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Canada's Supreme Court Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin takes part in a welcoming ceremony at the Supreme Court of Canada in Ottawa October 6, 2015. REUTERS/Chris WattieCHRIS WATTIE/Reuters

Two criminal-law decisions from the Supreme Court of Canada last week mark the end of a war between the judiciary and the federal government. The judiciary, not surprisingly, won.

Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin has helped restore a balance in "credit" for accused people who are held in jail awaiting trial. The Conservative government, with one of its characteristically rhetorical names for laws, the Truth in Sentencing Act, set stringent limits on how much credit an accused person could earn for jail time before conviction. It seemed to be based on the idea of the more imprisonment, the better.

The Chief Justice rightly saw that the law could often result in someone who committed rather minor drug offences spending a disproportionately long time in jail. The Supreme Court concluded that would amount to a violation of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Bye-bye, old law.

In another case decided on Friday, a ruling from the Chief Justice helped restore trial judges' discretion in sentencing. A judge who actually hears the evidence has a much better chance of getting some insight into people who are accused or convicted – certainly better than political staffers drafting legislation in Ottawa.

Some officials in the former Conservative government held a belief that sentences in general were often too lax. But in response, they caused the Criminal Code to be too generously sprinkled with mandatory minimum sentences.

In response, quite a few lower court judges devised an ingenious doctrine that many of the Code's mandatory minimums amounted to Charter violations, and that certain types of offenders should be punished not according to what the accused person had actually done, but according to a "reasonable hypothetical" of what a typical offender in such an offence would typically have done. It's an unusual approach, but it has taken Canada to the right destination.

Minimum sentences are not intrinsically evil – we're okay with a mandatory minimum for first-degree murder – but the Conservatives got completely carried away with the idea. And that increased injustice, not justice. So it's a welcome change that the Chief Justice and the Supreme Court of Canada are putting the law back on something like an even keel in criminal sentences.

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