Professor Richard Moon is quoted in a Toronto Star article about the recent University of Toronto hiring fiasco and its move from campus to the innermost sanctums of the halls of justice.
According to the news article, the UofT scandal has gone from lifting the veil on donor influence in places of learning to exposing a quiet ban on Muslims in a particular court. One thread that weaves its way through the tale is the lack of personal accountability.
Law professors Richard Moon (Windsor Law) and Anver Emon (University of Toronto), called this a “startling error in judgment” by the chief justice in an article for the Centre for Free Expression. The error, they said, was that the chief justice “failed to grasp the character of the perceived bias. The target of Justice Spiro’s biased intervention is neither Muslim nor Arab.”
Since Azarova’s writings about international law around Palestinian rights were enough for Spiro to lobby against her candidacy, “it would seem that the alleged bias is against anyone who holds a different opinion than Justice Spiro (or perhaps CIJA) about the legality of the Israeli occupation."
“This should surely set off alarm bells about the fitness of a judge whose job it is to hear and weigh legal arguments impartially,” they wrote.
The Star article goes on to suggest that "apparently nobody is to blame."