Scholar Spotlight: Dr. Emmett Macfarlane

Regime Politics, The Supreme Court of Canada, and the Government of Justin Trudeau

In this talk, Dr. Macfarlane will speak on to the relationship between specific governments and the judiciary. Extending a previous study of the records of the Mulroney, Chrétien, and Harper governments before the Supreme Court of Canada, and applying a conception of political regimes adapted from American scholarship, this paper analyzes the impact of judicial review on the Trudeau governments’ legislative agenda. The paper draws on a dataset of all Supreme Court cases involving federal legislation challenged on Charter grounds during the Trudeau era (2015-2025), as well as a handful of relevant lower court cases involving highly salient policies. In so doing, the paper also re-examines the relevance of a ‘regimes’ lens of analysis in light of criticisms that the concept does not translate to the context of a parliamentary system.