From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Court of Appeal of Quebec (in French: la Cour d'appel du Québec) is the highest judicial court in Quebec, Canada. It hears cases in Quebec City and Montreal. The quorum of the Court of Appeal of Quebec is three judges.

As a "Superior Court" under section 96 of the Constitution Act, 1867, Court of Appeal judges are appointed by the Governor-General of Canada (in practical terms, the Prime Minister of Canada). Appointees must be members of the Quebec Bar, but need not have had previous experience as a judge. However, appointees almost always have some experience as a judge, usually on the Superior Court of Quebec.

Under the Code of Civil Procedure of Quebec and the Criminal Code of Canada, someone wishing to appeal a decision of the Superior Court of Quebec generally has 30 days to file an appeal with the Court of Appeal. Civil cases usually must have at least $50,000 in dispute to be heard. The Court of Appeal will overrule a lower court decision if it is "incorrect" on a question of law or "patently unreasonable" on an important factual finding. The Court of Appeal almost never hears witnesses, and lawyers' oral and written submissions are kept to strict maximum lengths. A normal case will take several months from filing of an appeal to a decision by the Court of Appeal, but the Court may hear a case within hours or days in an emergency.

Appeals of Court of Appeal decisions are heard before the Supreme Court of Canada, which is located in the federal capital of Ottawa, Ontario. The Quebec Court of Appeal is overruled by the Supreme Court more often than the courts of appeal of other provinces; this has been speculated to be due to differences in legal culture between the two courts, but it may simply be a statistical anomaly due to the low number of cases heard by the Supreme Court from smaller provinces.

The ability of the Supreme Court of Canada, which has six of its nine justices from common law provinces and only three from the civil law province of Quebec, to overrule the Court of Appeal of Quebec has occasionally been raised as a political issue by Quebec nationalists, who worry that it erodes Quebec's distinctive legal culture. (In practice, issues of civil law are heard at the Supreme Court by its three Quebec members plus two of its common law members). However, due to the Supreme Court's limited caseload and discretion over the cases that it hears, the Court of Appeal is in practice the highest court of appeal for the vast majority of Quebec cases.

Perhaps the most famous decision of the Court of Appeal was R. v. Morgentaler (1974), in which the Court of Appeal overturned a jury decision acquitting Montreal Doctor Henry Morgentaler of performing an abortion, despite Morgentaler publicly admitting that he had done so. This was the first time in Canada that a jury acquittal had been replaced by a conviction, on appeal, rather than a new trial being ordered. The Court of Appeal was overturned by the Supreme Court of Canada in 1975. Subsequently Parliament amended the Criminal Code removing the ability of provincial courts of appeal to substitute jury acquittals with convictions.

The Court was created on May 30, 1849 as the Court of Queen's Bench (in French, Cour du Banc de la Reine). In 1974 it was officially renamed the Quebec Court of Appeal.[1]

• Julien Chouinard (1974 - September, 1979)
• Claire L'Heureux-Dubé (1979 - April, 1987)
• Louis LeBel (June, 1984 - January, 2000)
• Morris Fish (June, 1989 - August, 2003)
• Marie Deschamps (March 1992 - August, 2002)

• Official website