I recommend the excellent discussion at Michael Plaxon’s Substack: Interpretive Methodology: Is Anything Ever Really Settled?. Here is a taste:
Yet I believe we have reached a kind of tipping point in Canadian constitutional discourse. No matter what the majority in Taylor said, the idea that alternative constitutional methodologies are inherently implausible or beyond-the-pale or unworthy of attention by constitutional scholars in Canada is simply not a serious intellectual position in 2026. There has been enough jostling over constitutional methodology – within the Supreme Court of Canada (see my discussion of Frank); on lower courts (see my discussion of Drover); in extra-judicial writings and presentations by sitting and retired judges; in addition to substantial academic scholarship engaging with ideas borrowed from the United States – that our horizons over what might have been, and what is possible, have changed forever. The Overton window (sorry) has moved. The bell cannot be unrung. To some, Yeats’ Second Comingwill spring to mind, and I am sorry to bring them bad news. But the case for living tree constitutionalism must now be made – not assumed.
And:
This is tied to a problem I raised several months ago: is the decision to adopt one constitutional interpretive methodology rather than another meaningfully constrained by law; or is it really just up to judges to decide, drawing upon their own moral and political beliefs and values, what methodology will produce the ‘best’ legal and constitutional order?2 The latter idea makes critics of the Supreme Court of Canada nervous – and the nervousness, I will say in a moment, is not altogether unwarranted – but I want to stress for now that this way of thinking about the “choice” of methodology arguably has a clarifying, demystifying effect on cases like Hunter, Big M, and (yes) Taylor. For accepting that view means that these cases, and the constitutional interpretive methodology for which they stand, are fundamentally based on bedrock ideas of political morality and philosophy; on what judges must do and be allowed to do in a constitutional democracy; on how and to whom they can/must defend their decisions; on the relationship between rights and the community; and on what vision of justice should be pursued (both within the courts through litigation, but also through other avenues). The same would be true for any alternative methodology.