standards of review

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Standards of Review: The ABCA Weighs In

A well-written student note takes me to task for my interpretation of Catalyst Paper Corp. v. North Cowichan (District), [2012] 1 SCR 5. Catalyst has not (yet) proved to be catalytic. It has not been applied to delegated legislation or decisions taken by other elected bodies. I unhesitatingly concede that Canadian courts have treated Catalyst […] Read more

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Deference, Weight and Procedural Fairness

In both Canada and the United States, considerable jurisprudential effort has been expended on identifying “standards of review” of administrative action. Standards of review refer to the tests applied to determine whether a court should strike down administrative decisions.Most of the time, when administrative lawyers speak of “deference” they have in mind a standard of […] Read more

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Not to say I told you so

But, I told you so. In my piece on the Supreme Court of Canada’s copyright pentalogy (to appear next year in Michael Geist’s edited collection), I predicted that the concurrent jurisdiction innovation would cause confusion. Sure enough, counsel for the losing party in Pastore v. Aviva Canada Inc., 2012 ONCA 887 made an application for […] Read more

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Curial Deference, Irish style

Karole Cuddihy passes along an interesting Irish High Court decision. In the following passage, from EMI Records (Ireland) Ltd. v. The Data Protection Commissioner, [2012] IEHC 264, the ever-reliable Charleton J. describes the place of deference in Irish law. I think it also functions as a serviceable description of prevailing English law: 5.0 Only in […] Read more

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Standard of Review in the Copyright Cases

Last week the Supreme Court of Canada released its reasons in a “fivefecta” of copyright cases. Interesting questions were raised. Are additional royalties payable when a video game is downloaded rather than bought over the counter? Is streaming a communication to the public which requires payment to the copyright holder? When a consumer listens to […] Read more