July 11, 2024
In June 2024, the Supreme Court of the United States released 27 new written decisions on a wide range of matters. During that same time, the Supreme Court of Canada (SCC) issued only four.
An editorial by Canadian Affairs has compared the outputs of the two supreme courts, where it referenced a study co-authored by litigation partner Jeremy Opolsky. In this study, Jeremy and his co-author suggest this contrast could, in fact, be reassuring for Canadians.
One of the primary questions the Canadian Affairs piece explores is whether a concerning trend that is happening south of the border is taking hold in Canada: the court splitting along ideological lines.
In all the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent judgements, the vote was split 6-3 between the court’s conservative and liberal judges—a sign that judges’ political preferences could be at play. However, the study co-authored by Jeremy suggests this is not the case in Canada.
“I’ve said repeatedly that we have a strong non-partisan, apolitical court,” Jeremy told Canadian Affairs at the time the study was released in August 2023.
Read: Is Canada’s Supreme Court divided?
The study “found the [Supreme Court of Canada] under Chief Justice Wagner does exhibit higher levels of disagreement than earlier courts,” though disagreements are not of a political nature.
Ultimately, Jeremy and his co-author did not find evidence to suggest the SCC is split on political party lines—thereby reaffirming the integrity of Canada’s judicial system and demonstrating that data and numbers alone do not always tell the whole story.
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