Trial courts take direction from previous appellate level decisions. However, as can be seen below, trial courts have generated the most police powers out of all three levels we categorized in this section. Trial court judges are essential to the fact finding process within the criminal justice system. Once the facts have been agreed upon in a trial, they are accepted by appellate courts if there is an appeal by the losing side at the trial level. This suggests that trial courts have an impact on appellate level decisions and the facts and arguments heard at the trial level are often relied upon during the appeal process.
Trial courts take direction from previous appellate level decisions. However, as can be seen below, trial courts have generated the most police powers out of all three levels we categorized in this section. Trial court judges are essential to the fact finding process within the criminal justice system. Once the facts have been agreed upon in a trial, they are accepted by appellate courts if there is an appeal by the losing side at the trial level. This suggests that trial courts have an impact on appellate level decisions and the facts and arguments heard at the trial level are often relied upon during the appeal process.
Common Law Police Powers Deployed from 2020-2021:
Common Law Police Powers Deployed from 2020-2021:
In the past 35 years, the Supreme Court of Canada has generated several key police powers that have changed the criminal law landscape. Alongside warrantless roadside detentions (R v Dedman), the Supreme Court has provided police with the ability to detain individuals during a police investigation and search incident to the investigatory detention for police safety (R v Mann). The Supreme Court has also provided police with the power to use sniffer-dogs without a warrant (R v Kang-Brown, R v AM), and warrantless cell phone searches incident to arrest (R v Fearon).
Common Law Police Powers
THE CASE LAW
The Supreme Court of Canada's decision in Dedman v The Queen (1985) kickstarted a rapid expansion of ancillary police powers. Between 1985 and 2020, Canadian courts generated 96 new common law police powers. Since 1985, over 900 cases saw the deployment of established ancillary police powers, meaning that courts have deployed these powers at ten times the rate that they have been generated.
Canadian courts operate in a common law system. As we have discussed here, this means that every decision that justifies police action by defining a new power or bringing behaviour within the scope of a pre-determined power can lead to exponential change.
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Over the last 35 years, Canadian courts built off of one another to get us to where we are today. Every decision played a part.