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 topic of enforcement discretion is the subject of an interesting series of posts by Zachary Price over at the Volokh Conspiracy. The impetus for Price’s series and his underlying article (“Enforcement Discretion and Executive Duty“) comes from several recent American episodes, such as President Obama’s decision not to enforce certain provisions of the Affordable […] Read more

My colleague Stéphane Beaulac raises a question that has not (it seems) had any consideration: can Omar Khadr, now back in Canada, apply for habeas corpus? Khadr can apply for a conditional release next year, but perhaps he will not have to wait that long.Khadr can almost certainly apply for the Great Writ. The leading […] 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

Julian Assange is currently hiding out in the Ecuadorian embassy, where he may be for some time. The British government’s suggestion that he could be arrested there is wide of the mark, however. The Foreign Secretary does have statutory powers under the Diplomatic and Consular Premises Act, 1987 to remove the diplomatic or consular status […] Read more

The UK Supreme Court decided two very interesting immigration cases the week before last, touching on two very interesting issues.The first issue was whether the royal prerogative in respect of immigration control had been ousted by the Immigration Act, 1971. That Act seems to be expressed in permissive terms. It allows, but does not require, […] Read more

My colleague Daniel Turp led a spirited challenge to the federal government’s decision to withdraw from the Kyoto Protocol. Spirited and all as the challenge was, it failed before the Federal Court.The key plank in the argument was legislation that came into force in 2007, the Kyoto Protocol Implementation Act. As s. 3 of the […] Read more