In a recent report, The Value and Effects of Judicial Review: The Nature of Claims, their Outcomes and Consequences, Varda Bondy, Lucinda Platt and Maurice Sunkin challenge “widely held and influential assumptions about the costs and misuse of JR” in Britain. On the contrary, they find, for instance: JR claimants often win tangible benefits, such […] Read more

I have a new paper on SSRN, a draft of a chapter that will appear in a forthcoming collection edited by Greg Weeks and Matthew Groves, Legitimate Expectations in the Common Law World (Hart, 2016). Here is the abstract: Critics doubt the existence of any coherent doctrine of legitimate expectations in the common law. Legitimate […] Read more

Matthew Groves passes on a very interesting decision from the Full Court of the Federal Court of Australia: WZARH v Minister for Immigration and Border Protection [2014] FCAFC 137. The issue was simple. A refugee claimant went for an interview with an Independent Merits Reviewer whose task was to reassess a refusal to classify him […] Read more

Canadian courts are to take five factors into account in determining the content of procedural fairness in any given case. One of these factors is whether the applicant had any legitimate expectation about the procedure to be followed. I have always found this unusual. Surely once an applicant establishes that a legitimate expectation has been […] Read more

One of the panels at the inaugural Public Law Conference last week (see my previous post) was on legitimate expectations. I was keenly interested, as I have agreed to contribute a chapter to a forthcoming (early 2016) collection on legitimate expectations in the common law world. Cora Hoexter was sympathetic to legitimate expectations as she […] Read more

The power of courts to order interim remedies in judicial review proceedings was squarely in issue in Amalorpavanathan v. Ontario (Health and Long-Term Care), 2013 ONSC 4993. The subsequent decision on the merits (given orally: 2013 ONSC 5415) involved an interesting application of the doctrine of legitimate expectations.A group of physiotherapy clinics are to be […] Read more

The Supreme Court of Canada rendered, through the pen of LeBel J., a unanimous judgment in Agraira v. Canada (Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness), 2013 SCC 36 last week. The applicant is a Libyan national. He first sought and was refused refugee status: he claimed that he was a member of the Libyan National Salvation […] 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

Canada’s immigration system is bursting at the seams. One of the backlogs is in sponsorship applications by Canadian permanent residents and citizens of their parents and grandparents. The federal government’s response was to institute, by way of ministerial instructions issued pursuant to s. 87 of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, a “temporary pause” in […] Read more

At first blush, the result in North End Community Health Association v. Halifax (Regional Municipality), 2012 NSSC 330 is striking. A municipality’s decision to sell an old school to a property developer was held to be unlawful because it breached a duty of fairness to local non-profit organizations and because it was sold at less […] Read more