What is a judicial review vs administrative review? I hired lawyers to investigate something that happened to me. One of their findings was &quot;judicial review was unavailable&quot;. In simple terms does someone request a judicial review when they believe their rights have been violated and want a court to make an order that would help them? What exactly is an administrative review or administrative tribunal? I get the impression it can happen in the work place, school or some sort of organization with a certain level of formality and structure. I also understand that it need not be fair, or at least what counts as fair is not defined. I understand it usually doesn't happen, especially if it's a non-government organization, but when can a judicial review override an administrative review's decision?
In simple terms does someone request a judicial review when they believe their rights have been violated and want a court to make an order that would help them? No. A judicial review in Canada is when the court reviews an administrative decision, that is, a decision (including by omission) made by the executive branch of the government or another entity exercising public functions under legislative or administrative delegation, as a last resort to preserve the rule of law, as an exercise of the inherent judicial authority. If your rights were not violated by a decision of the executive branch of the government, a judicial recourse may still be available, but usually not called judicial review. For example, if your contratual rights were violated by a private party (e.g. you are owed money), you can still sue the person in court as an ordinary civil lawsuit. In certain cases however, an administrative tribunal can make a decision regarding private disputes; the decision of the administrative tribunal, a public body, is subject to judicial review. If your constitutional rights are violated by a primary legislation passed by the Parliament (or provincial legislature), you may apply to a competent court for declarative relief, but usually this is also not referred to as judicial review, despite some similarities and some intersections in practice. The scope of judicial review is limited. The courts show considerable deferrence to the elected legislature and government and only exercise the power when all other legal resorts are exhausted. The legislature often provides administrative recourses with quasi-judicial characteristics (e.g. administrative tribunals, see later), which must be exhausted before the court steps in. The legislature sometimes deliberately limits or even attempts to bar judicial review through privative clauses. Although completely barring judicial review is not possible, it can influence the court's deferrence. Usually, one must obtain a leave (permission) from the court before commencing a judicial review proceedings. Then, if the leave is granted, the judicial review proceeding is not a proceeding for the judge to substitute their own decision in place of what the original decision maker made. New evidences are generally not admissible in judicial review; the judge only considers what is involved in the attacked decision. In most cases, the judge assesses whether the decision-maker was reasonable in their interpretation of law and their exercise of legal authority; it does not matter whether the judge would have made a different decision. In most cases, if judicial review is granted, the original decision is quashed (cancelled) but it is remitted to the original administrative body for re-determination (usually with another officer or panel). Seeking judicial review does not automatically prevent the administrative decision from coming into force, unless the applicant specifically demands the stay of decision and the judge agrees. There are exceptional cases where the judicial review is conducted on a standard of correctness, notably when procedural fairness is involved or when another important constitutional or general legal question should be determined conclusively. The applicable standard of review is based on the Supreme Court judgement in Canada (Minister of Citizenship and Immigration) v Vavilov. In such cases, the judge would make what they think should be the correct decision with respect to the part of decision that should be follow such standard. Even then, the judge usually would direct the original decision maker to make a new one consistent with their judgement, instead of making a new one. What exactly is an administrative review An administrative review, or reconsideration, is when the administrative body itself provides a way for an interested party to request a review of the original decision by the administrative body itself (although often by another officer within the same service). It is generally not a legal right, and only granted when there is a clear error (e.g. the decision maker had the wrong file) to ensure administrative certainty. The term is usually not applied if there is a formal statutory structure of reexamination by another decision maker for an administrative decision, even if the new reexamination occurs within the same body. or administrative tribunal? Administrative tribunals are quasi-judicial bodies established by law (passed by legislatures) that makes independent decisions on behalf of the executive government. They are established to avoid costly and slow-moving lawsuits in courts and to specialize in specific areas of law to better serve the interests of justice. There are several types of administrative tribunals: dedicated conflict resolution tribunals between private persons, for example: Landlord and Tenants Boards that resolve disputes arising from real estate leases human rights tribunals where many discrimination claims in services and employment are resolved labour relations boards that deal with the recognition of labour unions and conflicts (grievance) between unionized workers and employers tribunals that review particular types of government decisions, e.g. the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada, who has jurisdiction to hear appeals on certain types immigration decisions (e.g. deportation of a permanent resident) tribunals that make independent decisions for the government, despite the tribunal itself being part of