Search

Most of the empirical work on the decision making of justices on the Supreme Court of Canada has taken as its exclusive focus the divided decisions of the Court. In contrast to this extensive body of research on divided decision, the much more limited knowledge of unanimous decisions is troubling because such decisions constitute nearly three-quarters of all of the formal decisions of the Court. The analysis reported below provides a first step towards understanding the neglected nature of unanimous decisions. This investigation of the nature and causes of unanimity in the Supreme Court of Canada explores two competing explanations: one drawn from the most widely accepted general explanation of judicial voting (that is, the attitudinal model) and the other from the perspectives of the justices themselves. To determine that perspective, the author interviewed ten of the current or recent justices on the Court. After describing these two alternative accounts of unanimity, empirical tests are conducted of the implications of each view. We find substantially more support for the perspectives of the justices than for the perspective derived from the attitudinal model on unanimity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the dignitary interest as a distinct head of damages. It analyzes recent decisions of the Supreme Court of Canada that have commented on the availability of aggravated damages. It informs that these decisions illustrate a degree of incoherence over the function of aggravated damages and how they should be quantified. It identifies how the protection of dignity lies at the root of awards for aggravated damages. It conceptualizes what is encompassed within the dignitary interest.

The article examines the validity of the United States bounded rationality theory of judicial decision-making in the Canadian Supreme Court. Since the mid-1980s, scholars have contended that judicial decision making on the U.S. Supreme Court in search and seizure cases is influenced by factual scenarios as well as attitudinal variables. This research has demonstrated that U.S. justices rely on shorthand cues from the factual circumstances in the cases to help them reach their decisions. When these factual variables are subsequently coupled with attitudinal variables, these scholars have been able to accurately predict a significant proportion of search and seizure votes by justices on the U.S. Supreme Court. Given the importance of these findings, it is surprising that scholars have not tested the relevance of the factual model to other high courts in advanced democracies. The article attempts to apply the search and seizure factual model to cases decided by the Canadian Supreme Court, and assess the validity of the model in a different cultural context.