Overbroad Legislation

R. v. Appulonappa, 2015 SCC 59:

[26]                          A law is said to violate our basic values by being overbroad when "the law goes too far and interferes with some conduct that bears no connection to its objective":  Canada (Attorney General) v. Bedford, 2013 SCC 72, [2013] 3 S.C.R. 1101, at para. 101.  As stated in Bedford, "[o]verbreadth allows courts to recognize that the law is rational in some cases, but that it overreaches in its effect in others":  at para. 113; see also Carter v. Canada (Attorney General), 2015 SCC 5, [2015] 1 S.C.R. 331, at para. 85.

[27]                          The first step in the overbreadth inquiry is to determine the object of the impugned law.  The second step is to determine whether the law deprives individuals of life, liberty or security of the person in cases that do not further that object.  To the extent the law does this, it deprives people of s. 7 rights in a manner that infringes the principles of fundamental justice.

Of the Law Societies of Upper Canada and Nunavut