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Understanding the Complexity of Canada's Courts Essay

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In America we have a complex system of courts that many do not understand, this is the same in many other countries too. There are many different types of court system you could have. There is Common Law, Civil Law, a mix of both and Islamic Law. America has a type of law called Common Law, which originally comes from England. This type just means that there are decisions by judges and courts. Another country with this law is Canada. When you look at the systems you can see how similar they are to each other. Both of these fine nations have judges and they have courts, where some are higher up than others. There is the Canadian Supreme Court, Tax Court, Court of Appeals, Providential Courts (the equivalent of district courts), and Court …show more content…

The lower courts of the country follow the rulings and decisions of the higher courts. Canada's supreme Court has the authority to overrule all lower Canadian courts. When there is an issue that there is little existing Canadian decisions they will often look at rulings made by the English of American courts. There is a long standing correlation between Canadian and English law, where the examples of the English House of Appeals and House of Lords are followed. Since there is this history, decisions by the House of Lords will stand in Canada until overturned by the Canadian Supreme Court. The Supreme Court of Canada of created by the Supreme Court Act and consists of nine judges. Because of Quebecs use of Civil Law, by law, three judges must be appoint that are from there. There are four main levels to the court system. It starts with provincial/territorial courts. They are the courts that handle the most of the cases, including criminal, family (excluding divorce), those dealing with minors, traffic, and private ones involving money. On the next level are the Provincial/Territorial Superior courts, Federal Courts and Tax Courts. The Superior Courts are found in each province and have inherent jurisdiction, which means they can hear cases from anywhere unless they are from an area specifically designated to another court. Most of these courts have special divisions for different types of cases. Even

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