the executive branch, e.g. the Competition Tribunal the Copyright Board other bodies exercising public statutory functions, e.g. the professional regulatory bodies (e.g. law societies, colleges of physicians and surgeons) are administrative tribunals for the purpose of exercising functions delegated to them by law, even if often they are private societies, for example, the decision to or not to admit a lawyer by a law society is subject to judicial review as the law society is exercising its delegated public authority (to regulate who can practice law). Some tribunals may have multiple functions described above; for example, the IRB is the first decision maker on the grant of refugee status, while also having statutory jurisdictions over appeals of certain immigration decisions (including the decision itself made over refugee status). As all powers of an administrative tribunal must be based in law, only those decisions that the legislature said could be dealt by these tribunals can be to an administrative tribunals; for example, temporary visa decisions (e.g. for visit or studies) are not appealable before IRB, but judicial review of the officer's visa decision can be directly requested. I get the impression it can happen in the work place, school or some sort of organization with a certain level of formality and structure. If it concerns the government, it may involve an administrative action that may be subject to judicial review. For example, a federal government employee may have recourses with the Federal Public Sector Labour Relations and Employment Board, whose decisions are subject to judicial review. A public university's decision (including a student's grade) may also be an administrative decision subject to review. The internal university appeal procedures could be seen as similar to the functions of administrative tribunals, but these internal boards are usually not established by law and are appointed by internal university procedures. Otherwise, it is a private dispute where a formal structure may be desirable for legal and moral reasons. I also understand that it need not be fair, or at least what counts as fair is not defined. A public body exercising a quasi-judicial function, particular an administrative tribunal, must be fair. It is a matter of natural justice where the court is not reluctant to correct an administrative decision maker. The duty of fairness generally does not apply to political or legislative decisions. While there is no simple definition of what is fair and the application of the principles of natural justice necessarily depends on the case in question, there is a significant body of case law on what consists fairness (or rather, unfairness). For example, arbitrary or dishonest decisions are almost always unfair. Decisions made without possibility of being heard are often unfair. Undisclosed conflicts of interest can also bring fairness into question. A private body in its private capacity (i.e. not exercising a public function) has no general constitutional or natural justice requirement to be fair, but the law may impose upon private persons a positive duty (e.g. provision of goods and services without racial or sex discrimination; dismissal without notice only possible for cause). if it's a non-government organization, but when can a judicial review override an administrative review's decision? If it concerns a non-government organization that is not exercising a public function, a judicial review is not possible; other recourses may be possible, e.g. an ordinary lawsuit, or recourses to a public body (e.g. if you have problems with a landlord, you can go to the LTB). If it concerns an actual administrative decision, judicial review is granted, among other possible reasons: when the decision maker lacks the jurisdiction to make the decision, e.g., when they make a decision outside their statutory powers when the attacked decision is unreasonable; for example, when the decision is not supported by logic or evidences (that were submitted during the administrative decision making) when it is incorrect on an important constitutional question or other question of law, or the principles of natural justice had been breached during the decision making process.
&quot;Legal problem&quot; is too vague to be included. &quot;Investigation&quot; needs a bit of refining; &quot;lawsuit&quot; is relatively simple (as long as you mean &quot;actual lawsuit&quot; not &quot;idea that maybe we could sue&quot;). There is no central list of all lawsuits against a given party, but you could theoretically check every jurisdiction to see if there is a lawsuit. That's a really big list, maybe in the millions if you want to be complete. You can use ordinary Google search to find announced lawsuits, typically by government agencies. Finding investigations is even more difficult: you will not be able to determine what investigations I am conducting. Even determining the existence of investigations by police including e.g. the FBI is hard to do. A government attorney is the one most likely to reveal that they are investigating some party with the intent to sue them. Again, you can't get a complete list, you can use Google to get an indication of who has announced an investigation (your results will generally not say whether the investigation was closed, unless you pursue that question as well).
I'd say it's more like a concurrence than a dissent. Justice Thomas isn't saying the Court should have taken the case; he's just raising question about the (implicit) reason the Court isn't taking the case. Most experienced observers will read the statement as a signal that he is open to reversing Raich and hoping that someone will bring the right case in which to do that. But in the end, t amounts to pure commentary and has no legal effect. The practice of filing these types of statements is not &quot;normal,&quot; as the Court rejects probably more than 95 percent of the cases that come to it, and it does so without comment. But it is hardly unprecedented to see these types of statements, and I assume that every justice (except perhaps Barrett, given her recent arrival) has made similar statements. From a quick search, I can find statements from Alito, Thomas, Gorsuch, and Kavanaugh, from Roberts, and from Breyer.
