Arms of Owen Maxwell Rees

Blazon

Per saltire Gules and Argent, in chief and in base a fox’s mask, in the flanks two hedgehogs respectant all counterchanged;

Symbolism

The foxes’ faces and the hedgehogs represent Mr. Rees’s work as a judge, as they refer to an aphorism by the Greek poet Archilochus that a fox knows many things, but a hedgehog knows one big thing. For Mr. Rees, a judge must embody the qualities of both a fox (grounded in the facts and specificity of a case) and a hedgehog (deriving general legal principles in a coherent way across the legal system). The X-shape division alludes to the saltire cross found in many Scottish Maxwell coats of arms, thus alluding to his mother’s family name, and in the arms of Queen’s University at Kingston, Ontario, where he studied law. The red and white colours are those associated with the Supreme Court of Canada, with which Mr. Rees has had a long association as a law clerk, as principal advisor to the Chief Justice and as the co-founder of the Supreme Court Advocacy Institute.