Commentary on developments in administrative law, particularly judicial review of administrative action by common law courts.
The Supreme Court of Canada’s decision in the Auer case (noted here) confirmed that the standard of review applicable to regulations is reasonableness: the judicial review analysis must be conducted under the Vavilov framework. Auer had a companion decision on discriminatory regulations: TransAlta Generation Partnership v. Alberta, 2024 SCC 37. In this decision dealing with […] Read more
The Supreme Court of Canada handed down its much-anticipated decision on standard of review of regulations in Auer v. Auer, 2024 SCC 36 this morning. I was co-counsel for the appellant, Roland Auer. After the hearing back in April, two things seemed quite clear to me: the Supreme Court would apply the Vavilov framework to […] Read more
I am giving a couple of ‘year in review’ talks in the coming weeks, to the CLEBC Administrative Law Conference in Vancouver on November 21, and the Canadian Bar Association’s Administrative Law, and Labour and Employment Law Conference in Ottawa on November 29. I’ve posted the CLEBC version of the paper to SSRN, “Correctness, Reasonableness […] Read more
Occasionally, cases arises in which the answer given seems intuitively obvious. The only surprise about Re McAleenon, [2024] UKSC 31 is that the case made it to the United Kingdom’s apex court at all (though as we will see there were some unusual aspects to the case that help to explain why the court below […] Read more
To open, a plug for the excellent new “Administrative Court Blog“, run by Anurag Deb, Lewis Graham and Gabriel Tan: this highlights important decisions from the UK on administrative law matters. I have found it invaluable and, indeed, only came across the case described in this post from Anurag Deb’s post. Last year, I posted […] Read more
On the evergreen topic of Charter values, I have a new paper on SSRN (forthcoming in a special edition of the Ottawa Law Review on language rights), entitled “The Charter in Administrative Decision-Making: Defending the Duty to Take Charter Values (or Purposes) into Account“: The Supreme Court of Canada recently reaffirmed that administrative decision-makers are […] Read more
In its 2018 decision in Highwood Congregation of Jehovah’s Witnesses (Judicial Committee) v. Wall, 2018 SCC 26, [2018] 1 SCR 750, the Supreme Court of Canada sought to clarify the approach to the scope of judicial review. Rowe J wrote, for a unanimous court, that “[j]udicial review is only available where there is an exercise […] Read more
It is a long time since I have uploaded a paper to SSRN but there may be quite a few on the way in the near future. Here is “Collaboration at the Intersection of Administrative Law and Political Science“, to appear in an edited collection published by the University of Toronto Press (edited by Emmett […] Read more
In a post earlier this year analyzing the Supreme Court of Canada’s recent administrative law decisions, I noted how it would be “necessary to read the next entries in the standard-of-review catalogue very carefully to see if the Court is sending a signal about the level of intensity of reasonableness review under the Vavilov framework”. […] Read more
It’s that time of year again, folks! The leaves are turning brown, the patios are closed and Jack Frost is roaming at dawn. And it is time for the Ontario Bar Association’s Annual Update on Judicial Review. Justice David Stratas and I will be taking our annual tour through the highways and byways of recent […] Read more