Andrew Heard

The Charter in the Supreme Court of Canada: The Importance of Which Judges Hear an Appeal *

A traditional focus on the collective, institutional operation of the Supreme Court of Canada has obscured the practical impact on the Charter of Rights of the personal views held by the individual members of the Court. A study of all the Charter cases decided by the Supreme Court from 1983 to 1989 reveals a profound divergence of opinions within the Court. The differences are seen not only in each judges overall support for Charter claims but also in the patterns of agreement between bilateral pairings of judges who have heard the same cases. The use of subsets of judges to sit on panels to hear Charter cases has meant that both the outcome of Charter cases and the content of our rights have depended to a large extent upon which judges happened to sit on the panels that heard the cases.

Empirical Banzhaf indices

This paper considers a generalization of the Banzhaf index which is used to quantify voting power in constituent bodies. The generalization allows unequal probabilities in voting outcomes and relies on historical voting data to highlight natural coalitions that exist between various constituent bodies. The approach is based on Bayesian modelling where estimates of voting probabilities are given by the posterior means of Dirichlet distributions. An example is provided concerning the voting power of provinces according to the amending formula to Canadas Constitution.

Steps Toward Making Every Vote Count: Electoral System Reform in Canada and its Provinces

Steps Toward Making Every Vote Count: Electoral System Reform in Canada and its Provinces , Henry Milner, ed., Peterborough: Broadview, 2004, pp. 319. After some decades of a principally academic debate in Canada, electoral reform has become a topic of current political discussion and even, in some cases, concrete action. Henry Milners Steps Toward Making Every Vote Count is a very useful follow-up to the widely read Making Every Vote Count (Peterborough: Broadview Press, 1999). While the focus remains on trying to make the case that electoral reform is indeed necessary in Canada, the emphasis lies more on assessing the changes that are already under way. With five provinces directly engaged in electoral reform, this book provides a very welcome collection of essays to deepen our understanding of the subject.