Future Work
The Legal Citation Lab is committed to advancing our understanding of how landmark court cases influence the development of law. Our future projects aim to explore the measurement and visualization of this influence across jurisdictions, different court levels, and in comparison to other cases, while also examining its evolution over time. Through innovative research and collaborative efforts among students, faculty, and contributors from around the globe, we strive to enhance citation analysis methods, statute, and contribute valuable insights into the citation of legal cases.
Last updated: 2025/07/18
Regional Patterns in Supreme Court of Canada Citations
By Paul Warchuk
An upcoming project by Professor Paul Warchuk is an empirical study exploring whether regional patterns influence the citation practices of the Supreme Court of Canada. Drawing on data from CanLII and the Supreme Court of Canada Bulk Decisions Dataset (1985–2024), the research examines how judicial behaviour may reflect regionalism within Canadian law. The study focuses on four key questions:
Home-region citations – Do Supreme Court judges disproportionately cite precedents from their own regions?
Judgment assignments – Are Chief Justices more likely to assign majority opinions to judges from the same province as the case?
Jurisdictional preference – Does the Supreme Court show a tendency to cite lower court precedents from the case’s originating jurisdiction?
Lower court uptake – Do lower courts favour Supreme Court decisions that originated within their own jurisdiction?
By combining large-scale citation data with questions of judicial behaviour, this project aims to shed light on how regional identity shapes legal reasoning and authority within Canada’s highest court.