60 years ago Canada took the path of complete judicial independence from the UK.
In 1931 the Statute of Westminster formally acknowledged the equality of the Canadian legislatures with that of Westminster. Two years later Canada amended the Supreme Court Act ending appeal to the Privy Council in criminal matters. In 1949, the Canadian Supreme Court became the final court of appeal for civil matters also.
To mark this anniversary, the Supreme Court of Canada (in cooperation with Montreal’s Faculty of Law), has made all the Supreme Court decisions which were published in the Supreme Court Reports dating back to 1948 freely available on the web.
The collection of earlier material is not yet comprehensive, but does include all published cases decided on appeal from both the British Columbia Court of Appeal and from the Ontario Court of Appeal since 1876.
The website allows you to browse the Supreme Court Reports by volume, by date, by neutral citation (for cases from 2000 on), by case name, by subject (drill down from a subject area eg Family Law to Divorce, Rights of Custody etc) and there are both simple search and advanced searched options. (The latter allows searches by judges.)
The site is, of course, offered in French also.
I’m really pleased to see the link to the Canadian website — and now my students can no longer claim that they cannot find the Supreme Court of Canada cases on my reading lists!
Regards,
Laura