The entrenchment of a Charter of Rights and Freedoms in the Canadian constitution raises a host of fundamental issues, both theoretical and practical. As the American experience makes abundantly clear, expanding the focus of judicial review means that the symbiosis between law and politics will become more intimate and interwined than ever before. Putting the Charter to Work David Beatty investigates the extent to which judicial review offers a means to the enhancement of social justice in our community.

Rather than considering the relationship between the three branches of government in the abstract, Beatty focuses on legal practice as it functions in labour law, and shows how the Charter could be used both to reform labour law and to protect against attempts to reverse gains made in labour legislation in the past. Beatty's critical analysis rests on two principles: that the Charter provides equal liberty for all workers to participate in determining the conditions that govern their working life, and that fundamental rights should be limited only by laws employing the least repressibe alternative. These principles are applied to the constitutional validity of rules that prohibit discrimination: those requiring payment of minimum wages, excluding groups from collective bargaining laws, mandating retirment at a specific age, and requiring membership in trade unions. Beatty argues that the current model of collective bargaining cannot be constitutionally sustained and that voluntary and/or plural representation of employee interests is more compatible with the Charter.

The final part of the book makes clear just how dramatic achievements in social justice can be. Beatty shows that the process of judicial review can be instrumental in extending meaningful institutions of industrial democracy through all sectors of our economy and argues that interest group advocacy can be an effective means by which the least advantaged in our community can have more influence in determining the law which governs their working lives.