Article content

The Supreme Court of Canada decides a lot of political matters and it clearly has political influence. Yet is there any empirical evidence to suggest that Canada’s Supreme Court judges are pursuing their own political agendas?

According to a study by Benjamin Alarie and Andrew J. Green of the Faculty of Law at the University of Toronto, the answer is no.

We apologize, but this video has failed to load.

tap here to see other videos from our team. Try refreshing your browser, or Supreme Court of Canada docket not driven by ideology, study suggests Back to video

About 20% of the cases the court hears arrive there “as of right” — that is, the appellant has an automatic right to argue that matter before the court. The remaining 80% of cases are granted on leave. What Alarie and Green did is look at the cases the court decided to hear, and see whether any patterns emerged.

“Our results therefore overall provide weak evidence for ideological voting in the selection of cases to be heard by the Supreme Court of Canada,” they conclude.

Applications for leave are made before a panel of three SCC judges. Alarie and Green studied the composition of those panels.