Clawbies 2015: Year in Review

Paul Daly December 20, 2015

That time of year again! Here are my nominations for this year’s awards.

  1. Pierre Trudel, Journal de Montréal: my polyvalent colleague has been blogging on current legal affairs in an unlikely venue, the website of the blue-collar Journal de Montréal. His posts are excellent, accessible entrées into the legal issue du jour and deserve a wide readership.
  2. Léonid Sirota, Double Aspect: last year’s big winner has remained at his irrepressible best throughout 2015, while also adding appreciably to his pile of excellent peer-reviewed articles. Hire him, hiring committees.
  3. Faculty of Law, University of Calgary, ABlawg: the decline in oil prices has had no appreciable impact on the quality of the posts here, with many members of the Faculty chipping in on a wide variety of issues.

In a year (you can start browsing here) that featured a new job for your erstwhile blogger and the 500th post on the blog, here are some of the highlights: Elvis impersonators, citizenship ceremonies (mine and Zunera Ishaq’s), fish, drugs, the Prince of Wales,  tenure, what to call a leading case, dog destruction, a Coke CJ pun, Tom Brady’s odd-shaped balls, the newest member of the Supreme Court of Canada, Arsenal defender Gabriel Paulista and Justin Trudeau’s attempt to skip around a constitutional amendment.

I also did some doctrine, lamenting the current state of Canadian administrative law, noting with increasing exasperation (here, here, here and here) that the Supreme Court of Canada has not helped matters, explaining (with the help of Stratas JA) how to do reasonableness review, mapping new horizons in public authority liability, having a look at the intersection of administrative and constitutional law (here, here and here), considering how to update the adjectival law of judicial review to account for changes in substantive law (here, here and here), and covering cases from Australia (here, here and here), Ireland, the UK (here, here, here, here and here)  and the European Union.

I hope you have had fun reading the blog this year and that you while away some pleasant time browsing through the 2015 back catalogue. Happy holidays to you all and a very happy New Year.

This content has been updated on December 20, 2015 at 11:28.