Laws L.J. delivered the judgment of the Divisional Court yesterday in Miranda v. Home Secretary, [2014] EWHC 255, a judgment explained by Rosalind English and Carl Gardner, and aspects of which have also been discussed by Fiona de Londras and Colin Murray. Miranda, en route to Berlin to share confidential information with a journalist, was […] Read more

There is another aspect of Bernard v. Canada (Attorney General), 2014 SCC 13 (discussed here) that is of general interest. When the matter was remitted to it, the Public Service Labour Relations Board had to address whether its order that an employer had to disclose home contact information of non-union employees was compatible with privacy […] Read more

Bernard v. Canada (Attorney General), 2014 SCC 13 represents the end of a long struggle for Ms. Bernard, an employee of the Canadian revenue service who challenged — without counsel — her employer’s ability to send her personal contact details to a union. A decision ordering disclosure was ultimately upheld as reasonable and constitutional but […] Read more

The standard for impartial decision-making in administrative law continue to pose difficulties in practice. Here is an interesting new paper from Laverne Jacobs, “From Rawls to Habermas: Towards a Theory of Grounded Impartiality in Administrative Law“: At the same time that Canadian public law jurisprudence has grappled with some very key cases on bias, a […] Read more

Stratas J.A. has suggested a new set of guidelines to govern applications for intervener status before the federal courts: Canada v. Pictou Landing First Nation, 2014 FCA 21. Here they are: I.                 Has the proposed intervener complied with the specific procedural requirements in Rule 109(2)? Is the evidence offered in […] Read more

At the centre of R. (L.) v. West London Mental Health NHS Trust, [2014] EWCA Civ 47 was a man with significant mental health challenges. In a learned judgment, Beatson L.J. analyzed the requirements of the common law of procedural fairness and made some interesting observations about the challenges the common law poses for reviewing […] Read more

President Obama’s apparent determination to wield executive power to achieve his ends has provoked much discussion this week. The tendency for leaders to use various methods other than legislation to fulfill their objectives should be familiar to Canadian readers. Minority governments in parliamentary systems are in much the same place as an elected President who […] Read more

The Supreme Court of Canada this morning waded into the mire of the “economic torts”, a grab bag of common law causes of action that impose liability for (primarily) nasty behaviour in the marketplace. Up for discussion in A.I. Enterprises Ltd. v. Bram Enterprises Ltd., 2014 SCC 12 was the “unlawful means” tort, though as […] Read more

The UK Supreme Court released a very important decision last week: R. (HS2 Action Alliance) v. Secretary of State for Transport, [2014] UKSC 3. David Hart Q.C. has an excellent overview here, while Mark Elliott and Adam Tomkins have commented incisively. The importance of the decision lies in the intersection of domestic constitutional principles and […] Read more

I am somewhat late to last week’s D.C. Court of Appeals decision in the Net Neutrality case: Verizon v. Federal Communications Commission.  In brief, the Court struck down the Federal Communications Commission’s “Open Internet Order”, which imposed restrictions on how broadband providers may interact with providers of services like Netflix, Google and Youtube (so-called “edge […] Read more