"Supreme court" vs. "highest court"

I just read an article about aided suicide on Toronto Star which mentioned B.C. supreme court and Canada's highest court.

Do supreme court and highest court mean the same thing? The different modifiers (B.C. and Canada) preceding them just add to the difficulty of distinguishing them. If so, why didn't the author keep it consistent by using the same term?

Solution 1:

Typically, the term Supreme Court would be capitalized and refer to a specific body - it's a proper noun.

The second phrase, highest court, is not a proper noun; it simply refers to the highest ranking court in a country. (In the US, the highest court is the Supreme Court.)

Solution 2:

The political division qualifier is the critical aspect here. In "B.C. supreme court", British Columbia is the area of jurisdiction, whereas in "Canada's highest court", Canada is the jurisdiction. Since British Columbia is smaller than Canada as a whole, the two names cannot refer to the same court. That should help, not hinder, distinguishing that two different courts are being referred to.

Supreme may seem to have an obvious meaning, but this is a legal system and sometimes the seemingly obvious is wrong in that context. In the New York State court system, for example, a Supreme Court is two levels below the state's highest court (which is known as the "Court of Appeals").