Top Five 2007: R v Clayton

Each year at OJEN’s Toronto Summer Law Institute, a judge from the Court of Appeal for Ontario identifies five cases that are of significance in the educational setting. This summary, based on these comments and observations, is appropriate for discussion and debate in the classroom setting.

R v Clayton, [2007] 2 SCR 725, 2007 SCC 32

“Within minutes of receiving a 911 call indicating that a number of persons were openly displaying handguns in a strip club’s parking lot, the police stopped the first car leaving from the lot’s rear exit” [para. 1].  The Supreme Court of Canada was tasked with determining whether this search contravened sections 8 and 9 of the Charter.  The police detention and search of two men at the site of a roadblock was found not to infringe s. 8 and s. 9 of the Charter because the roadblock was “reasonably necessary to respond to the seriousness of the offence and the threat to the police’s and public’s safety” [para. 41]. The full decision is available here.