Since its decision in Canada (Minister of Citizenship and Immigration) v. Vavilov, 2019 SCC 65, [2019] 4 SCR 653 in December 2019 (and a couple of companion decisions released the same month), the Supreme Court of Canada has done nothing in respect of the standard of review of administrative action. And, it must be said, […] Read more

This is the last in my series of posts on the Supreme Court of Canada’s decision in Law Society of Saskatchewan v. Abrametz, 2022 SCC 29 (see also here, here, here and here). Before discussing the available remedies for administrative delay in the wake of Abrametz, it is appropriate to note the dissenting reasons of […] Read more

This is the latest in my series of posts on the Supreme Court of Canada’s decision in Law Society of Saskatchewan v. Abrametz, 2022 SCC 29 (see also here, here and here). Undue delay in Canadian administrative law is an aspect of procedural fairness. A “corollary” to the duty to act fairly is “a power […] Read more

In my last post, I explained the position we took on the standard of review of procedural fairness issues in Law Society of Saskatchewan v. Abrametz, 2022 SCC 29 (overview here). In this post, I will tease out the implications of the decision. During my oral submissions (all seven minutes of them!), Justice Rowe asked […] Read more

In this and the following post, I will address the implications of Law Society of Saskatchewan v. Abrametz, 2022 SCC 29 for the standard of review on procedural fairness matters (see my overview of the case here). I will suggest that the implications are potentially profound, as Abrametz suggests that procedural fairness issues should be […] Read more

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