One of the cardinal principles of administrative law is that a decision-maker should never fetter his or her discretion. A recent case involving a claim for reimbursement for medical marijuana illustrates the principle nicely: Heilman v The Workers’ Compensation Board, 2012 SKQB 361.A battery of pharmaceutical treatments were prescribed over the years for the applicant’s […] Read more

You know when academics say, “Some of my best ideas come from students”? Sometimes, we mean it.A student I had a couple of years ago came to talk to me about procedural fairness in administrative law. “Why don’t you focus more on the right to respond? We talk about hearings, the right to counsel, and […] 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

A basic principle of administrative law is that a decision-maker must approach its decisions with an open mind. Demonstrating that a decision-maker had a “closed mind”, however, is extremely difficult. A decision-maker bent on refusing an application come what may will, if clever enough, keep his or her prejudices to him or herself.Interestingly, the applicant […] Read more

As a Q.C., Rabinder Singh appeared in some of the most significant public law cases before the superior courts of England and Wales. He was appointed to the bench in 2011. From the High Court, he recently issued an interesting judgment in H.A. (Nigeria) v. Home Secretary, [2012] EWHC 979 (Admin), a case concerning the […] Read more

In a recent decision, Justice Stratas of the Federal Court of Appeal raised a host of questions about the applicability of the Supreme Court of Canada’s re-shaping of judicial review doctrine to decisions taken by discretionary decision-makers: [19]           I am inclined to find that the Director is subject to this “normal” or […] Read more

One of the reasons offered by the concurring judges in Multani for merging administrative review and constitutional review (at least when an individualized decision was challenged) was that keeping them separate and distinct would be confusing to lower courts and litigants. That view never seemed particularly compelling to me: lawyers and judges often make and […] Read more

The Supreme Court of Canada has been feverishly productive in the field of administrative law since the Fall of 2011, rendering decisions on standard of review (questions of law, jurisdictional error and labour arbitrators), the right to reasons, issue estoppel, attempts to pre-empt the administrative decision-making process, and review of municipal by-laws. Plenty of grist […] Read more