Judicial path dependence and market restrictions in Canada
Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: This article reassesses the early evolution of the Canadian constitution by examining how legal systems adapt through their own interpretive and institutional feedback mechanisms. It develops the concept of Internally Generated Legal Evolution (IGLE) to describe forms of doctrinal change that originate within the legal system yet remain bounded by inherited structures, interpretive habits, and institutional incentives. Using the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council’s federalism jurisprudence as a focal case, the paper shows how centralized appellate decisions created a decentralised regulatory environment that generated continuous doctrinal activity without correcting underlying coordination and market-integration problems. The analysis identifies the specific mechanisms, interpretive canalisation, incremental precedent, informational closure, and the reinforcement of provincial incumbencies, through which this bounded evolutionary process operated. The resulting pattern is one of adaptive stasis: persistent adjustment and local adaptation alongside long-run inefficiency. By distinguishing the effects of decentralization from the evolutionary lock-ins produced by early judicial choices, the article reframes familiar debates in Canadian federalism and contributes a generalizable framework for understanding path-dependent constitutional development in common-law systems. In doing so, the paper challenges and defines the boundaries of conventional efficiency-oriented accounts of common-law evolution by demonstrating how internally adaptive processes can also entrench inefficient trajectories.
Author: Alex Atanasov
Institution: Applied Science University
Language: English
Subfield: Law
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: gold
Estimated APC paid: $1,180
OpenAlex ID: W7165685472