Pre-1970
Supreme Court of Canada Decisions
The Supreme Court of Canada has removed pre-1970 judgments from its website, specifically those that exist only in one official language. This decision was made in the context of litigation regarding whether the court must publish bilingual versions of its pre-1970 decisions, issued before the Official Languages Act took effect. The Court has argued that these older decisions are primarily of historical interest and the cost of translating them would be prohibitive.
About the Project
The Supreme Court removed approximately 6,000 untranslated judgments from its website, primarily those rendered between 1877 and 1969.
The removal of these pre-1970 decisions creates an access-to-legal-information problem that can only partially be filled by recourse to other online databases. With the assistance of the Internet Archive (which gives people the ability to create archives of web pages) we have found that the Supreme Court's pre-1970 web pages have been archived, including the sub-pages containing the SCC’s decisions and the underlying files, in both HTML and PDF format. The pre-1970 decisions can be accessed through the links below.
Search by Year
To find a Supreme Court of Canada case by decision year, click on the appropriate link below. Parentheses show the number of decisions within the year. Links to the Internet Archive may experience service interruptions due to website maintenance
1960s
1950s
1940s
1930s
1920s
1910s
1900s
1890s
1929 (83)
1880s/70s
Search by Case Name
To find a Supreme Court of Canada case by name, click the button below. This button will direct you to the Internet Archive, where cases can be searched alphabetically.
Search by Supreme Court
Report Volume
To find a Supreme Court of Canada case by Supreme Court Report volume, click the button below. This will direct you to the Internet Archive, where cases can be searched by Supreme Court Report volume.
Do Pre‑1970 Precedents Still Matter?
An Empirical Analysis of Legal Submissions and Court Decisions
By Paul Warchuk
Project Overview
This project undertakes an empirical examination of the continued influence of pre-1970 decisions of the Supreme Court of Canada (SCC). Contrary to claims by some jurists that such precedents have diminished in contemporary relevance, the findings demonstrate that these historical judgments remain substantively cited across a range of legal contexts. The analysis draws on a comprehensive dataset encompassing more than four decades of SCC jurisprudence, over a decade of appellate factums filed before the Court, and a broad cross-section of Canadian case law available on CanLII.
The study challenges prevailing assumptions regarding the obsolescence of older precedent and provides robust evidence that pre-1970 decisions continue to play a significant role in the development and articulation of Canadian legal doctrine.
The Continuing Influence of Pre-1970 SCC Decisions
This paper challenges the notion that Supreme Court of Canada decisions made before 1970 have lost their legal relevance. Responding to Chief Justice Wagner’s 2024 assertion that these historical rulings are of minimal contemporary interest, this research offers compelling evidence to the contrary.
Key Findings
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Widespread Citation: Pre-1970 Supreme Court decisions appear in over half of all Supreme Court rulingsbetween 1985 and 2024, and in one-quarter of appeal factums filed from 2015 to 2024.
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Extensive Reach: The analysis covers more than 2,100 unique pre-1970 cases, demonstrating broad ongoing engagement across Canadian courts and tribunals.
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Binding Authority: Lawyers and judges predominantly cite these precedents as binding legal authority (77.6%), rather than mere historical context.
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Commercial Law Impact: Contrary to assumptions that older precedents lack relevance in commercial law, this domain shows the highest frequency of pre-1970 citations.
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Language Insights: French-language factums cite untranslated pre-1970 decisions more often than English ones, highlighting a unique linguistic engagement.
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Judicial Practices: Chief Justice Wagner himself ranks among the Supreme Court justices most likely to cite pre-1970 cases, underscoring their continuing significance.
Implications
This study reveals that pre-1970 Supreme Court decisions remain deeply embedded in Canadian legal reasoning, especially within certain specialized areas of law. The findings suggest a pressing need for official translations of these decisions to ensure equitable access and informed legal discourse across linguistic communities.
Supreme Court of Canada:
Historical Case Citation Analysis (2015-2024)
Between 2015 and 2024, Supreme Court judges included 19,548 citations in their opinions. Of those, 975 citations (4.99%) were to pre-1970 decisions, including 344 (1.76%) pre-1970 Supreme Court decisions. The table below breaks this down on an annual basis. The annual figures show consistent citation, including moderate fluctuations but with no evidence of decline in recent years.