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

My paper for this Saturday’s conference at the University of Ottawa in honour of Justice Charron is now available on SSRN. You can download it here. To whet your appetite, here is the abstract: In interpreting the “prescribed by law” requirement contained in section 1 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, Canadian courts have […] Read more

I was particularly taken by Julia Black’s recent Calling Regulators to Account: Challenges, Capacities and Prospects: Since their inception, public lawyers and political scientists have fulminated at the lack of accountability of regulatory agencies. But, though it may surprise their critics, regulatory agencies do not go out of their way to be unaccountable. The difficulties […] Read more

Blogging has been light recently: teaching, writing and administrative commitments, allied to some technical problems, have been holding me up.One interesting recent case, which I consider a useful launching pad for a consideration of justiciability, is Guergis v. Novak, 2012 ONSC 4579. Ms. Guergis is a former minister in the federal cabinet: you can read […] Read more

Last week, the New York Times published a lengthy article on the ‘secret kill list’ being maintained by President Obama. Whatever the merits of targeted killings as a matter of international law, international human rights law, or justice, for students of administrative law, there are at least three aspects of interest to the story. To […] Read more

Last week the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia upheld against constitutional challenge a delegation of power to Amtrak to develop performance standards. One of the grounds on which the challengers in Association of American Railroads v. Department of Transportation relied was that Amtrak was a private entity. American constitutional law doctrine looks […] Read more