I hope to start blogging more regularly in the coming weeks, as we are gearing up for a return to Term time here at Cambridge. I thought it might be useful to give you all an overview of my current and upcoming and projects, many of which will appear in some form in this forum. […] Read more

Another excerpt from my work on Hogan and Morgan’s Administrative Law in Ireland follows, this time attempting to distinguish between mandatory and directory statutory provisions. Warning: this analysis may not survive its imminent encounter with my co-authors! Thoughts welcome, especially from those who have to walk the mandatory/directory line in other jurisdictions. ——— When the […] Read more

Some of the contretemps between the UK Supreme Court and the European Court of Human Rights produce more heat than light. Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights has been a persistent source of discord for the last decade or so. The most recent exhibit is Poshteh v Royal Borough of Kensington & […] Read more

Judicial disagreement in administrative law cases is nothing new and nothing remarkable. Canadian judges have been disagreeing with each other — often at inordinate length — about the “standard of review” for over 30 years. But there are several remarkable features of the Supreme Court of Canada’s latest foray into standard of review in Quebec […] Read more

The UK Supreme Court’s decision today in R (UNISON) v Lord Chancellor [2017] UKSC 51 contains a fascinating discussion of the principles relating to vires review of delegated legislation that infringes on fundamental rights. There is much that will be of interest to public lawyers around the Commonwealth. At issue was whether fees imposed in […] Read more

Deference doctrines have a tendency to wax and wane in their application. In Canada, exceptions to the general presumption of reasonableness review of administrative interpretations of law are stubbornly tenacious and, sometimes, reasonableness review is applied in such a non-deferential way as to invite accusations that the reviewing courts is engaged in “disguised correctness review”. […] Read more

Today, the British government published its European Union (Withdrawal) Bill, the legislation designed to give statutory effect to Brexit. There is much of interest in the Bill, which will be debated in the autumn. Clauses 1-6 form a swamp of definitions, rules and standards designed to avoid chaos by ensuring that EU law remains enforceable […] Read more

It is good to be back blogging, at least fleetingly, after a long absence. I hope to start posting more regularly over the next few weeks. Work on the next edition of Hogan and Morgan’s Administrative Law in Ireland continues apace. Irish readers and those from other jurisdictions might find something of interest in this […] Read more

Blogging is likely to be more than usually intermittent in the coming weeks and months. Most importantly, my wife and I are expecting our third child imminently. The new arrival will join a four-year-old and soon-to-be-three-year-old. Those of you who have survived having young children will understand that the next few months will be very […] Read more

My paper “The Signal and the Noise in Administrative Law” will appear later this year in a special Administrative Law issue of the University of New Brunswick Law Journal. I have made a few small modifications to the paper that I posted in November 2016. Thanks to the Law Society of Upper Canada and the […] Read more