Abstract Hogg and Bushell’s “The Charter Dialogue between Courts and Legislatures” sparked a debate concerning the extent to which legislatures respond to the Supreme Court of Canada’s decisions in which the judges invalidate laws under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms . After constructing and coding a dataset of all relevant Charter cases between 2010 and 2023, this paper finds that the legislatures complied with rulings made by the Court in 93.3 per cent (or 28 out of 30) of the cases. It nevertheless demonstrates how the two non-compliant replies (to Bedford on sex work and to Carter on medical assistance in dying) are exceptional in that they featured strong interest-group support for upholding the constitutionality of the challenged provisions and thus straying from the Court’s rulings that invalidated them. This paper argues that while legislatures overwhelmingly comply with Charter rulings, interest-group support may help explain rare instances of legislative noncompliance.
Eleni Nicolaides (Wed,) studied this question.