As promised last week, here are the remaining summaries of the leave applications that were granted last Thursday. Please note that since the Mustapha case was covered in detail yesterday, a summary of it won’t be repeated here. RBC Dominion Securities Inc. v. Merrill Lynch Canada Inc. In this tort law case coming from the [...]

Yesterday, the Supreme Court granted leave to appeal in seven cases. Another 18 applications were dismissed. Below is a review of four of the cases granted leave. A review of the other three cases will be provided next week. Wayne Alexander James v. Her Majesty the Queen and Gurkirpal Singh Khela v. Her Majesty the [...]

I am not aware of the exact arrangements with respect to the law clerks at the Supreme Court, though the basic terms are posted on the court’s website. The program in place at the court is nevertheless similar to that at the United States Supreme Court. The clerks are typically new graduates, who serve a [...]

With the recent decision handed down against the claimant in Christie, there has been discussion here at The Court concerning how far legislation must go in creating barriers to courts before the unwritten constitutional principle of the ‘rule of law’ is invoked to strike down such legislation. Though on the one hand there is a [...]

With the death of Bertha Wilson on April 28th, Canada lost the first woman judge to be named to the Supreme Court of Canada. Appointed on March 4, 1982, Justice Wilson served as a member of the SCC until retiring on January 4, 1991. A few months earlier, in May of 1990, she wrote one [...]

The Supreme Court yesterday granted leave to appeal in five cases. They dismissed a further 13 applications. Canadian Federation of Students v. Greater Vancouver Transportation Authority This is likely to be the highest-profile of the five cases granted leave yesterday. In this case, the respondents (who include the BC Teachers’ Federation as well as the [...]

The first woman to sit on Canada’s Supreme Court and the Court of Appeal for Ontario, the Honourable Bertha Wilson, has passed away at the age of 83. The following press release was issued yesterday by the Supreme Court of Canada: The Honourable Bertha Wilson, formerly a justice of the Supreme Court of Canada, passed [...]

Two weeks ago, I was fortunate enough to attend a symposium in Toronto on the 25th Anniversary of the Charter. Aside from being quite obviously the youngest person in the room, the entire day was quite a marvel. TheCourt.ca’s new Editor-in-Chief James Stribopoulos reported on the Top 10 Charter decisions which were released that day, [...]

It’s been a busy couple of weeks for Supreme Court pundits recently with the Charter’s 25th anniversary. The Supreme Court will follow that up with a busy week of its own as it kicks off its spring session on April 23. There will be four hearings that week (Tuesday through Friday) as well as a [...]

Introduction The Court has been given a sneak peek at the list of “top ten” decisions in the first 25 years of the Charter‘s history that will be revealed at today’s symposium commemorating the Charter‘s Silver Anniversary. As readers of The Court will know, April 17, 2007 marks the 25th anniversary of the Charter; it [...]