THE PLACE OF PRIVATE LAW IN FEDERAL LEGISLATION:
THE ST-HILAIRE CASE AND
BIJURAL TERMINOLOGY RECORDS

André Ouellette, Lawyer
Mathieu Legris, Lawyer
Department of Justice Canada

Table of Contents

• Introduction
• 1. The St-Hilaire Case
  • 1.1. Basic Concepts: The Interaction of Federal Legislation with the Private Law of Quebec
  • 1.2. The Facts
  • 1.3. The Trial Judgment
  • 1.4. Issues Raised on the Appeal
    • 1.4.1. Suppletive law applicable to this case
    • 1.4.2. Unworthiness to inherit
• 2. Relevance of this Decision for Tax Law
  • 2.1. Public Law - Private law
  • 2.2. Federal Rules of Private Law
• 3. Bijuralism and the Harmonization of Federal Statutes
• 4. Bijural Terminology Records
  • 4.1. Methodology Employed for the Preparation of Bijural Records
    • 4.1.1. One record for all occurrences of the same solution
    • 4.1.2. Appropriate terms for each legal system
    • 4.1.3. Precedence of common law terms in English and precedence of civil law terms in rench
    • 4.1.4. Concepts with no corresponding concept in the other system
    • 4.1.5. Rules of interpretation: the bijural tradition in Canada
    • 4.1.6. Amendment to one linguistic version only
  • 4.2. Overview
• Conclusion
• Schedule