Birds of a Feather: Alliances and Influences on the Lamer Court 1990-1997

The Supreme Court does not always speak with a single voice; for many decisions, there are judges who register disagreement with the majority\u27s legal reasoning or even with the outcome. Are there identifiable fault lines dividing a persisting majority and minority? Are there one or more swing vote judges who allow the minority some share of the decisions of the Court? And, given that the coalitions are shifting rather than rigid, which pairings of judges most frequently (or most seldom) hold together through these shifts? This paper examines the divided panel decisions of the first seven years of the Lamer Court to suggest answers to these questions

Judgment and Opportunity: Decision Assignment on the McLachlin Court

The workload of the Supreme Court of Canada is shared among the Court\u27s nine members, but is this sharing equal with respect to the writing of judgments? A simple count does not provide an answer because not all cases are equally important. This paper develops an objective measure of case importance-the Legal Complexity Index-and applies it to the cases decided by the McLachlin Court. It demonstrates that judgment-delivery opportunities for significant cases have not been shared equally, either overall or with respect to any of the major subdivisions of the caseload. Some judges enjoy the spotlight, while others are relegated to the margins. An assessment of the major correlates of this inequality-gender, seniority, and the Chief Justice factor . indicates that their combined impact poses a significant challenge for the Court

Certainty, Belief, and Rationality

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Littéralement dépourvu de sens

Dire précisément ce que signifient littéralement certaines expressions est souvent important. La compréhension satisfaisante de nombreuses expressions normatives en effet, qu’elles soient juridiques, morales, religieuses, poétiques ou autres, suppose de comprendre ce qu’elles signifient à la fois littéralement et non littéralement. Malgré des recherches pourtant sérieuses et durables sur la nature du « sens littéral », depuis les anciennes théories religieuses jusqu’aux théories linguistiques et philosophiques contemporaines, une explication généralement satisfaisante des significations supposées littérales des phrases normatives peut s’avérer étonnamment insaisissable. À partir des échanges serrés entre Donald Davidson, Michael Dummett et Ian Hacking, j’aborde un cas de compréhension du littéral dans un discours normatif artistiquement représenté qui est tout aussi difficile à éclaircir. À la différence de Davidson, toutefois, je ne me concentrerai pas sur les aspects qui sont les conditions de vérité des significations littérales supposées des contenus propositionnels de phrases bien assurées et présentées de manière littéraire. J’aimerais plutôt attirer une attention renouvelée sur plusieurs aspects problématiques des significations présumées littérales, spécialement dans des phrases interrogatives présentées sous un jour littéraire lors de conversations normatives lourdes d’un poids éthique.Saying just what some expressions mean literally is often important. For understanding satisfactorily many normative expressions, whether legal moral religious poetic or whatever, requires understanding what these normative expressions mean both literally and non-literally. Despite however serious, protracted investigations of the nature of “the literal sense” from ancient religious theories to contemporary linguistic and philosophical theories, a generally satisfactory account of what the supposed literal meanings of normative sentences might come to remains surprisingly elusive. Taking my cue from Donald Davidson’s closely argued exchanges with Michael Dummett and Ian Hacking, I take up a puzzling instance of understanding the literal in artistically represented normative discourse. Unlike Davidson, however, I will focus not on the truth-conditional aspects of the supposed literal meanings of the propositional contents of literarily represented assertive sentences. Rather, I would like to call renewed attention to several puzzling communicative aspects of supposed literal meanings, especially in literarily represented interrogative sentences in ethically charged normative conversations

“By the Court”: The Untold Story of a Canadian Judicial Innovation

What do the BCE case of 2008, the Securities Reference case of 2010, the Senate Reform Reference case of 2014, and the Carter (assisted suicide) case of 2015 have in common? All are unanimous decisions of the Supreme Court of Canada in which the reasons for judgment—the explanation as to why the outcome is the legally and constitutionally appropriate one—are not attributed to any specific named judge or judges on the Supreme Court, but rather to a mysterious entity called THE COURT. Very few Supreme Court decisions take this form, and there was a time not that long ago when no headline-worthy decision ever did—this is a practice that emerged on an identifiable date with a trackable history. Moreover, it is a purely Canadian story—it is not part of the legacy of English law, not something that crossed from south of the border by imitative osmosis, not an idea copied from anybody else. It is something that was developed by Canadian judges, that emerged in response to a very specific Canadian event, and that has evolved since that first experience. This Commentary identifies and explores this underappreciated and understudied judicial innovation

Blocs, Swarms, and Outliers: Conceptualizing Disagreement on the Modern Supreme Court of Canada

Almost half of the Supreme Court of Canada\u27s decisions are not unanimous, but not all disagreement is of a kind. It makes a difference whether the panel\u27s unanimity is broken by a single dissident, by several judges signing a single set of reasons, or by several judges each writing separately. This article examines the notion of disagreement, suggests a conceptual framework in which the various disagreement formats can be located, applies that framework to the Court\u27s performance over the past thirty years, and concludes with some speculation as to why the Supreme Court of Canada and the United States Supreme Court should exhibit such different patterns of behaviour in this regard

The Evolution of Coordinate Precedential Authority in Canada: Interprovincial Citations of Judicial Authority, 1922-92

It comes as no surprise that the provincial courts of appeal frequently cite as authority the decisions of the Supreme Court of Canada or the prior decisions of the court of appeal itself. However, the citation practices of these courts also show (emerging before, and persisting after, 1970) a striking reliance on their counterparts in other provinces. Both the simple existence of this interprovincial conversation and the details of its provenance-such as the dominance of Ontario, the persistent isolation of Quebec, the recent emergence of British Columbia-constitute an important and distinctive element of judicial decision making in Canada

‘By the Court’: The Untold Story of a Canadian Judicial Innovation

The Supreme Court of Canada has for several decades used an anonymous and unanimous decision format – ‘By the Court’ – for a subset of its constitutional decisions; although some of the specific cases (such as the Quebec Secession Reference) have been closely examined, the practice itself has never received focused consideration. This article establishes a chronology, an inventory, and a typology for the Supreme Court’s ‘By the Court’ judgments, and concludes by suggesting that it use has become more frequent under the current Chief Justice