Understanding Canada's Legal System - 2

By Author: Joan Bennett
Total Articles: 2
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Civil law

Civil law in Canada comprises areas of law dealing with disputes between discrete parties, and by legal definition parties includes government, corporations and individuals. Courts will render decisions on such disparate subjects as contractual matters, torts and property cases, among many others.

A fast growing area of the Canadian justice system is administrative law. This body of law describes the operation and aim of such federal and provincial administrative tribunals as labor, human rights and workers' compensation appeal boards. Superior courts may review these tribunals' decisions (in the case of federal decisions, the Federal Court Trial Division or the Federal Court of Appeal performs the reviews), but the courts accord these hearing boards wide latitude and rarely reverse their decisions outright. Courts are more likely to overturn tribunals' decisions when they doubt that the expertise of the panel is sufficient for rendering a decision on the subject matter before it.

Summary

A full understanding of Canada's legal system is impossible without noting that local (or municipal) ...
... law is essentially non-existent. That is, municipal and regional laws are the exclusive jurisdiction of provincial legislatures, and vary from province to province rather than among cities or towns. Paralleling the U.S. Constitution's 14th Amendment extending equal protection of the laws, however, the Supreme Court of Canada has determined that the nation's Charter of Rights and Freedoms does apply to the various activities of municipal governments.

Finally, it should be noted that Canada's legal system is quite open to using case precedents from both England and the United States when there are insufficient ones in the corpus of Canadian law. For the most part, Canadian jurists will refer to American cases dealing with privacy rights, as the U.S. has many precedents in that area. However, they often consider decisions by both the English Court of Appeal and the House of Lords when judging a wide range of matters. Once a Canadian court has established a non-Canadian court or magistrate as being a persuasive authority, it can use their decisions as foundations for its own. In this way, Canada's legal system truly incorporates a living body of laws.

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