The Supreme Court of Canada has abandoned X: what next?

Lise Brun

Lise Brun is a post-doctoral fellow (FRQSC) and lecturer in constitutional law at the Faculty of Law, Université Laval, Québec (Canada).

Since 20 January and Donald Trump's inauguration, Elon Musk, for now director of the Trump administration's Office of Government Efficiency, has used his platform, whose algorithm helps to increase the visibility of his posts, to promote his conservative views but also his blatant disregard for the basic principles of the rule of law.

Through his X account, he continues his increasingly frontal and systematic attack on the US judges who are temporarily blocking the application of several of Donald Trump's executive orders until they have ruled on their legality. Musk regularly accuses them of being corrupt without evidence, calls for their impeachment, attacks their families and loved ones, launches petitions against them and offers million-dollar cheques to certain signatories. He now regularly shares videos questioning whether judges have the power to issue such injunctions and even threatening to end funding for federal courts. This kind of intimidation has been roundly condemned by Democrats, but also by Chief Justice Roberts himself. Since, according to the now 47th President of the United States of America, "he who saves his country breaks no law", many felt that it was no longer even certain that court decisions would be respected if they went against President Trump's policies.

More recently, Elon Musk, like Donald Trump, has gone a step further, this time attacking foreign judges. Like other leaders who threaten the rule of law in their countries, they have backed Marine Le Pen, leader of France's largest far-right party. She has also accused the French judiciary of politicization and tyranny, having just been sentenced by the Paris Criminal Court to four years in prison and five years of ineligibility immediately enforceable for embezzling 4.1 million in European public funds over more than 10 years, severely jeopardizing her candidacy for the 2027 French presidential election. Other posts retweeted by Musk also target British judges and, more broadly, judges across the West, accusing them of being infiltrated by the left.

Among lawyers, we often argue vigorously about what the rule of law requires. But what is at risk in the United States today is not the subject of disagreement. It is the very principle of the limitation of power by law and independent courts that is being openly challenged. There's every reason to believe that Musk won't be shy about continuing to undermine public confidence in judicial institutions in the coming months, in other countries as well.

As the American College of Trial Lawyers, the American Bar Association but also the self-described conservative Society for the Rule of Law have called for, the Trump administration's unprecedented attacks on the judiciary and the rule of law "should be universally condemned": “now is the time for all of us to speak with one voice”. The Canadian Bar Association, the Federation of Law Societies of Canada and the International Commission of Jurists Canada recently heeded this appeal. With this in mind, it's not unreasonable to ask whether courts around the world will be able to continue using Elon Musk's platform as if nothing had happened for much longer.

On the 26th of January 2025, the Supreme Court of Canada had already decided that it will have to leave X. In doing so, Canada's highest court was also quickly accused of making an illegitimate political decision. Although the Court has been evasive, to say the least, about its decision, this analysis is undoubtedly a bit hasty. 

In this post, I would like to suggest another plausible way of understanding the Supreme Court of Canada's recent decision to abandon X. More specifically, this judicial boycott could just as easily reflect the Court's refusal to normalize a platform used by Musk to attack the rule of law head-on. Nevertheless, it must be recognized that even such a non-partisan and legitimate initiative carries significant risks for the judiciary. Indeed, should other courts also wish to leave X, I believe that they would do well to learn from the recent Canadian experience by being more transparent about this change in their communications with the public.

The Supreme Court of Canada withdrawal from X, a likely non-partisan refusal to standardize a platform used by Musk to frontally attack the rule of law

End of January, the Supreme Court of Canada announced on X, without explicit justification, that it would henceforth only communicate via its website and its LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube accounts. In just a few hours, this very short tweet became the most retweeted and liked message from the Court, probably since Canada's highest Court launched its Twitter account in 2015. It also immediately generated an almost equally large and unprecedented stream of disapproving comments.

Leaving aside the violence of some staunch defenders of the X platform and of its owner, Elon Musk, the main criticism of the latest Supreme Court of Canada decision on communications should give us pause for thought. In particular, Jamie Sarkonak, a columnist for the National Post, made the following point: Supreme Court’s exit from X is a political decision and therefore completely inappropriate for the judiciary.

