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CanLII Adds 1,600 Decisions to Supreme Court of Canada Database
CanLII has added 1,600 Supreme Court of Canada cases, bringing the total of SCC opinions to 9,000 and taking the scope of the SCC database back to 1907. As the press release (soon to be available on the CanLII blog) says:
As with all Canadian court and tribunal decisions available on CanLII (over 1M and growing at a rate of over 2,000 per week), these decisions are fully integrated and cross-linked to any subsequent case on CanLII in which they are referenced.
This is not yet true with respect to earlier Supreme Court decisions on CanLII, which are also limited to cases originating in British Columbia or Ontario.
Not all old Supreme Court judgments were reported. For instance, Prof. Michel Morin published the court’s unreported reasons for the order reported as King v. Bonhomme, (1918) 59 S.C.R. 679, aff’g. (1917) 16 Ex. C.R. 437.
Prof. Morin points out that in their opinions, several judges held as obiter that the rights of aboriginal peoples within the Province of Québec in 1763 may have been protected by the
Royal Proclamation, which runs contrary to other case law.
See: « Un document inédit sur la portée territoriale de la Proclamation royale: Les notes des juges de la Cour suprême dans l’affaire R. c. Bonhomme », (1995) 26 R.G.D. 557-564 (http://www.revuegeneralededroit.ca/index2.php?option=com_sobi2&sobi2Task=dd_download&fid=515&Itemid=0)