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Using a dataset of over 880,000 court decisions from Canadian federal and provincial courts, we derive an empirical centrality score for case importance. We demonstrate the utility of using our score in legal scholarship in compliment the simple and popular approach based on raw topical or citation counts. The methods for constructing an empirical measure of centrality are discussed and results are compared to expert qualitative rankings. In this net- work context, the general nature of the court from the past 30 years is discussed; particular attention is given to determining what areas of jurisprudence the court has been focused on. It is shown that the large quantity of criminal law cases is somewhat misleading, as the most important cases generally come from other areas of law. We conclude by showing how our methodology may be used in analysing other questions in Canadian jurisprudence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines how federal principles, structures and practices affected the efforts of the two majority women's movements to make Canada a more women-friendly democracy. It surveys accounts of the effects of federalism on women's politics by practitioners and gender scholars. It also introduces several hypotheses derived from the literature outlining the possible gender consequences of federalism.

ABSTRACT: This study compares audits of Nova Scotian women's groups in the years 1990 and 2004 with the membership of women's groups in the Canadian umbrella group called the National Action Committee on the Status of Women at comparable times. These lists are sufficiently similar to support a number of hypotheses of the development of the Canadian women's movement in the decades of the turn of the century. More generally, this exercise suggests that the understanding of the terms "feminism" and the "women's movement" should be interpreted less restrictively and more in terms of the literature on new social movements. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focuses on the effects of institutions on political debate and policy development on political-institutional change in Canada through a case study of lesbian and gay rights movement. Role played by organized interests and social movement organizations in the feedback loop between institutional changes; Contribution of social movement theory to understanding the dynamic interaction between institutions, movement politics and policy outcomes; Impact of policy legacies and institutional changes on civil society.

A comparative survey of activist mobilizing to secure recognition of gay and lesbian relationships in Canada and the United States, and of the extent to which public policy, law, and institutional policy among private employers has moved in directions sought by such activism. Such movement as has occurred depends on developments at national, regional, and local levels of government, as well as in the courts. Shifts toward equity have come faster and more uniformly in Canada than in the U.S.. A few American states and several localities have seen marked progress, but are hampered by the relative absence of change at the federal level. Variation in outcome depends on constitutional, legal, and institutional context, on party configerations, on labour union support, and to some extent on public opinion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]