Jamie Sarkonak and another Canadian journalist, Rupa Subramanya, directly asked the Supreme Court of Canada why it had decided to stop publishing communications through X. The Court's staff replied as follows: “The decision is based on strategic priorities and resources allocation. We are focusing on platforms that allow us to best serve the public and provide relevant information about the Court’s work within our limited resources”. In their exchanges with Jamie Sarkonak, they added that “the Court’s online presence has been ‘bolstered’ by its YouTube account and the ‘What’s New’ section of its website”.

As Jamie Sarkonak and Rupa Subramanya have pointed out, it's hard to be convinced by these elusive justifications. Of all the social networks used by Canada's highest court, the Supreme Court of Canada's two X accounts (one in English and one in French) have the largest number of subscribers (currently 51,000 to be exact). By comparison, the Supreme Court has 42,000 followers on LinkedIn, 15,000 on Facebook, 4,000 on Instagram and just 239 on YouTube. In terms of informing the public about the Court's work, the abandonment of its most popular account to date does not seem to be a very strategic move. What's more, publishing on X shouldn't be too much of a burden for the Court's nine-member communications team.

Nor, contrary to what Jamie Sarkonak or some other comments imply, does the Court's withdrawal from X obviously have anything to do with a desire to avoid criticism. The Court's decisions and activities are much more widely analyzed and criticized in legal reviews, blogs and conferences, and even in the general press, than X's. Even if the Supreme Court no longer publishes on X, its decisions and other activities will continue to be commented about on Elon Musk's platform or elsewhere online by many academics, politicians or journalists, and more broadly by all Canadians, who may well subscribe to the Court's newsletter to keep in touch with their Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court of Canada's decision to suspend its communications through X can no doubt be debated within the legal community and Canadian society. But, without further explanation from the Supreme Court, it should not be too quickly analyzed as a simple political decision. It is also possible that the Supreme Court withdrawal from X was justified by the Court's non-partisan refusal to continue to use and normalize a platform employed by its owner to challenge the rule of law on a daily basis.

As I documented in my doctoral dissertation, which is still under embargo, like a lot of other courts in the world, the Supreme Court of Canada clearly believes it has a role to play on the international stage, particularly in defending the rule of law wherever it seeks to establish itself and wherever it is under attack.

This view of the international role of the Court is not a new one. As early as the 1980s, Chief Justice Brian Dickson saw “the Canadian legal system and the heritage of freedom it enshrines [...] as a symbol of the strength of the free world” (Brian Dickson, Discours prononcés par le très honorable Brian Dickson, vol. 1, Ottawa, Cour suprême du Canada, 1993, p. 549). Chief Justices Lamer and McLachlin, like a lot of other Justices, also strongly believed that the Canadian judiciary should contribute to the consolidation of an “international legal order” based on the rule of law (see Cristin Schmitz, ‘Canada’s new global role: “Juges sans frontières”’, The Lawyers Weekly, 29 August 1997; Kirk Makin and Beverley McLachlin, ‘Kirk Makin in Conversation with the Right Honourable Beverley McLachlin – Chief Justice McLachlin in Her Own Words’, (2018) 87 Supreme Court Law Review (2d) 305, 329).

In recent years, as the global context has rapidly deteriorated, Supreme Court justices have been called upon to play an increasingly visible role in denouncing the assault on the rule of law beyond Canada's borders. Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin, in several public speeches at the end of her term of office, has not hesitated to review the attacks on the independence of the judiciary and thus on the effectiveness of rights and freedoms in a number of countries, such as Russia, Venezuela, Poland, Hungary, Ukraine and Turkey. For her part, Justice Rosalie Abella was also able to directly criticize the attacks on the courts in Israel. Finally, Chief Justice Richard Wagner is also, to say the least, transparent about his conception of the Supreme Court's international role: “As Canada’s Chief Justice, it is my duty to speak out in support of the rule of law in Canada and abroad. Indeed, it is my responsibility to safeguard judicial independence and to respond when the rule of law is in question”.

