In jurisprudential writing, single decisions are often held up as representative without any evidence to support their representative claims. In order to address this problem, Daved Muttart has made a systematic study encompassing every judgment of the Supreme Court of Canada between 1950 and 2003.
Examining almost 5000 cases, Muttart analyses these Supreme Court decisions employing several important criteria including whether the decisions overruled prior precedent, the extent to which they were decided on fact, law, or policy, and the legal and extra-legal modes of reasoning utilized by the Court. Muttart uses the results of this systematic examination to test the validity of extant jurisprudential theories. Ultimately, he concludes that the Court's method of operation is evolving as it moves into a new century. While the court's reasoning is becoming less foundational, it remains a predominantly legal, as opposed to political, institution.
Filling an important niche in the study of jurisprudence, The Empirical Gap in Jurisprudence demonstrates that systematic studies based on large samples of cases will yield many insights that were obfuscated by prior efforts that relied on small and self-selected samples.
Authors
- Bibliography, etc. Note
- Includes bibliographical references and index
- Control Number Identifier
- CaOOCEL
- Dewey Decimal Classification Number
- 347.71/035
- Dewey Decimal Edition Number
- 22
- General Note
- Issued as part of the desLibris books collection
- Geographic Area Code
- n-cn---
- ISBN
- 9781442684898 0802091598
- LCCN
- KE8244
- LCCN Item number
- M88 2007eb
- Modifying agency
- CaBNVSL
- Original cataloging agency
- CaOONL
- Physical Description | Extent
- 1 electronic text (xiv, 260 p.)
- Published in
- Canada
- Publisher or Distributor Number
- CaOOCEL
- Rights
- Access restricted to authorized users and institutions
- System Control Number
- (CaBNVSL)thg00601126 (OCoLC)606330159 (CaOOCEL)418953
- System Details Note
- Mode of access: World Wide Web
- Transcribing agency
- CaOONL
Table of Contents
- Contents 6
- List of Tables and Figures 8
- Preface 12
- Acknowledgments 16
- Section I. Setting the Stage 18
- 1 Introduction 20
- 2 Possible Solutions: Case Study of the Supreme Court of Canada 34
- 3 Beginning to Close the Empirical Gap 46
- Section II. Measuring the Court’s Decisions 56
- 4 Fact, Law, and Policy 58
- 5 Modes of Legal Reasoning 67
- 6 Changing the Law 81
- 7 Other Trends: Bright Lines to Principles 98
- 8 Judicial Attitudes and Other Interesting Findings 104
- 9 Charter Cases Are Different 117
- Section III. Testing Theories 128
- 10 How Judges Judge: Testing Legal Theory 130
- 11 Is Legal Reasoning Autonomous? 146
- 12 Is the Supreme Court of Canada ‘Too’ Activist? 162
- 13 Conclusion: The Gap Has Been Narrowed 194
- Notes 212
- Glossary 252
- Bibliography 254
- Index 272
- A 272
- B 272
- C 273
- D 273
- E 273
- F 273
- G 274
- H 274
- I 274
- J 274
- K 274
- L 274
- M 275
- N 275
- O 275
- P 275
- Q 276
- R 276
- S 276
- T 277
- U 277
- V 277
- W 277
- Z 277
