Editing Supreme Court of Canada (section)

===Appellate process===
The Supreme Court rests at the apex of the judicial pyramid. This institution hears appeals from the provincial courts of last resort, usually the provincial or territorial courts of appeal, and the Federal Court of Appeal, although in some matters appeals come straight from the trial courts, as in the case of [[publication ban]]s and other orders that are otherwise not appealable.

In most cases, permission to appeal must first be obtained from the court. Motions for [[discretionary review|leave to appeal]] to the court are generally heard by a panel of three of its judges and a simple majority is determinative. By convention, this panel never explains why it grants or refuses leave in any particular case, but the court typically hears cases of national importance or where the case allows it to settle an important issue of law. Leave is rarely granted, meaning that for most litigants, provincial courts of appeal are courts of last resort. But leave to appeal is not required for some cases, primarily indictable criminal cases in which at least one appellate judge (on the relevant provincial court of appeal) dissented on a point of law, and appeals from provincial [[reference case]]s.

A final source of cases is the power of the federal government to submit reference cases. In such cases, the Supreme Court is required to give an opinion on questions referred to it by the Governor in Council (the [[Cabinet of Canada|Cabinet]]). However, in many cases, including the most recent [[Re Same-Sex Marriage|same-sex marriage reference]], the Supreme Court has declined to answer a question from the Cabinet. In that case, the court said it would not decide if [[same-sex marriage]]s were required by the ''Charter of Rights and Freedoms'', because the government had announced it would change the law regardless of its opinion, and subsequently did.