In both Canada and the United States, considerable jurisprudential effort has been expended on identifying “standards of review” of administrative action. Standards of review refer to the tests applied to determine whether a court should strike down administrative decisions.Most of the time, when administrative lawyers speak of “deference” they have in mind a standard of […] Read more

The Law Society of Upper Canada (to the uninitiated, that’s the Ontario Bar Association) is holding its annual 6-Minute Administrative Lawyer conference next month. I’m doing the ‘Year in Review’ presentation. Here’s the abstract: I will discuss the leading Supreme Court of Canada (“the Court”) decisions of the one-year period bookended by the Six-Minute Administrative […] Read more

Unlike most well-adjusted people I do not make a habit of watching the Oscars. I do make a habit, however, of watching movies that were nominated for Oscars (this and the IMDB rating system largely dictate my entertainment choices). Last night, I sat through Dallas Buyers’ Club, which is tipped to win heavily this evening. […] Read more

In a mammoth recent paper on Chevron deference, Gary Lawson and Stephen Kam trace the origins of the doctrine: Making Law out of Nothing at All (2013), 65 Admin Law Review 1 (draft). The paper is ably reviewed on Jotwell by Linda Jellum. What I found most striking, in view of Canadian courts’ desire to […] Read more

Laws L.J. delivered the judgment of the Divisional Court yesterday in Miranda v. Home Secretary, [2014] EWHC 255, a judgment explained by Rosalind English and Carl Gardner, and aspects of which have also been discussed by Fiona de Londras and Colin Murray. Miranda, en route to Berlin to share confidential information with a journalist, was […] Read more

There is another aspect of Bernard v. Canada (Attorney General), 2014 SCC 13 (discussed here) that is of general interest. When the matter was remitted to it, the Public Service Labour Relations Board had to address whether its order that an employer had to disclose home contact information of non-union employees was compatible with privacy […] Read more

Bernard v. Canada (Attorney General), 2014 SCC 13 represents the end of a long struggle for Ms. Bernard, an employee of the Canadian revenue service who challenged — without counsel — her employer’s ability to send her personal contact details to a union. A decision ordering disclosure was ultimately upheld as reasonable and constitutional but […] Read more

The standard for impartial decision-making in administrative law continue to pose difficulties in practice. Here is an interesting new paper from Laverne Jacobs, “From Rawls to Habermas: Towards a Theory of Grounded Impartiality in Administrative Law“: At the same time that Canadian public law jurisprudence has grappled with some very key cases on bias, a […] Read more

Stratas J.A. has suggested a new set of guidelines to govern applications for intervener status before the federal courts: Canada v. Pictou Landing First Nation, 2014 FCA 21. Here they are: I.                 Has the proposed intervener complied with the specific procedural requirements in Rule 109(2)? Is the evidence offered in […] Read more

At the centre of R. (L.) v. West London Mental Health NHS Trust, [2014] EWCA Civ 47 was a man with significant mental health challenges. In a learned judgment, Beatson L.J. analyzed the requirements of the common law of procedural fairness and made some interesting observations about the challenges the common law poses for reviewing […] Read more