judicial power, what is the biggest difference between the American Supreme Court and the Canadian one?
There are both institutional and cultural differences between the two courts and the settings in which they operate, and those differences tend to inform each other. Since Canada’s constitutional law is in part determined by things like non-formalized conventions, it can sometimes be difficult to draw a bright line between the constitutional / judicial factors and the political / philosophical factors. Strictly speaking, the biggest institutional difference between the two courts is the presence of the “notwithstanding clause” in Section 33 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms — it effectively functions as a legislative veto over judicial decisions relating to certain parts of the Charter. There is no similar provision in US constitutional law. If the US Supreme Court renders a decision on, say, a freedom of speech issue with which the legislature and/or the executive disagree, they don’t have the option of re-introducing the law in question or enacting a statute which has th
