Back in 1985, I'm sure I was taking this or that undergraduate course with either or both of professors Jamie Snell and Fred Vaughan at my alma mater, the University of Guelph. While I was preparing papers or cramming for exams, they were researching and writing The Supreme Court: History of the Institution. Though it was 1985 and the country was more than 120 years old, this would be the first-ever history of the country's highest court.
Given the relatively lengthy life of the Supreme Court of Canada and given the emphasis of Canadian historians on political history and constitutional development, it is surprising that no basic history of the Court has been written. This volume is an attempt to fill that gap.
Snell, a historian, and Vaughan, a political scientist, recognize that the first attempt at a history of the court ought to be a “just the facts, ma'am” type of affair. And yet:
Some basic themes emerge throughout the study. A judicial conservatism has long dominated the Supreme Court ofCanada. Judicial conservatism is defined here as ‘a tendency literally to conserve or maintain existing law by shictly, even mechanistically, applying established rules and precedents. The conservative judge is unwilling to modify rules and thus little interested in policy arguments about the effect of his decision or the social function of a rule.’ Justices of the Supreme Court of Canada actively and knowingly adopted shict conshuction because they believed ‘in the principle that changing the law is the province of the legislature, not the judge,‘a sentiment in keeping with Canadian judicial and political culture.‘
If, by chance, you're reading Philip Slayton's entertaining Mighty Judgement: How the Supreme Court of Canada Runs Your LIfe, I strongly recommend the study by Snell and Vaughan as an excellent primer that will make Slayton's study even more interesting.