When will a jurisdictional error be sufficiently “material” to justify the quashing of a tainted decision? This issue has prompted some discussion on the High Court of Australia, most recently in Minister for Immigration and Border Protection v SZMTA [2019] HCA 3 and especially in Hossain v Minister for Immigration and Border Protection [2018] HCA 34. […] Read more

Perhaps because I have collateral challenge on the brain (see my post on the Supreme Court of Canada’s decision in Bird) but I cannot help but think of Adesotu v Lewisham LBC Case No E40CL183 in terms of the permissibility of indirectly impugning allegedly unlawful administrative action. Adesotu is not really a case about collateral […] Read more

Found to be a long-term offender and known to be someone who struggled with conditional releases from custody, Mr Bird was made subject by the Parole Board of Canada to a long-term supervision order, which included a residency requirement. Mr Bird breached the residency requirement and criminal proceedings were duly initiated, carrying a penalty of […] Read more

Away from this forum I’ve made three contributions in the last month to debates about Brexit, from a law and policy point of view. First, I participated in a Centre for Public Law panel discussion on the UK Supreme Court’s decision in the Scottish Continuity Billcase, [2018] UKSC 64. The link below starts at my […] Read more

Can a statutory tribunal disapply the law? The question arises in respect of constitutional challenges to legislation and, in the European Union, in respect of claims that domestic law contravenes norms of E.U. law. The recent decision of the Court of Justice in Minister for Justice and Equality v Workplace Relations Commission C-378/17 on a preliminary reference […] Read more

My blogging year has been dominated — almost bookended, even — by two symposiums, one (held jointly with Double Aspect) to mark the tenth anniversary of the Supreme Court of Canada’s decision in Dunsmuir v New Brunswick (see here), and another on a United Kingdom Supreme Court appeal concerning ouster or privative clauses, published on Administrative […] Read more

In a previous post, I complained about the approach the Irish courts have taken to the scope of the obligation on the Oireachtas (the Irish Parliament) to transpose certain measures of E.U. law into domestic law. These concerns are underscored by the decision of the Supreme Court in O’Sullivan v Sea Fisheries Protection Authority [2017] […] Read more

Mine this time, following from Professor Macklin’s provocative post last week. Having tuned in for the oral arguments, I am slightly more optimistic about the Supreme Court of Canada’s endeavour than I was before the hearing. The judges certainly asked pertinent questions over the three days and homed in on the methodology of reasonableness review […] Read more

The appropriate scope of the use of sophisticated computer programmes by government agencies is likely to be one of the most important topics in administrative law and administrative justice in the next decade. Indeed, it already is attracting significant scholarly and political attention, from the use of automated technologies to collect overpayments of welfare benefits; […] Read more

This is a guest post from Professor Audrey Macklin I represented the intervener Canadian Association of Refugee Lawyers (CARL) before the Court in Vavilov.  I will not rehearse the contents of the factum or my oral argument. Suffice to say that that, as a colleague remarked to me, the Court appeared “completely nonplussed” by my […] Read more