Same-sex marriage in Canada: contributions from the courts, the executive, and parliament

The same-sex marriage debate in Canada has involved all three branches of government, including judgments from several provincial courts of appeal ruling the traditional definition of marriage to be contrary to the equality provision of the Canadian Charter. However, the Supreme Court has recently reversed this trend in declining to answer the question at the heart of the debate; namely, whether equality between same-sex couples and opposite-sex couples requires that both have a claim to marriage. The authors argue that the Supreme Court, having opted to leave the debate to the political branches, has exercised the sort of decisional minimalism apt for such a contentious social and political question