In order to pull my weight in solidifying the general reputation of law students as somewhat nerdish types who just…can’t…get…enough…law, I recently picked up The Nine, journalist Jeffrey Toobin’s behind the scenes look at the U.S. Supreme Court through the nineties and early 2000s. (The book was reviewed by TheCourt.ca’s Jon Bricker back in March, [...]

The Supreme Court of Canada recently released official statistics on its work in 2009 along with comparisons with the previous ten years: Bulletin of Proceedings: Special Edition, Statistics 1999 to 2009 (26 February 2010). The official statistics are interesting and insightful. In light of recent, flavourful TheCourt.ca posts by my friend James Yap (“Judgment of [...]

TheCourt.ca is very pleased to reproduce the decisions of the Women’s Court of Canada. In 2004, this group of feminist/equality Charter activists, lawyers, and academics, decided to do something about what they saw as the sorry state of equality jurisprudence under s. 15. Their solution - rewrite the key decisions of the Supreme Court of [...]

On the afternoon of September 12, 2005, the media were more concerned with the news that Michael D. Brown—or “Brownie,” of Hurricane Katrina “heck of a job” fame—had resigned than what was happening in the Caucus Room of the Russell Senate Office Building in Washington. Inside, John G. Roberts was listening patiently as twenty one [...]

As briefly surveyed in last Friday’s Amici Curiae, the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, No. 08-205, is causing quite the stir in judicial circles for its recognition of corporations as legal persons entitled to First Amendment protection. What many conservative commentators are calling a major victory for free [...]

If there’s one thing law students revel in, it’s evaluations and rankings. For a discipline so fraught with subjectivity and indeterminacy, we place a heavy stake in the ambiguous, opaque, and really rather meaningless ratings we are subjected to once a semester. And how else to explain all the important life choices made chiefly on the [...]

Since the advent of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, a growing number of Canadian academics have delved into empirical, and especially quantitative, research on Supreme Court of Canada judicial decision-making. A flurry of articles and literature on the subject has been published in the past few months. Below is a sample of some such research.
A [...]

Two stories last week, one involving an appeal and one about a case just getting underway, showcase another delaying tactic in the arsenal of the deep-pocketed litigant: reasonable apprehension of bias.
The Ontario Court of Appeal released its judgment Friday in Ontario Provincial Police v. MacDonald (2009 ONCA 805), ruling on OPP Commissioner Julian Fantino’s effort [...]

Quite possibly the single most entertaining jurisprudential moment of 2009 happened this Tuesday, when Judge Clay Land of the U.S. District Court in the Middle District of Georgia finally lost his judicial temper at the antics of Orly Taitz.
Orly Taitz is now infamous for her championing of the “birther” cause, whose adherents believe that Barack [...]

On November 17, 2009 the Supreme Court of Canada will hear argument in R. v. Cunningham, an appeal of a judgment by the Yukon Territory Court of Appeal released June 25, 2008. If the Court upholds the YKCA decision in Cunningham it would change the law in many other Canadian provinces, including Alberta (R. v. [...]