Here is an interesting Supreme Court of the United States opinion on a statutory requirement to give reasons: T-Mobile South, LLC v. City of Roswell, 574 U.S. ___ (2015). T-Mobile wanted to build a cell-phone tower in Roswell. The City refused to give permission: the elected members of the Council adopted a motion to deny […] Read more

The extent to which administrative decision-makers should be allowed to participate in judicial review challenges to their decisions is a difficult question. On the one hand, limited participation deprives a reviewing court of important perspectives that an administrative decision-maker might be able to bring to the discussion. On the other hand, aggressive participation might — […] Read more

The Irish Supreme Court recently released its judgment in Murphy v. Ireland, 2014 IESC 19. Of greatest general interest is the recognition that the applicant had a limited right of procedural fairness which imposed a duty on the Director of Public Prosecutions to give reasons to send him for a non-jury trial at the Special […] Read more

A troubling controversy is emerging about the decision of a couple of federal adjudicative tribunals, those charged with social security and refugee appeals, to refuse to publish all of their decisions. Those who regularly represent clients in these appeals are complaining. There is no general rule even that all judicial decisions be published. In courts […] Read more

The recent UK Supreme Court decision in Osborn v. The Parole Board, [2013] UKSC 61 has already provoked interesting commentary on the relationship between the common law of procedural fairness and the European Convention on Human Rights. I have nothing to add to that commentary, but one of the things I find interesting about Osborn […] Read more

The vexed question of the adequacy of reasons got another outing in Wall v. Independent Police Review Director, 2013 ONSC 3312. Here, an individual arrested during an allegedly heavy-handed police operation at the 2010 G20 summit in Toronto made a complaint about his treatment. Having spent 28 hours in custody, he was released without charge.His […] Read more

The President of France, M. Hollande, has recently suggested that where the administration fails to reply to individual decisions silence should be taken as indicating consent: “dans de nombreux domaines, le silence de l’administration vaut décision d’acceptation et non plus décision de rejet”. The reasoning is obvious: citizens deserve responses from the machinery of the state; […] Read more

The Supreme Court of Canada took the (in my view) reasonable step in Newfoundland Nurses, 2011 SCC 62 of separating procedural review for failure to provide reasons from substantive review for reasonableness. One concern that might be voiced in response is that rolling a procedural right to reasons into substantive review may give too much […] Read more

The Manitoba Court of Appeal, in London Limos v. Unicity Taxi Ltd., 2012 MBCA 75, recently discussed whether market participants in regulated industries have any procedural rights when new companies apply to enter the market. The answer in this case was some, but not many. London Limos applied to the provincial Taxicab Board for licences […] Read more

Another example from the Canadian courts of the thin line separating process from substance: Turner v. Canada (Attorney General), 2012 FCA 159. On this occasion, the determination that a question went to process is again plausible at first sight but troubling on closer inspection. The applicant here alleged that he was discriminated against by the […] Read more