Generally, a local county judge’s decision is not binding on the judgement of another judge unless it is that of an appellate division. The law of the case principle could be referred to as an argument if it would have been decided by another judge in the same case (some courtships work on a rotary basis with different judges sitting over a single case). This would mean that the court would give greater deference to that decision; however, applying the principle is a matter of administrative preference to save resources of the court. Whether or not the other judge would reconsider the matter would be within their discretion absent binding authority to the contrary as a “law of the case” is not binding. In fact, even if it would have been the same judge with the exact same facts deciding the matter in a final judgement, there wouldn’t be much to do. One could argue that deciding differently is a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment which, if the judge fails to explain the different decision on the exact same facts may have a reasonable probability to get overturned provided the unconstitutionality finding was correct in the first place. If the matter was, in fact, unconstitutional, appeals may overturn a contrary judgement if the issue is brought up in the lower court and enters the court record. It may have some weight still to cite the decision of the other judge as the argument may be given more weight than if merely delivered as the argument of counsel.
I'm not going to comment on the specifics of this law; rather, I think this question shows a misconception of the way the legal system works in general. Here's the question: do you actually have "legally privileged" material on your phone? If not, what's keeping you from claiming that is that it's not true, and lying to a police officer is a bad idea. And just putting a letter from your lawyer on the phone doesn't mean you've established a legal privilege--attorney-client privilege is not a magic spell, it's a reasonable system of protection that only covers certain communications. The bottom line is: the statute in general, and that clause in particular, were included in the law to protect real, important, and substantial legal right. The courts interpret the law in light of that purpose. If the police officer finds a solution that protects your rights while still carrying out the purpose of the statute, the court will be unlikely to fault him or her. In this case, if you tell the officer that there is a letter from your attorney in a particular folder, the obvious solution is for the officer not to open that folder. Problem solved. In practice, in the United States at least, these cases are dealt with routinely; computers are seized, and attorneys and judges work together to ensure that privilege is protected while still allowing reasonable access to seized materials. I would imagine the same is true in the U.K. The bottom line is: the law is not a game, and technical "gotchas" are rarely effective. Common law systems allow judges enough leeway to avoid this sort of pointless technicality.
The wording is a little confusing, but I interpret it as saying the following: Normally, discovery in a court case allows either party to demand documents from the other, to be used as evidence. However, our courts have exceptions; certain documents might be 'privileged against discovery', meaning they couldn't be demanded in that way. If one of those exceptions would apply to a document under court rules, then you can't request it under Freedom of Access either. To know what those privileges are, and how broadly they apply, you'll have to consult the rules of court procedure for your state.
Laws are different around the world and you didn't bother to state your location, but typically no- this is not how the system works. What would be the point? There's no defendant. You, the plaintiff would argue against thin air and then what? The court rules in your favour, declares this illegal, and nothing happens because there's no defendant. Is it so you can use this ruling if you find out later? Pretty sneaky. Let's look into how this would actually work. You bring up a case- Jackson vs a mannequin or something. You make your arguments. The defense makes literally no defense. The judge rules in your favour, with a result of nothing as there is no defendent. Next, you find the culprit and bring a case against them. You point out that this is illegal because we came to that decision last week. What's that defendant? An argument against it being illegal? Too bad, the decision has been made. When I posted this answer, it was before the &quot;Nyah, I was ranting about government spying but was deliberately vague- aren't I clever?&quot; comment and I assumed it was against, say, a neighbour but it doesn't really matter. You cannot have a system that makes a judgement without a defendant so it can be applied later.
In broad terms, in a three pillar democracy, the job of the legislature is to make the law, the job of the executive is to enforce the law and the job of the courts is to interpret the law. The courts may find that a piece of legislation is invalid, either in whole or in part for any number of reasons. The legislature can respond by: Repealing the legislation Changing the legislation to remove the invalidity Doing nothing. Your first question is why would they go for option 3? I can, off the cuff, think of several reasons: Time pressures, a legislature can only deal with so many pieces of legislation per year - it may not be a worthwhile investment of time to "tidy up" the statute books. Possibility of appeal, the precedent may be open to appeal or having an alternative ruling in a higher court. Precedent, unless and until the decision reaches the Supreme Court or equivalent then the decision is only binding on lower courts. Possibility of change to superordinate legislation, in the particular circumstance you cite, the local authority may leave the law on the books in the hope or expectation that the state law may be repealed or overturned - the local law would then be valid. For your second question, the judge is supposed to know. That said, judges make mistakes so a wise plaintiff/defendant will draw the judge's attention to the current state of the law. It would certainly look bad for them on appeal if it emerged that they did know and allowed the judge to make a mistake. Firstly, they are officers of the court and secondly, justice is blind but justices may remember you made them look like a fool! For your third question ... maybe. However, such a claim would be limited to what you actually lost through your lawyer's malpractice. It can't be the case because you couldn't win it anyway - the law was against you! You may be able to argue that the lawyer should be responsible for some of the costs or losses that arose from you failing to settle earlier. Good luck with that.