The Supreme Court of Canada rendered, through the pen of LeBel J., a unanimous judgment in Agraira v. Canada (Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness), 2013 SCC 36 last week. The applicant is a Libyan national. He first sought and was refused refugee status: he claimed that he was a member of the Libyan National Salvation […] Read more

Luckily for me, the Supreme Court of Canada’s decision on Friday in Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union of Canada, Local 30 v. Irving Pulp & Paper, Ltd., 2013 SCC 34 was not unanimous. Otherwise, I would have had to buy a hat and eat it. I discussed the decision on CBC Radio New Brunswick on […] Read more

I should mention (in fact, should have mentioned before now) that I am on twitter, with the handle @pauldalyesq. Were it not for Twitter, I would post much more material on the blog. When I have little to say about something which is otherwise interesting, I tend to say it on Twitter rather than on […] Read more

An English accountant, Mr. Hill, was the subject of disciplinary proceedings. Hill gave lengthy evidence-in-chief and was also cross-examined. On one of the days of the hearing, one of the tribunal members left early, with the agreement of counsel for both sides. A transcript was provided to the member and he was able to ask […] Read more

The decision in Saskatchewan Federation of Labour v Government of Saskatchewan, 2013 SKCA 61, is unsurprising and, barring an appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada (leave for which is unlikely to be forthcoming in my view), brings to an end an interesting administrative-law saga.The basic issue here is that a provision in the provincial […] Read more

These days, we are all very aware of the importance of metadata. Administrative decision-makers should be too: a failure to be fully aware of the implications of metadata nearly did for the respondent in Demaria v Law Society of Saskatchewan, 2013 SKQB 178.The applicant challenged, on numerous grounds, the Law Society’s refusal to admit him […] Read more

The Supreme Court of the United States handed down Peugh v. United States today. The individual in question was sentenced according to the harsher set of sentencing guidelines that were in force at the time of sentencing rather than the milder set that were in force at the time he committed the offences. The majority […] Read more

There are two important recent papers, from both sides of the Atlantic, tackling the thorny question of enforcement discretion. The underlying concern, common to both papers, is the power of administrative actors to choose which statutory provisions they will apply against particular individuals or companies and the intensity with which they apply them. If one […] Read more

In late 2011, the Canadian federal government suffered a defeat at the Supreme Court of Canada. In Canada (Attorney General) v. PHS Community Services Society, 2011 SCC 44, [2011] 3 SCR 134, the government was ordered to give an exemption from the application of criminal prohibitions on drug possession to a safe injection site called […] Read more

Back in my native Ireland, the public finances have been severely compressed since the onset of the Great Recession. Unsurprisingly, numerous legal issues have arisen. A recent interesting case is MacDonncha v. Minister for Education and Skills, [2013] IEHC 226.The applicants here are the chief executive officers of two regional education authorities (Vocational Education Committees). […] Read more