EPP, Charles R <br/><br/>
Do bills of right matter? :  the canadian charter of rights and freedoms 

 - New York, NY :  Cambridge University Press,  December 1996 
<br/><br/> Although constitutional protection for rights in icreasingly popular, thereīs 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 Courtīs agenda. The data suggest that the Charter indeed has influenced the Courtīs 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