Supreme Court of Canada

The clerkship no profile mentions

The most distinctive verified fact about the Supreme Court of Canada that no standard reference profile states is a career link to the American federal bench: Amir Ali clerked for Justice Marshall Rothstein of this Court. Ali says so himself in a sworn declaration filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York: “I served as law clerk to the Honorable Raymond C. Fisher of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and to Justice Marshall Rothstein of the Supreme Court of Canada” (U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York (via CourtListener)). Rothstein sat on the Court from March 1, 2006 to August 30, 2015, according to the Court’s own biography of him (Supreme Court of Canada).

The sequence fits the rest of Ali’s early record. He graduated magna cum laude from Harvard Law School in 2011 (U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York (via CourtListener)), and told Bloomberg Law that “right after law school, I had the honor of clerking for Judge Raymond C. Fisher in the Ninth Circuit, who became an early and important mentor to me” (Bloomberg Law). Fisher’s lesson, as Ali describes it: persuasion is not about being the loudest person in the room but the most prepared — listen, make sure people know you are listening, then use preparation to answer what you heard (Bloomberg Law). The FactsLedger Amir Ali profile dates the Fisher clerkship to 2011–2012 and the Rothstein clerkship to 2012–2013, sourced there to the White House archived judicial-nominations announcement; the declaration confirms the clerkships while the exact date window was not re-verified this session.

That lineage — Fisher in the Ninth Circuit, then Rothstein on Canada’s highest court — sits behind Ali’s later record as a civil-rights appellate advocate: he argued Larry Thompson’s police-misconduct case in the U.S. Supreme Court, won an 11-judge majority before the en banc Fifth Circuit for Ryan Cole after officers shot him from behind without any threat, and says his very first Supreme Court argument led to hundreds of people receiving relief from illegal sentences (Bloomberg Law). It is the living connection between this Court and the present-day American judiciary — and no leading profile of the Court says a word about it.

What “bijural” means in practice

The Court describes itself as bijural: “it applies the law according to common law and civil law legal traditions” (Supreme Court of Canada). That is not a slogan on a website; it is built into the bench. By law, three of the nine judges must come from Québec, “to ensure the Court can deal with civil cases from that province” — civil law being Québec’s private-law tradition (Supreme Court of Canada). The judges hear and decide cases in both English and French, and all nine are appointed by the Governor-in-Council (Supreme Court of Canada). By tradition the remaining seats break down as three from Ontario, two from the Western provinces or Northern Canada, and one from the Atlantic provinces (Supreme Court of Canada).

What happens in the courtroom is also unlike any trial court. There are no trials or juries at the Supreme Court; no one testifies and no new evidence is introduced. The judges consider written and oral arguments from the parties’ lawyers, question them, and may hear from interveners — often members of the public with a special interest in a legal issue (Supreme Court of Canada). As Canada’s final court of appeal, it has “jurisdiction over disputes in every area of law,” and it presents itself as “open, impartial and independent,” respected around the world for “its culture of judicial excellence” (Supreme Court of Canada).

From an empty first sitting to 150 years

The Court’s own history page tells a founding story with an unusual stutter. The British North America Act, 1867 — now the Constitution Act, 1867 — instructed the new federal Parliament to create a “General Court of Appeal for Canada,” but the first two bills for the Court’s creation were withdrawn in 1869 and 1870; only a new bill passed on April 8, 1875 (Supreme Court of Canada). The politicians who played important roles were Sir John A. Macdonald, Télesphore Fournier, Alexander Mackenzie and Edward Blake (Supreme Court of Canada). The first Chief Justice, William Buell Richards, and the first Registrar, Robert Cassels, were sworn in on October 8, 1875; the other judges signed their oaths in the Senate Chamber on November 8; the Court was inaugurated at a state dinner on November 18 (Supreme Court of Canada).

Then the famous anticlimax: at its first sitting on January 17, 1876, there were no cases to be heard. The first case arrived in April 1876 — a reference from the Senate requesting the Court’s opinion on a private bill — and the Court sat one week in June 1876 to decide three cases, beginning regular sessions in January 1877 (Supreme Court of Canada). The bench began at six: Richards plus William Johnstone Ritchie, Samuel Henry Strong, Jean-Thomas Taschereau, Télesphore Fournier and William Alexander Henry, who at first also served as judges of the Exchequer Court of Canada, a predecessor of today’s Federal Court (Supreme Court of Canada).

The long road to genuine supremacy ran through London. Decisions of the new Court could still be appealed to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in the United Kingdom, as could provincial-court decisions; that oversight continued until 1933 for criminal appeals and 1949 for civil appeals (Supreme Court of Canada). In the same year the civil appeals ended, the bench reached its present total of nine — raised from six to seven in 1927, then to nine in 1949 (Supreme Court of Canada). The Court’s building followed its own slow arc: sessions in the Parliament buildings until 1882, then a small two-storey building at the foot of Parliament Hill on Bank Street; construction of the present building began in 1939, with Queen Elizabeth laying the cornerstone on May 20, 1939 in the presence of King George VI; the Court took possession in January 1946 after wartime delays and heard its first case there on February 5, 1946 (Supreme Court of Canada). The Court commemorated its 150th anniversary in 2025, and since the summer of 2026 it has sat temporarily in the West Memorial Building at 344 Wellington Street while its heritage home undergoes long-term restoration (Supreme Court of Canada).

The bench today

The Chief Justice is the Right Honourable Richard Wagner, P.C., who holds an annual news conference to update the media and public on the Court’s work — the 2023 edition took place on June 13, 2023 (Supreme Court of Canada). Wagner also speaks for the institution on judicial independence: “there is no democracy without judicial independence. These are principles that all of us need to uphold — from reporters to politicians, to lawyers, to judges, to members of the public” (Supreme Court of Canada). In 2019, the Minister of Justice and the Chief Justice entered an accord to strengthen the independence of the Court (Supreme Court of Canada).

The bench changed materially on November 6, 2023, when the Honourable Mary T. Moreau was sworn in by Wagner at a private ceremony. Moreau had been a judge of the Court of King’s Bench of Alberta since 1994, a deputy judge of the Supreme Court of Yukon from 1996 and of the Northwest Territories from 2005, and Chief Justice of the Court of King’s Bench of Alberta from 2017. With her appointment, the Court had a majority of women judges for the first time in its history (Supreme Court of Canada).

Cases reach the Court in three ways. Most often a party asks for leave — permission — to appeal a lower-court decision, and the Court only hears cases it considers of public importance. Some criminal cases carry an automatic right of appeal, for example when a court-of-appeal judge dissented on a point of law. And the Court hears references: government requests for advisory opinions, which over the years have covered climate change, same-sex marriage, Senate reform and more (Supreme Court of Canada). Hearings are open to the public and most are webcast live or on demand; the Court publishes plain-language “Cases in brief” summaries for every judgment (Supreme Court of Canada).

What this profile does not claim

This profile does not assert the precise 2012–2013 dates of Amir Ali’s Rothstein clerkship beyond the established queue context; the clerkship itself is verified in Ali’s sworn declaration, and the date window comes from the FactsLedger Amir Ali profile’s earlier-verified sourcing. It does not resolve the one-day difference between the official Rothstein bio’s header (August 30, 2015) and body (August 31, 2015) for his retirement. It does not state how Chief Justice Wagner reached the role, nor describe any federal appointment-reform process — both appeared only as unverified leads. It says nothing about the Court’s current docket or pending references.