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JustResearch Edition no. 11
RESEARCH IN PROFILE
Canada′s Administration of Justice: International Outlooks
By Fernando Mata, Senior Research Officer, Research and Statistics Division
Introduction
A fair administration of justice is achieved when citizens treat each other fairly and justly. Justice institutions, processes and frameworks adequately protect individual and collective rights. There is also consonance between what the law punishes or facilitates and the values dominant in society. No one is above the law and the law is applied fairly to all.
If Canada is perceived as a fair society there will be more confidence in the international community that its legal framework would adequately handle settlement of international disputes and, thus, enable favourable trade and investment outcomes.
How is Canada seen by the international community in terms of the administration of justice? How does it compare to other countries of mixed legal systems (bijural or multijural) or to common law and civil law countries? Are countries that rank higher in terms of its administration of justice rank accordingly in terms of the presence of legal frameworks supporting world competitiveness?
Method
Tentative answers to these questions are found in data drawn from World Competitiveness Survey (WCS). This interesting information is compiled and published by IMD International.[7] Annually, more than fifty countries are ranked according to major dimensions of world competitiveness. Hundreds of indicators measure countries' performance of the domestic economy, government, business and infrastructure. In addition to hard data, IMD evaluates countries through an Executive Opinion Survey, a panel comprised of international experts in the business and economics fields.
World competitiveness is defined by IMD as a "quality in nations related to the facts and policies that shape the ability of a nation to create and maintain an environment that sustains more value creation for its enterprises and more prosperity for its people" (IMD, 2003, p. 702). This notion covers both tangible and intangible aspects such as the efficiency of government or businesses, the size and growth of the economy, the sustainability of growth and the impact of education, research, etc.
Results
Between 1999, 2001 and 2003, experts of the Executive Opinion Survey of the WCS assessed if countries had a fair administration of justice or not. A generic scale ranging from 1 (unfair administration) to 10 (fair administration) was used for this purpose. Figure 1 presents the average scores given by experts to each country in terms of perceived administration of justice in 1999, 2001 and 2003. Canada and other countries were classified by their dominant legal systems[8].
In all three years of observation, experts assessed that common law countries were more fair in the administration of justice than mixed system (including Canada) and civil law countries. Canada's scores were relatively higher than the averages of all systems and kept above the 8-point mark (8.63 in 1999, 8.49 in 2001 and 8.02 in 2003).
Figure 1: Country Scores, Fair administration of Justice, WCS 1999-2003
According to Figure 2, from an individual country perspective, Canada ranked 11th out of 51 countries in 2003. Nordic countries such as Finland, Denmark and Iceland topped the list in terms of a fair administration of justice. Singapore was the only mixed legal system country surpassing Canada's average scores. Canada's score was notably higher than that of many industrialized countries such as Germany, Netherlands, United Kingdom, United States and France.
Figure 2: Country Scores, Fair Administration of Justice, WCS 2003
The 2003 WCS revealed also that a fair administration of justice in society is strongly correlated with the presence of governmental legal frameworks that encourage the world competitiveness of enterprises. Figure 3 presents the positions of countries surveyed by the 2003 WCS in a two-dimensional plane spanned by these dimensions.
Country positions are presented in quadrants to facilitate identification of characteristics. Canada occupied a middle position in quadrant I (see arrow, top right of plot), which contains favourable evaluations in both terms of the administration of justice and governmental legal frameworks. In contrast, countries located in quadrant III received low scores on the two dimensions. Venezuela, Indonesia and Argentina, for instance, seem to be grappling in terms of problems in administering justice and being unable to create legal frameworks promoting competitiveness. A clear outlier in quadrant IV is Germany. Although the administration of justice is seen by experts as more than satisfactory, the presence of legal frameworks promoting competitiveness were not found to be commensurate with this level of administration.
Figure 3: Assessment of a Fair Administration of Justice and Presence of legal frameworks promoting world competitiveness, WCS 2003
Country Symbols
Conclusion
A better understanding of how Canada fares internationally in terms of its administration of justice is reflective on the justice system's progression towards its proposed policy goals of fairness, inclusiveness, adaptability, efficiency and accessibility. Looking at Canada's progress provides important clues about the degree to which its bijural system (compared to other uni-legal or multi-legal systems) may be responsible for favourable economic and legal outcomes. If the opinion of WCS experts is to be used as the main criteria used to estimate progress made by the system towards its desired goals, Canada's performance in the world stage appears to be quite satisfactory.
References
- IMD. (2003). Executive Summary, IMD World Competitiveness Survey Yearbook 2003. Lausanne, Switzerland: IMD.
