Consensus and Unanimity at the Supreme Court of Canada

Empirical studies of judicial decision-making tend to focus on explaining why individual judges often come to different conclusions. The dominant understanding of decision-making on the U.S. Supreme Court is the ideologically based policy preferences of the justices, with related studies showing that American justices often make strategic choices to ensure the Court’s decisions reflect their preferred outcome. Recent studies investigating whether similar “attitudinal” behaviour occurs at the Supreme Court of Canada generally confirm the existence of ideological voting, but in a weaker form than in the American Court. These results