From the Privy Council comes an interesting review of the general principles governing retrospective legislation: Ferguson v. The Attorney General of Trinidad and Tobago [2016] UKPC 2. The facts in the several cases under appeal arose out of the introduction of a ten-year statutory limitation period for criminal prosecutions in Trinidad and Tobago. At the […] Read more

The potential demise of so-called Auer or Seminole Rock deference has been discussed on the blog before (see here and here). The Supreme Court of the United States is now poised to consider interring the doctrine. However, in “The Unbearable Rightness of Auer“, Cass Sunstein and Adrian Vermeule encourage the Supreme Court to leave well […] Read more

The decision of the Court of Appeal in the high-profile case of R. (Miranda) v. Home Secretary, [2016] EWCA Civ. 6 was handed down last week. My interest in the case, which stems from the detention, questioning and search of David Miranda, was piqued by Laws L.J.’s discussion of the “prescribed by law” test at […] Read more

A trilogy of recent Canadian decisions raising standard of review issues have caught my eye. In each case, a standard of correctness is applied, but different reasons are given by each court. Indeed, it would be fair to say that each court follows a different analytical approach. Some more evidence, then, of confusion in this […] Read more

Yesterday, the Canadian government took the next step in its Senate reform process by appointing an advisory board, “an independent and non-partisan body whose mandate is to provide the Prime Minister with merit-based recommendations on Senate nominations”. I have blogged already about the new government’s use of mandate letters, issued to individual ministers, to impose […] Read more

The paper I prepared for the ‘Deference or Drift’ conference (that I was unfortunately unable to attend in person) focuses on several areas of administrative law doctrine in which Canadian courts have given the Crown special treatment that they do not give statutory decision-makers. Here is the first part… The Supreme Court of Canada has […] Read more

I have written before, somewhat sceptically, about the problem of ‘rebottling old wine’, updating the adjectival law of judicial review to take account of developments in the substantive law. Stratas J.A. had an interesting take on the question of the content of the record for judicial review in Bernard v. Canada (Revenue Agency), 2015 FCA […] Read more

A belated welcome to 2016. Normal post-holiday service should now resume. Some good news to begin the year. Administrative Law Matters won the 2015 Fodden Award for Best Canadian Law Blog. Here are the very kind and generous words of the judges: This was one of our toughest choices in years, thanks to the incredible […] Read more

The latest decision in Trinity Western University’s battle to have its law school accredited by Canadian law societies comes from British Columbia: Trinity Western University v. The Law Society of British Columbia, 2015 BCSC 2326. While the cases in other jurisdictions (Nova Scotia and Ontario) have considered grand constitutional questions, this one focused on traditional […] Read more

I have written before about whether a statutory tribunal sitting on “appeal” from another body can exercise a judicial review jurisdiction — and Francophiles can read in greater detail in the latest issue of the Canadian Bar Review. The issue continues to arise with frequency before Canadian courts. In two recent decisions, appellate judges have […] Read more