Ireland now has a Court of Appeal. If some of its citizens were unaware of its existence, the buzz that followed  Bederev v. Ireland, [2015] IECA 38 put paid to any lack of public awareness. In a set of reasons by Hogan J., the Court held that s. 2(2) of the Misuse of Drugs Act […] Read more

Ishaq v. Minister of CItizenship and Immigration, 2015 FC 156 has received enormous media attention. The case touches on whether the government can require an applicant for Canadian citizenship to take off her niqab before she takes the oath of allegiance. Moreover, having lost at first instance, the federal government was very loud in announcing […] Read more

As is well-known, the Supreme Court of Canada stated in Doré v. Barreau du Québec, [2012] 1 SCR 395 that administrative decision-makers must consider Charter values in the exercise of discretionary powers. However, this duty has recently been cast in very limited terms by a strong bench of Ontario’s Divisional Court in Iacovelli v. College […] Read more

In a remarkable decision yesterday, the Supreme Court of Canada struck down British Columbia’s regime of court fees as unconstitutional: Trial Lawyers Association of British Columbia v. British Columbia (Attorney General), 2014 SCC 59. A litigant was faced with a $3,600 bill for scheduling a 10-day trial. She could not pay the court fees — […] Read more

One of the panels at the inaugural Public Law Conference last week (see my previous post) was on legitimate expectations. I was keenly interested, as I have agreed to contribute a chapter to a forthcoming (early 2016) collection on legitimate expectations in the common law world. Cora Hoexter was sympathetic to legitimate expectations as she […] Read more

Last week I presented my paper “Administrative Law: a Values-Based Approach” at the inaugural Public Law Conference at the University of Cambridge. I hope to have a few posts on the conference, focusing on panels that I attended. But I will start with a post on my own paper. By way of general comment, I […] Read more

I posted recently about Canada’s new anti-spam law, mentioning the challenges that the CRTC would face in implementing it. The CRTC has established a complaints mechanism which can be accessed via its website.  Have a look here. It is proving popular: more than 1,000 complaints were received in the first week. By the end of […] Read more

Philip Hamburger‘s Is Administrative Law Unlawful? has been getting much attention in the blogosphere recently. Hamburger guest-blogged at the Volokh Conspiracy — and his series of posts laid out his position, an emphatic “Yes”, with admirable clarity — and his detractors (Adrian Vermeule, here and here) and supporters (Gary Lawson, Michael Ramsey) are now hammering […] Read more

There are shades of the Hart vs. Fuller debate in the disagreement between Scalia J. and Breyer J. in last week’s greenhouse gases case: UARG v. EPA. As part of a much wider debate about the relationship between law and morality, Hart and Fuller jousted over a rule prohibiting vehicles in the park. To simplify […] Read more