Scholar Spotlight: Dr. Emmett Macfarlane
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.