Abstract. Studies of federal judicial appointments made before 1988 discovered significant partisan ties between judicial appointees and the governments appointing them. In 1988, in response to criticism of these “patronage appointments,” the Mulroney government introduced screening committees to the process. This article explores the impact of these committees. Using information gained from surveys of legal elites, we trace the minor and major political connections of federal judicial appointees from 1989 to 2003 in order to determine whether patronage has continued despite the reform to the process. We discover that political connections continued to play an important role in who was selected for a judicial appointment. However, these connections were not quite as common as those found before 1988, and the new process does appear to have prevented the politically motivated appointment of completely unqualified candidates. Interestingly, our findings also suggest that the impact of patronage varies by region and interacts with other, newer influences, in particular, concerns for group representation on the bench. The paper concludes by briefly discussing these results in the context of the relationship between judicial selection and politics with a comparative perspective.Résumé. Les études sur les nominations judiciaires fédérales réalisées avant 1988 ont découvert des liens partisans étroits entre les juges nommés à la cour et les gouvernements les nommant. En 1988, en réponse aux critiques sur le favoritisme entourant les nominations, le gouvernement Mulroney a introduit des comités d'évaluation dans le processus. Cet article explore l'impact de ces comités. En utilisant de l'information recueillie lors de sondages menés auprès de la communauté légale, nous retraçons les connexions politiques mineures et majeures des attributaires judiciaires fédéraux de 1989 à 2003 en vue de déterminer si le favoritisme a persisté malgré la réforme du système. Nous découvrons que les connexions politiques continuent à jouer un rôle important dans la sélection des juges. Toutefois, ces connexions ne sont pas aussi importantes que celles qu'on a identifiées avant 1988 et le nouveau processus semble avoir réussi à prévenir les nominations partisanes de candidats entièrement non qualifiés. Les résultats de notre recherche suggèrent également que l'effet du favoritisme varie par région et dépend aussi d'autres facteurs plus nouveaux, en particulier le souci de représentation de certains groupes au sein de la magistrature. L'article conclut en discutant brièvement ces résultats dans le contexte de la relation entre la sélection judiciaire et la politique dans une perspective comparative.

This paper investigates the relationship between diffuse support for the Canadian Supreme Court (general, lasting attachments to the institution) and specific support (attitudes toward its policy outputs). We hypothesize that diffuse support for the Court will not be closely related to specific support until after 1988, when the Court began making a number of controversial decisions. Using data from 1987 and 1997 we test multivariate models of the determinants of diffuse support and discover that it is indeed correlated more with democratic norms than with attitudes toward specific policies in 1987, while the reverse is true in 1997. The fact that support for the Court now appears to be more closely tied to its outputs could have important political implications for the Court and its decisions.

Abstract.The federal government's power to appoint judges has come under increased scrutiny in recent years. While many suggest that partisan affiliation, gender and professional background may be influencing the Canadian appointment process, and some have called into question the fairness of such influences, little attention has been directed at determining whether these characteristics influence the outcome of cases. This paper studies decisions made by the Ontario Court of Appeal between 1990 and 2003 and uses a unique measure of partisan affiliation in an attempt to answer the question: do characteristics which play a role in the appointment process influence judicial decision making.Résumé.Ces dernières années ont vu une augmentation de l'attention donné à l'autorité du gouvernement fédéral en ce qui concerne la nomination judiciaire. Il y en a plusieurs qui suggèrent que l'affiliation partisan, le sexe, et l'expérience professionnelle des candidats judiciaires sont tous des caractéristiques qui peuvent influencer la procédure de nomination. Encore d'autres ont remis en question l'équité d'un choix basé sur ces influences. Cependant, la question qui n'a pas reçu beaucoup d'attention jusqu'à maintenant est si ces caractéristiques influencent le résultat des affaires juridiques. L'article qui suit examine les décisions rendu par le Cour d'appel de l'Ontario entre les années 1990 et 2003, employant une mesure unique d'affiliation partisan, avec le but de répondre à la question : Est-ce que les caractéristiques qui peuvent jouer un rôle dans la procédure de nomination influencent les décisions judiciaires?

The article investigates whether the new screening system introduced by the federal government in 1988 for appointing judges (below the Supreme Court level) has reduced the influence of patronage in the federal judicial appointment process. To analyse this question, we examined whether judicial appointees from 1989 through 2003 donated to a political party, particularly the party that appointed them, up to five years prior to their appointment. We found that almost one-third of appointees had donated to the party in power and that these numbers were relatively consistent between the Mulroney and Chrétien governments. The number of party donors and the fact that so few appointees had donated to parties other than the one in power suggest that the screening-committee system has done little to curtail patronage in the appointment process. In addition to reporting on political donations by candidates, the article summarizes their gender and legal background characteristics. The article places the discussion of patronage and judicial appointments in the larger context of the role of courts in Canada's system of governance and, in doing so, discusses the relationship between judicial appointments and judicial independence. Our findings and the more general discussion are placed in a comparative context.

The article investigates the impact of legal mobilization and judicial decisions on official minority‐language education (OMLE) policy in the Canadian provinces outside Quebec, using the “factor‐oriented” and “dispute‐centered” theories of judicial impact developed by U.S. scholars. The Canadian Supreme Court's decision in Mahé v. Alberta (1990), which broadly interpreted Section 23 of the Charter of Rights to include management and control of OMLE programs and schools, along with federal funding to the provinces to implement OMLE policy, are important to explaining OMLE policy change as predicted by the factor‐oriented approach. The dispute‐centered approach, on the other hand, helps us understand how the Charter of Rights and judicial decisions shaped the goals and discourse of Francophone groups in the policy process and, more instrumentally, provided opportunity structures that Francophone groups exploited effectively. The article concludes that both approaches to explaining judicial impact could be accommodated within an institutional model of judicial impact that construes institutions as state actors, as sets of rules, and as frameworks of meaning and interpretation. Such an approach would allow for the development of a more comparative model of judicial impact.