Nzolameso v. City of Westminster, [2015] UKSC 22 is a case about a technical area of law — local housing authorities’ duties to house homeless persons — but which contains interesting passages on reasoned decisions and administrative guidelines. N was evicted from a private property in Westminster and applied for local authority housing. The authority […] Read more

Here are two contrasting Court of Appeal decisions relating to human rights decision-makers’ ability to hear late-filed complaints: British Columbia (Ministry of Public Safety and Solicitor General) v. Mzite, 2014 BCCA 220 and Izaak Walton Killam Health Centre v. Nova Scotia (Human Rights Commission), 2014 NSCA 18. In the latter, the decision-maker proceeded pursuant to […] Read more

Canada has a new anti-spam law. Sending commercial electronic communications without the recipient’s consent is no longer permitted. But “commercial activity” is very broadly defined: “any particular transaction, act or conduct or any regular course of conduct that is of a commercial character, whether or not the person who carries it out does so in […] 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

The Irish Supreme Court will shortly deliver its judgment on litigation commenced against the State by Marie Fleming. Ms. Fleming is terminally ill with multiple sclerosis. She has asked the courts to declare unconstitutional Ireland’s prohibition on physician-assisted suicide. At first instance, a very strong three-judge High Court (Kearns P., Carney and Hogan JJ.) upheld […] Read more

Members of Canada’s First Nations have, if they can satisfy the significant evidentiary thresholds, potentially broad rights to engage in traditional practices such as hunting and fishing. At issue in L=Hirondelle v Alberta (Sustainable Resource Development), 2013 ABCA 12 was the administrative structure erected by the province of Alberta to regulate the issuing of fishing […] Read more

I’ve commented previously on administrators’ interpretations of their own regulations. In a recent Federal Court case, Moya v. Canada (Citizenship and Immigration), 2012 FC 971, the question of how reviewing courts should treat such interpretations arose again.The applicants were members of a Colombian family, variously born in Colombia, the United States and Canada (having been […] 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

Administrative agencies are generally entitled to develop policies. Doing so assists agencies in discharging their statutory mandates in a coherent and consistent manner. Those who come into contact with agencies also benefit: it ought to be easier to predict the application of a general rule than the exercise of discretion. From the Court of Appeal […] Read more