The decision of the Federal Court of Appeal in Paradis Honey Ltd. v. Canada, 2015 FCA 89 is quite remarkable. A majority of the Court developed a new test for public authority liability in tort, casting off the previous unwieldy private-law framework in favour of an approach that relies exclusively on public law concepts. The […] Read more

Shortly after a majority of the Supreme Court of Canada wrote that when fundamental rights are engaged by an administrative decision, “reasonableness requires proportionality” (here, at para. 38), the members of the UK Supreme Court said something very similar in Pham v. Secretary of State for the Home Department, [2015] UKSC 19. The case was […] Read more

What sort of a King will Prince Charles be? A clue may lie in the contents of the so-called “black spider” letters he sends to government ministers, so named because they are typed up after Prince Charles writes them out in longhand and sent after he supplements them with additional cursive script. The Upper Tribunal […] Read more

Regular readers will know that I had quite a bit to say about the gun registry case decided by the Supreme Court of Canada on Friday: Quebec (Attorney General) v. Canada (Attorney General), 2015 SCC 14. I have written a brief summary and commentary on the case at the I-CONnect blog. Here is a snippet: […] Read more

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

Where an administrative decision-maker has violated a fundamental right, how should courts review the decision? Should they apply the standards of constitutional law (a proportionality test, for example)? Or should they apply the standard grounds of administrative law (such as reasonableness)? The Supreme Court of Canada has written more than most on this question and […] Read more

Regular readers know of my fascination with the “internal standard of review” problem: how does an appellate body within the administration go about reviewing first-instance decisions? The issue will shortly be before the Federal Court of Appeal, in the context of refugee appeals. I have a paper (in French) on the subject which will appear […] Read more

A couple of weeks ago, the federal government announced new ‘life without parole’ legislation. I was quoted in a story suggesting the proposed law would be “likely to face a Charter challenge”: “This is not parole,” Harper said. “Unlike parole, decisions will not rest with an appointed board but with the federal cabinet, men and […] Read more

As I have previously explained, I think it is wrong to measure administrative interpretations of law by reference to the principles of statutory interpretation. Sure, administrative decision-makers should be required to read statutory provisions intelligently and explain their conclusions in terms of statutory language and objectives, but they should not be required to master these […] Read more

I took the Canadian citizenship test recently. This is great fun for an administrative lawyer. For example, when the regulations say that citizenship is dependent in part on responding accurately to questions “prepared by the minister”, I am not fooled into thinking that Mr. Alexander composed the test himself on a sunny Sunday afternoon at […] Read more