According to the Council's policy on international judicial activities, at the international level, Canadian judges must not compromise the independence and impartiality of the judiciary in Canada or interfere in the internal affairs of another country. But neither should they be seen as supporting foreign attacks on the rule of law. By standing by their threatened colleagues, the Supreme Court judges undoubtedly believe that these rules do not prevent them from speaking out to denounce, with increasing precision, the most serious attacks on the independence of the judiciary abroad.

Above all, to this day, this Supreme Court’s international strategy has not been questioned by the other branches of government in Canada. On the contrary, successive federal Ministers of Justice, whether in Conservative or Liberal governments, have always stressed that the Supreme Court's role on the international stage in support of the rule of law is to be welcomed and encouraged.

No jurisdiction is present on every possible social network, and it's hard to consider illegitimate a court's refusal to communicate with the public on a social network used by its owner to threaten the rule of law as Musk is doing.

The possibility of a more general and risky judicial boycott around the world

Actually, the Supreme Court of Canada is not the first jurisdiction in the world to decide to boycott X. The Supreme Court of Norway and the Council of State of Belgium reached the same decision, in early December 2024 and late February 2025 respectively. The Supreme Court of Sweden, the Constitutional Court of Belgium and the German Federal Court of Justice also deleted their X account recently.

Above all, it is not impossible that they will soon be joined by other courts. In France, the three highest courts in the country, the Council of State, the Constitutional Council and the Court of Cassation, have begun to consider the subject, although no decision has yet been taken. Without ceasing to post on X, some courts, like the three aforementioned, the International Criminal Court, the European Court of Human Rights, the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom, the Federal Supreme Court of Brazil, the Supreme Court of the Netherlands or the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation of Mexico, also decided very early on to create accounts on the competing platform BlueSky.

But, for any jurisdiction, the decision to rule out communications on X should be carefully thought out. Firstly, as in Brazil, it is very likely that Elon Musk's platform could be the subject of litigation in several democracies, especially in the event of X's failure to comply with legislation to combat online disinformation and defamation. In France, for example, this is already the case. However, their impartiality in adjudicating such disputes would certainly be called into question if the courts boycotted X without explanation after having used it for several years. Unfortunately, in all of the above examples, the courts have never given reasons for their departure from platform X. 

Moreover, the virulence, even aggressiveness, of the reactions to the Supreme Court of Canada's (or Germany’s Federal Court of Justice) evasive removal of X shows how Musk's rhetoric about allegedly corrupt left-wing judges and the lack of real online freedom of expression outside his platform has managed to penetrate minds beyond American borders. Leaving X could also have the opposite effect of reinforcing Musk's false claims about the judiciary, at least to some members of the public, and preventing citizens who only use X from being properly informed about the work of the courts.

In my view, despite these risks for the public confidence in the administration of justice, courts that would nevertheless choose to boycott X would certainly be better off clearly justifying their exit from the platform because of the attacks made by its owner on the judiciary in the United States.

In addition, this is surely the best way to avoid any doubt as to the impartiality of the courts in adjudicating cases involving X, as to the platform's compliance with the various national laws. This reasoning does not prejudge the merits of a possible future case, especially since in assessing the impartiality of a court, at least in Canada and Europe, it is appropriate to ask whether "an informed and reasonable person would perceive the court as [impartial]" with "knowledge of all the relevant circumstances" and that there is a "strong presumption of impartiality" (R. v. Edwards, 2024 SCC 15, paras. 84 and 85. See also, for the European Court of Human Rights, Hauschildt v. Denmark, n° 10468/83, 24/05/1989, A154, A154, para. 38).

Finally, it will be an opportunity for the courts to explain once again to the public why a system of checks and balances and judicial review by independent judges is essential in any democratic system to guard against potential abuses of power.

Judges must, of course, refrain from commenting on political news. But in these troubled times, it would be hard to blame them for showing their clear disapproval of the serious threats to their colleagues abroad, or for preemptively raising their country's awareness of the importance of respecting the fundamental principles of the rule of law.

Lise Brun is a post-doctoral fellow (FRQSC) and lecturer in constitutional law at the Faculty of Law, Université Laval, Québec (Canada).

Suggested citation: Lise Brun, ‘The Supreme Court of Canada has abandoned X: what next?’ IACL-AIDC Blog (13 May 2025) The Supreme Court of Canada has abandoned X: what next? — IACL-IADC Blog