Down yonder, a Canadian reader asks:
I’m not a lawyer or too familiar with the way the court system works down there.
Could someone please explain to me briefly what privileges and powers the Chief Justice has in your system?
The chief justice doesn’t have much more actual authority than an associate justice. Each justice, whether chief or associate, gets only one vote.
But in addition to having greater ceremonial gravitas and prestige, the chief justice has certain procedural duties. He chairs the meetings of the justices and thus (to some extent) shapes the discussion. If he is in the majority, he also by tradition assigns which justices write the majority opinion. These process-oriented powers may have helped notable chief justices like Earl Warren (let his name be stricken from the monuments) to significantly influence the results the Court put forward.
It’s also a very effective (perhaps even more effective) tool for *preventing* judicial activism. I discussed how Burger used this power to block Brennan’s liberalism on the Scalia thread: http://www.jimmyakin.org/2004/11/scalia.html
[BTW, Jimmy, for some reason, the comment boxes don’t have a field for name, email, etc. unless I preview the post. Not sure what’s causing it, but it might explain the increase in anonymi in the comboxes.]
Thanks Jimmy.
Also, thanks Jonathan for your informative post. I did read it.