As a legal scholar with a keen interest in how pressure groups influence the Supreme Court of Canada, Ian Brodie concluded that they provide judges with a handy rationale for meddling in the work of Parliament.

Now chief of staff in the Prime Minister's Office, Mr. Brodie has just helped preside over a watershed moment in the life of a party that sports a historic distrust of the judiciary, the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and the power of lobby groups.

Going even further, the government also killed off another long-time bête noire -- the Law Commission of Canada, a sort of think tank from which have percolated numerous ideas for modernizing the Criminal Code, legislating same-sex marriage or dealing with the challenges of procreative technology.

An effective intervention can run many thousands of dollars. To launch and pursue an actual court challenge can run into the hundreds of thousands of dollars.

The perceptual gap between how intervenor groups see themselves and how the Conservative brain trust sees them could hardly be wider. Indeed, the question of who gets into court and who judges are dominant themes of Conservative thinking on the justice system.

Critics such as Mr. Brodie view the ability of interest groups to use public money for litigation as a constant irritant. In addition, they see judges as being malleable creatures who will not shirk from inserting their views for those of duly elected politicians, making them easy pickings for a deft interest group.

There is an obvious remedy. If you don't believe judges can immunize themselves against lobbying from interest groups, you simply stop the interest groups from talking to them.

"I just don't think it made sense for the government to subsidize lawyers to challenge the government's own laws in court," Treasury Board President John Baird explained on Tuesday in announcing the cuts.

To make matters worse for would-be intervenors, the Supreme Court bench has its own love-hate relationship with them. Last winter, judicial frustration with the amount of time they consume bubbled to the surface in a case where Ms. Chen appeared.

Soon after Ms. Chen rose to fill her allotted 15 minutes, Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin interrupted to say that her legal point had been amply made by others on the list of intervenors.

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