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Supreme Court of Canada judges ‘unpredictable,’ not ideological
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| Contributor | Monsieur |
| Last Edited | Monsieur Jun 12, 2009 11:09pm |
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| Category | Study |
| Author | Cristin Schmitz |
| News Date | Saturday, October 13, 2007 05:00:00 AM UTC0:0 |
| Description | Allegations that Canada’s top judges have pursued their own policy agendas during the Charter era, or that they espoused the ideologies of the prime ministers who appointed them, are not borne out by judicial voting records, contends an in-depth study of decision-making at the Supreme Court of Canada.
University of Toronto law professors Andrew Green and Benjamin Alarie used two different statistical methods to reveal what they say are the “liberal” and “conservative” leanings of the 27 judges who made decisions on the high court from 1982 to 2004.
Green and Alarie’s preliminary findings purport to show that almost none of the judges have displayed consistent ideological orientations, much less echoed the political philosophy of the prime ministers who appointed them.
“There is very little connection between how individual judges vote and the [partisan] identity of the prime minister who appointed a judge, so you cannot use the identity of a prime minister to predict how a given appointee is going to vote, either over their whole career or in their first year on the court,” Alarie told The Lawyers Weekly.
“We can’t necessarily use our results to say that it is impossible to pick judges on the basis of ideology — all we can say is that the way judges have previously been selected has not led to an ideologically-driven court, along party lines.”
Elaborated Green, “there is very little evidence that the appointments process has been abused by the prime ministers who appointed the 27 justices who served during the time period we studied. We hope that this empirical analysis will help provide a basis for better discussion of these issues, as opposed to just assuming certain things about how judges vote and the connection with who appoints them.” |
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