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

Adrian Vermeule has a new paper, Rationally Arbitrary Decisions (in Administrative Law). Here is the abstract: How should administrative law cope with genuine uncertainty, in which probabilities cannot be attached to outcomes? I argue that there is an important category of agency decisions under uncertainty is which it is rational to be arbitrary. Rational arbitrariness […] Read more

R. (Sandiford) v. Foreign and Commonwealth Secretary, [2013] EWCA Civ 581 is a fascinating case.  A British citizen has been accused by the Indonesian authorities of drug trafficking, an offence which carries the death penalty in that jurisdiction. She wants the British government to fund her defence. Her arguments — which were rejected by the […] Read more

In his dissent in Arlington v. FCC (noted here), Chief Justice Roberts decried the rise and rise of the administrative state. This criticism nourished an op-ed in the Washington Post by George Washington University Law School’s Jonathan Turley. Here is a taste: The rise of the fourth branch has been at the expense of Congress’s […] Read more

An organization entered into an agreement with the Minister for Citizenship and Immigration to sponsor immigrants to Canada. Initially, the agreement provided that the Minister would cover all health care costs. Subsequently, the federal cabinet (of which the Minister is a member) issued an order which had the effect of requiring the organization to defray […] Read more