As regular readers know, I was counsel for the Law Society of Saskatchewan (with Alyssa Tomkins and Charles Daoust) in Law Society of Saskatchewan v. Abrametz, 2022 SCC 29. By a majority of 8-1, the Supreme Court of Canada (Rowe J for the majority, Côté J dissenting) allowed our appeal from the decision of the […] Read more

This blog has now been up and running for a decade (since May 2012). In that time, I have published over 1,000 entries. I hope at some point to mark these anniversaries with some thoughts about my blogging experience and what I have learned over the years. For now, as I head off on vacation […] Read more

I have posted “The Ages of Administrative Law“, my contribution to this year’s Public Law Conference, to SSRN. Here is the conclusion. Thoughts and comments very welcome. I have set out, in this paper, an analytical framework for explaining developments in administrative law over time. I identified an Age of Invention, in which the basic […] Read more

Joe Tomlinson and I have posted “The Importance of Methodology in Public Law Research” to SSRN: Public law academics are coming under increasing pressure to be more open about methodology. In part, the pressure results from the increasing sophistication and ambition of legal scholarship. Where lawyers were writing to develop arguments about how other participants […] Read more

Joe Tomlinson and I have posted “Researching Public Law and the Administrative State” to SSRN: The modern administrative state is vast and complex. Public lawyers who seek to make sense of it face a difficult challenge and, over time, different ways of confronting the administrative state have emerged. Broadly speaking, academic studies relating to the […] Read more

I was invited to contribute to a major symposium on the career of Dr S Ronald Ellis QC today (see the details). Here are my remarks: A few weeks ago, the Supreme Court of Canada released a remarkable decision in R. v. Bissonnette, 2022 SCC 23. The issue was the constitutionality of a sentencing provision […] Read more

I have posted “The Ages of Administrative Law“, my contribution to this year’s Public Law Conference, to SSRN. Here is the third and final substantive part. Thoughts and comments very welcome. Already in the Age of Expansion general principles relating to administrative justice and administrative law had begun to emerge. That process accelerated from the […] Read more

I have posted “The Ages of Administrative Law“, my contribution to this year’s Public Law Conference, to SSRN. Here is the second substantive part. Thoughts and comments very welcome. Central government did not regulate many aspects of public and private life in the 19th century. In Canada, the early years post Confederation were marked by […] Read more

I am working on a paper on Justice Abella’s administrative law jurisprudence. Here is the opening part, describing her approach to judicial restraint. Justice Abella’s advocacy of deferential review of administrative decisions was a consistent theme throughout her tenure on the Supreme Court of Canada. I will address substantive review in this section but I […] Read more

I have posted “The Ages of Administrative Law“, my contribution to this year’s Public Law Conference, to SSRN. Here is the first substantive part. Thoughts and comments very welcome. In his Hamlyn Lectures, Professor Paul Craig has elegantly described how the administrative state existed in embryonic form before even the Glorious Revolution.[1] In this section, […] Read more