Talk:By the Court decisions of the Supreme Court of Canada

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Is "anonymous" the right word?

It strikes me as very odd to call opinions attributed to The Court "anonymous". The word "anonymous" suggests that nobody is prepared to take responsibility for the contents of the document, when in fact the opposite is true: all the justices are prepared to take responsibility for it.

A better name for the article would be Collective opinions of the Supreme Court of Canada. Another alternative is Supreme Court of Canada opinions attributed to The Court.

I always thought that opinions were attributed to "The Court" when several justices made substantial contributions to the opinion, so that it did not really have to do with protecting individual judges from being singled out for criticism. I do not have a source for that however; I could be wrong on that point.

It is wrong for the article to say "this option is only used on the more controversial or serious decisions that may have a large impact". For example, neither R. v. R.G.L. [1] nor R. v. Rodrigue [2] is controversial (or even particularly important). --Mathew5000 02:41, 17 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

PullUpYourSocks responded to this query on the Latimer talk page, and what he said is exactly what I learned in university: By the Court decisions often are written by one person, and sometimes its kept confidential, and sometimes it's leaked but not officially recorded. CanadianCaesar Et tu, Brute? 02:43, 17 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I will see if I can find a more definitive answer. The Osgoode Hall Law Journal has some of its archives online [3] and they do lots of articles analysing SCC trends. Also I forgot to mention earlier that "per coram" is one term I've seen used, in English and Australian decisions as well as Canadian. It looks like a variation of "per curiam" but the meaning seems a little different. --Mathew5000 03:38, 17 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I can understand your concern. "Anonymous" does seem to suggest that the court is being evasive, which may not be an entirely fair characterization. Though you've rightfully pointed out some exceptions, the Court has used the device relatively infrequently and mostly for important or controversial cases. I am not convinced that they are only using it in order to give attribution to more than one judge for writing it since they cite multiple authors all the time. I'm sure there is an explanation out there somewhere (I'll check the SCC Procedure book in a few days). While I think "anonymous" is an adequate decription as is, if it proves too controversial I'd side with Mathew5000's second suggestion as an alternative. -PullUpYourSocks 03:45, 17 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I found this: "For a discussion on judgment writing in the modern Supreme Court, see L'Heureux-Dubé, "The Length and Plurality of Supreme Court of Canada Decisions" (1990), 28 Alta. L.R. 581; P. Hogg, Constitutional Law of Canada, supra, at 206." Let me know if anyone can find these. --PullUpYourSocks 04:03, 17 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Bah! The L'Heureux-Dube article was interesting but not very helpful. I didn't find anything in Hogg or the Supreme Court Procedure book. -PullUpYourSocks 21:47, 21 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks anyway for checking. In this article, McCormick does call such decisions "anonymous and unanimous" (footnote 24, page 11 of the pdf) but I still think it sounds funny to use the word "anonymous" in that context. --Mathew5000 08:50, 22 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

For various reasons above, including everyone's lack of certainty, I'd say calling them collective wouldn't work. If it must be changed, the second best possible title, IMO, would be By the Court (Supreme Court of Canada). CanadianCaesar Et tu, Brute? 04:06, 17 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I've found a few more sources on this issue. If you can get the papers I've cited in the article, they are helpful. It appears that the opinions are essentially per curiam decisions, only that Canada uses them in different circumstances from the US. They are also sometimes called "per coram" but not always consistently and I wonder if that has any different meaning. It may be worth considering to just merge the explaination with the "per curiam" article and just turn the article into a straight-ahead list of cases. --PullUpYourSocks 18:53, 25 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, please not. Simple lists are often questioned; people wonder why we can't have categories instead. I like how this has references- good job in digging those up BTW. No merge. CanadianCaesar Et tu, Brute? 18:56, 25 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, good job in finding those sources. The term "per curiam" is sometimes used in SCR headnotes to refer to unanimous judgments (or part of judgments) that are attributed to one judge. See for example the headnote of Sport Maska Inc. v. Zittrer or the headnote of R. v. S.(R.D.). I don't think that needs to mentioned in the article; I just point it out to be aware of the alternate usage of "per curiam". Generally see this Google search. --Mathew5000 19:16, 25 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Given the prevalence of the "per coram" term over the "per curiam" and McCormick's preference for it, might I suggest changing the article to something like Per coram decisions of the Supreme Court of Canada. --PullUpYourSocks 19:24, 4 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

"Per coram" may prevail over "per curiam", but the article itself states that it is not a common term. "By the Court" is what I've heard most often in my studies. Absent any official or commonly-used term, the way the Court puts it (which, as you'll read at the top of the decisions says "The following is the judgment delivered by the Court") should be what we use here. I've moved the article accordingly. _└ ^OzLawyer / _talk ^┐ 15:39, 6 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

"opinions", "reasons", "decisions"

I've changed the recent change of "opinions" to "reasons" to "decisions", which I think is how I had it in the past. Since this is a list of decisions where "By the Court" reasons are given, I think it makes more sense for it to be "decisions". _└ ^OzLawyer / _talk ^┐ 17:55, 18 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

ZOMG UNILATERAL PAGE MOVE WARRING ;) CanadianCaesar Et tu, Brute? 22:44, 18 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

That's fair. I think it's correct to stay away from "opinion", but in a choice between "reason" and "decision", it seems like both'll do. --PullUpYourSocks 00:16, 21 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]