Empirical Gap in Jurisprudence : : A Comprehensive Study of the Supreme Court of Canada / / Daved Muttart.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter University of Toronto Press eBook-Package Backlist 2000-2013
• VerfasserIn: Muttart, Daved,
• Place / Publishing House: Toronto : : University of Toronto Press, , [2016]; ©2007
• Year of Publication: 2016
• Language: English
• Series: Heritage
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (276 p.)

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.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Tables and Figures -- Preface -- Acknowledgments -- Section I. Setting the Stage -- 1. Introduction -- 2. Possible Solutions: Case Study of the Supreme Court of Canada -- 3. Beginning to Close the Empirical Gap -- Section II. Measuring the Court's Decisions -- 4. Fact, Law, and Policy -- 5. Modes of Legal Reasoning -- 6. Changing the Law -- 7. Other Trends: Bright Lines to Principles -- 8. Judicial Attitudes and Other Interesting Findings -- 9. Charter Cases Are Different -- Section III. Testing Theories -- 10. How Judges Judge: Testing Legal Theory -- 11. Is Legal Reasoning Autonomous? -- 12. Is the Supreme Court of Canada 'Too' Activist? -- 13. Conclusion: The Gap Has Been Narrowed -- Notes -- Glossary -- Bibliography -- Index