Purpose of Appellate Review and Role of Appellate Courts

“There is no suggestion that appellate court judges are somehow smarter and thus capable of reaching a better result. Their role is not to write better judgments but to review the reasons in light of the arguments of the parties and the relevant evidence, and then to uphold the decision unless a palpable error leading to a wrong result has been made by the trial judge…On a pure question of law, the basic rule with respect to the review of a trial judge’s findings is that an appellate court is free to replace the opinion of the trial judge with its own…Thus the standard of review on a question of law is that of correctness…The standard of review for findings of fact is that such findings are not to be reversed unless it can be established that the trial judge made a “palpable and overriding error.”

___Per the Supreme Court of Canada in Housen v Nikolaisen [2002] 2 S.C.R. 235 at pp. 246-247.