[40] HEALTHCARE POLICY Vol.1 No.1, 2005 The Chaoulli Judgment or How to Sell Off a Public Right The problem is to find a form of association which will defend and protect with the whole common force the person and goods of each associate, and in which each, while uniting himself with all, may still obey himself alone, and remain as free as before. This is the fundamental problem of which the Social Contract provides the solution. JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU, The Social Contract What was now wanted was, that the rulers should be identified with the people.... The nation did not need to be protected against its own will... But...the notion, that the people have no need to limit their power over themselves, might seem axiom- atic, when popular government was a thing only dreamed about... Protection, there- fore, against the tyranny of the magistrate is not enough... How to make the fitting adjustment between individual independence and social control – is a subject on which nearly everything remains to be done... What these rules should be, is the principal question in human affairs. JOHN STUART MILL, On Liberty O N THE SURFACE, THE POSITIONS OF FLOOD AND LEWIS AND EVANS on the Chaoulli judgment, expounded in their articles for this issue of Healthcare Policy/Politiques de santé, are quite similar. Although Evans’s style is rather flamboyant, and while Flood and Lewis’s is more staid, all three agree in their condemnation of the Supreme Court’s judgment. The Chaoulli judgment is factually and logically flawed, and the legal arena is not set up to hold an essentially political debate. The two texts also complement one another. Flood and Lewis analyze the majority judgment and criticise the use it makes of social sciences and the opinion of a few physicians who testified before the Court. Their analysis reflects many commen- taries that have been published in the press (Béland 2005) and on Canadian Internet sites (Longwoods eLetter 2005). They suggest some actions and steps to take to limit the consequences of the Chaoulli judgment on Canada’s public and universal medicare system. Evans relates the history of federal and provincial budgets and of medicare François Béland