CanLII Extends Historical Coverage of Appeal Decisions

The Canadian Legal Information Institute or CanLII announced today that it has completed a major expansion of its historical coverage of judicial decisions.

In a message sent to e-mail list subscribers, the not-for-profit organization that seeks to make primary sources of Canadian law accessible for free on the Internet explained that "the average coverage of the Appeal Courts databases is now of 12 years."

The more precise figures are:

• Supreme Court of Canada - 22 years
• Federal Court of Appeal - 9 years
• British Columbia Court of Appeal - 17 years
• Alberta Court of Appeal - 9 years
• Court of Appeal for Saskatchewan - 13 years
• Manitoba Court of Appeal - 8 years
• Court of Appeal for Ontario - 13 years
• Quebec Court of Appeal - 20 years
• Court of Appeal of New Brunswick - 5 years
• Nova Scotia Court of Appeal - 17 years
• Supreme Court of Prince Edward Island, Appeal Division - 14 years
• Supreme Court of Newfoundland and Labrador, Court of Appeal - 6 years
• Court of Appeal of the Yukon Territory - 11 years
• Court of Appeal for the Northwest Territories - 11 years
• Court of Appeal of Nunavut - 1 year

In addition, some 2,000 early landmark decisions that predate the above cutoff points have been digitized and published on CanLII.