Law Commons^™

Effecting A Culture Shift—An Empirical Review Of Ontario’S Summary Judgment Reforms, Brooke Mackenzie

Osgoode Hall Law Journal

Lawyers and policymakers in Canada frequently discuss the need for reforms to increase access to civil justice, but concrete efforts to improve the efficiency and cost-effectiveness of our justice system are few and far between. Unfortunately, even when reforms are implemented, measures are rarely put in place to assess whether the reforms were effective. Ontario’s Civil Justice Reform Project inspired a package of amendments to Rules of Civil Procedure in 2010 but, aside from anecdotal reports, little is known about whether they achieved their desired effects. This paper presents an empirical analysis of all reported summary judgment decisions in Ontario …