(De)Coding the Court: Legal Data Insights into Canada’s Supreme Court

The Public Law Centre and the Centre for Law, Technology and Society at the University of Ottawa are delighted to invite you to the launch of the edited collection (De)Coding the Court: Legal Data Insights into Canada’s Supreme Court.

Featuring contributions from project members and other invited contributors, including Justice Carissima Mathen, Professor Wolfgang Alschner, Professor Vanessa MacDonnell, Professor Terry Skolnik, Visiting Professor Stephen Bindman, and students Keenan MacNeal and Kelly Humber, this collection combines state-of-the-art legal data analytics with in-depth doctrinal analysis to study the Supreme Court of Canada (SCC), Canada’s top court.

A data analytics perspective adds new dimensions to the study of courts and their case law. It renders legal analysis scalable, making it possible to investigate thousands of judicial decisions, adding new breadth and depth. It also enables researchers to combine doctrinal questions about how the law evolves with institutional questions about how courts operate, shedding new light on how law works in practice. By applying a range of methods to study the content of SCC decisions, this work bridges the gap between qualitative and quantitative research. Demonstrating how new analytical perspectives can generate new insights about the Supreme Court, an institution which is closely studied by scholars both within and outside Canada, the book will be essential reading for legal scholars and political scientists, particularly those working in public law and in empirical legal studies.