POL111H5 Lecture Notes - Lecture 8: Supreme Court Of Canada, Lords Of Appeal In Ordinary, Responsible Government
Document Summary
In every federal state, you are going to get disputes and overlapping jurisdictions. So every federal state needs an impartial umpire, to adjudicate disputes between the two levels about which level can do what. In a federal state the courts are the umpire: until 1949, canada"s top court was the judicial committee of the privy council (jcpc). The jcpc was the british empire"s highest appeal court, sitting in london and made up of british judges. In all the parliamentary democracies that were part of the empire, and then stayed in the. Commonwealth, you could appeal decisions by your country"s highest court, across the ocean to the jcpc. Canadians could appeal decisions from the supreme court of canada to the jcpc: canada chose to abolish appeals to the jcpc from the canadian supreme court in 1949. Jcpc judges are members of the house of lords, the upper house of the british.
