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Beneath the Law

Author: Stories and Strategies

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If “No One is Above the Law,” then everyone is beneath it. Beneath the Law is a frank discussion between two lawyers who have lived and breathed the legal system in Canada for over 30 years.

Winner of a 2026 Mondaq Thought Leadership Award, this podcast hosts Stephen Thiele and Gavin Tighe of Gardiner Roberts, examine the arguments made in some highly contentious, and public cases, with a focus on the intersection between law and politics and where courtrooms become part of the political arena. In each episode Beneath the Law digs into interesting and current legal topics or legal battles and provides insight and commentary on the law and its application in our society.
 

Law is at its core the expression of the fundamental framework of any organized society – it is the fine print of the social contract. Courts play a fundamental role in any democracy, getting underneath the surface and beneath the law requires an understanding of not only what courts are doing but why.

79 Episodes
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Send us Fan Mail Can fifty percent plus one break up a country? This episode tackles the most existential question in Canadian law as Albertans vote on whether to begin the legal process toward a binding referendum on separation. Hosts Gavin Tighe and Stephen Thiele examine the Supreme Court of Canada's landmark 1998 Reference re Secession of Quebec, the clarity requirement, and the duty to negotiate that would follow a clear vote. They challenge whether a simple majority sh...
Send us Fan Mail Is there a constitutional right to a bike lane, and who gets to decide? Gavin Tighe and Stephen Thiele analyze Cycle Toronto v. Ontario, the landmark Ontario Court of Appeal decision that overturned a lower court ruling blocking the removal of Toronto's Bloor, Yonge, and University bike lanes. Writing for a unanimous panel, Justice Grant Huscroft held that section 7 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms imposes no positive duty on government to fund safety measure...
Send us Fan Mail What happens when a jury is offered only two verdicts and neither one fits? Gavin Tighe and Stephen Thiele step outside their usual lane to examine the hung jury that ended the murder trial of Lindsay Clancy, the Massachusetts mother charged with killing her three young children. After five weeks of evidence and seven days of deliberation in Plymouth County Superior Court, eleven jurors favoured acquittal while one held out, forcing a mistrial. Gavin and Ste...
Send us Fan Mail What happens when a lawyer's greatest mistake is not submitting fabricated cases to a court…but lying about it afterward? This episode confronts Canada's first Law Society of Ontario disciplinary decision arising from the misuse of artificial intelligence: a landmark case in which a thirty-year practitioner used ChatGPT to produce a factum, submitted citations for cases that did not exist, and then constructed a series of falsehoods when caught. Gavin Tighe and St...
Send us Fan Mail When does protecting the public justify reaching into an employee's private life? This episode takes on one of the most contentious labour and privacy law battles in recent Toronto history: the Toronto Transit Commission's random drug testing policy and the sweeping arbitration decision that struck it down. Hosts Gavin Tighe and Stephen Thiele unpack a case nearly two decades in the making, stretching from a fatal tunnel accident in 2007 to a 400-page arbitrator's...
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