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. [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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. [...]

As mentioned in TheCourt.ca’s first Amici Curaie, today heralds historic changes to the United Kingdom justice system: installed in their swanky new digs, by the time this article goes to print the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom will have already opened. The new Constitutional Reform Act 2005, 2005 C. 4, (the CRA) goes beyond [...]

Introduction In light of Justice Sotomayor’s recent comments during oral arguments in Citizen United v. Federal Election Commission, it may be useful to consider the state of the corporation as a distinct legal entity. On September 9, 2009, Justice Sonia Sotomayor made the following remark in her question to Mr. Abrams: “Because what you are suggesting is [...]

The Supreme Court of Canada has taken big steps in the last year at making its records more accessible and its website more useful. I was reminded of the great potential of these resources last week when I got an email about one of the first questions that new U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor [...]

Not long after Justice David Souter announced his retirement from the U.S. Supreme Court and Justice Sonia Sotomayor was confirmed as his replacement, the legal blogosphere lit up last week with reports that Justice John Paul Stevens may retire next year. The court’s most aged and arguably most “liberal” member, Justice Stevens confirmed through a [...]