Do bills of right matter? : the canadian charter of rights and freedoms
By: EPP, Charles R
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ArticlePublisher: New York, NY : Cambridge University Press, December 1996American Political Science Review 90, 4, p. 765-779Abstract: Although constitutional protection for rights in icreasingly popular, there´s little systematic research on the extent to wich bills of rights affect the process of government. This article examines the effect a bill of rights may be expected to produce, and then uses a quasi-experimental design to analyze the effects of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms on the Canadian Supreme Court´s agenda. The data suggest that the Charter indeed has influenced the Court´s agenda, although the effects are more limited than generally recognized. More important, the data suggest that a number of the influences often attributed to the Charter likely resulted instead from the growth of what I call the support structure for legal mobilization, consisting of various resources that enable litigants to pursue rights-claims in court. The political significance of a bill of rigths, then, depends on factors in civil society that are independent of constitutional structure
Although constitutional protection for rights in icreasingly popular, there´s little systematic research on the extent to wich bills of rights affect the process of government. This article examines the effect a bill of rights may be expected to produce, and then uses a quasi-experimental design to analyze the effects of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms on the Canadian Supreme Court´s agenda. The data suggest that the Charter indeed has influenced the Court´s agenda, although the effects are more limited than generally recognized. More important, the data suggest that a number of the influences often attributed to the Charter likely resulted instead from the growth of what I call the support structure for legal mobilization, consisting of various resources that enable litigants to pursue rights-claims in court. The political significance of a bill of rigths, then, depends on factors in civil society that are independent of constitutional structure
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