Those of you planning to attend ‘year in review’ sessions in the coming weeks and months will no doubt be pleased to learn that Justice Stratas has updated his invaluable “The Canadian Law of Judicial Review: Some Doctrine and Cases“, available on SSRN: It is hard to find a useful, up-to-date summary of the Canadian […] Read more

It is the Fall and as the leaves fall so too are forests felled to print the annual ‘year in review’ papers. I have posted my annual update on the Supreme Court of Canada’s administrative law jurisprudence to SSRN: This paper focuses on the Supreme Court of Canada’s 2022 administrative law jurisprudence. This year marked […] Read more

This is an extract from my paper “A Defence of Administrative Law Doctrine“ I argued in Part II that administrative law doctrine is not empty, as it precludes judicial conclusions in concrete cases. In this Part, I will argue that administrative law doctrine is not pernicious either. Setting out a systemic conception of doctrine is […] Read more

I have not had as much time as I would like recently to pursue my research interests in the regulation of social media platforms. Before the pandemic, I wrote favourably of the Broadcasting and Telecommunications Legislative Review Panel: What are the social media behemoths — Facebook, Google, Netflix, Twitter, Youtube, etc — that have come […] Read more

This is an extract from my paper “A Defence of Administrative Law Doctrine“ Professor Allan’s third proposition is that there are no general principles of judicial review. Indeed, the very proposition that general principles give administrative law a “genuine sense” is “actually a contradiction in terms”.[1] As a “body of doctrine”, administrative law lacks “any […] Read more

This is an extract from my paper “A Defence of Administrative Law Doctrine“ The second proposition is that the heads of review – legality, rationality and procedural propriety – are too abstract to guide judges: “Though a convenient summary of our conclusions in any particular case, the doctrine cannot provide any justifying ground for those […] Read more

This is an extract from my paper “A Defence of Administrative Law Doctrine“ In his writings on deference, Professor Allan picked up on a theme he had first elaborated in “Doctrine and theory in administrative law: an elusive quest for the limits of jurisdiction”.[1] As he later summarized his general position, doctrinal grounds of review […] Read more

In this post, I want to mark the National Day of Truth and Reconciliation by highlighting two recent Alberta Court of Appeal decisions on reconciliation and regulation. Both treat reconciliation as an integral part of the regulatory enterprise. Consider first Fort McKay First Nation v Prosper Petroleum Ltd, 2020 ABCA 163. Here, the Alberta Energy […] Read more

This is an extract from my paper “A Defence of Administrative Law Doctrine“ It is necessary at the outset to define what I mean by “doctrine”. What I have in mind is an account which provides a “systemic conception” of a particular area of law, setting out the relevant principles, rules and standards in a […] Read more

For previous posts in this series, prepared for today’s University of Toronto symposium on Justice Abella, see here, here and here In the scholarly literature on deference, one finds pro-deference arguments based on legislative intent,[1] relative institutional competence,[2] democratic legitimacy[3] and much else besides.[4] These arguments tend to be developed from the perspective of the […] Read more