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).
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This project is a product of research conducted by Professor David Ireland, Dr. Richard Jochelson, and a team of dedicated law students.
Professor Ireland is an assistant professor at Robson Hall Faculty of Law at the University of Manitoba and graduate of Robson Hall's LL.M and LL.B programs. Prof. Ireland has practiced criminal law as both Crown and defence counsel, and was involved in high profile inquiries as well as dealing extensively with police powers. He joined the Faculty of Law, University of Manitoba, in 2016. He has published and researched in the area of police powers, jury trials, empirical assessments of plea bargaining and bail courts, evidence law and legal pedagogy.
Dr. Jochelson, Dean of Law at Robson Hall, is an expert in the Supreme Court’s articulation of reasonableness standards in criminal procedure. He has been studying the mechanics of judicial decision-making by Canadian courts in the criminal context in the areas of police powers, constitutional adjudication and the adjudication of cases of obscenity and indecency since 2002. He has co-authored multiple empirical papers in the area of police powers, exclusion of evidence and jury studies.
This website is intended to act as an open access platform for all Canadians to learn about issues of common law police powers in Canada.