Canadian Constitution breaks new ground with a rigorous exploration of these questions. Scott Fairley explores federal-provincial confrontations over foreign affairs, beginning with the free-trade debate of the 1980s. To contextualize the issues, he traces Canada's evolution from semi-colonial to autonomous nation-state and offers comparative analyses of legal approaches in other federal states, such as Australia and the United States. Scott Fairley proposes that the weight of history, constitutional evolution, governmental practice, and judicial interpretation have established foreign affairs as a constitutionally supported and integrated field of federal jurisdiction. This meticulously argued conclusion allows us a better understanding of Canada as a unified nation-state within the community of nations.