At the second Public Law Conference the week after next, I will be presenting a paper entitled “Administrative Law: Characteristics, Legitimacy, Unity“. Here is the abstract: Over the last half century, courts around the common law world have transformed the principles of judicial review of administrative action. Administrative law’s scope and depth have increased dramatically. […] Read more

I have a new paper on Canadian administrative law, to be published shortly in the McGill Law Journal, entitled “Struggling Towards Coherence in Canadian Administrative Law? Recent Cases on Standard of Review and Reasonableness“. It is likely to be topical, in view of recent developments: the discussion in Wilson and the extra-judicial plea by Justice David Stratas for “doctrinal coherence […] Read more

I wrote this op-ed-style piece earlier in the week with my initial reactions to the announcement of a new appointment process but was travelling and did not have an opportunity to post it. If I find the time over the weekend, I’ll add some thoughts about the constitutionality of the new process, in particular the […] Read more

As is well known, the people of Britain voted to leave the European Union on June 23. Quite how that vote will shape Britain’s future relationship with the EU remains unpredictable. One important factor is whether and when Article 50 of the Treaty on the European Union will be triggered. There has been a flood […] Read more

There are several points of general interest raised by the Supreme Court of Canada’s most recent administrative law decision, Wilson v. Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd., 2016 SCC 29. By majority, the Court reversed the Federal Court of Appeal (see my post). For a discussion of the merits — in which the Court restored what labour […] Read more

Apologies again for the long silence. Things remain rather chaotic, as we find ourselves between Canada and Cambridge, a move made all the more difficult by Brexit, and I have several writing commitments which have been filling my limited free time. These are now much closer to being fulfilled (or, at least, the deadlines are […] Read more

Regular readers will know that I have been following very closely the Canadian case law on internal administrative appeals. Three recent decisions, two from the Federal Court of Appeal on the Refugee Appeal Decision (the body that first prompted my interest in the subject) and one from the Prince Edward Island Court of Appeal (h/t […] Read more

One could be forgiven for thinking that the Supreme Court settled this question definitively in the following quote from the Reference re Supreme Court Act : Both the general eligibility requirements for appointment and the specific eligibility requirements for appointment from Quebec are aspects of the composition of the Court.  It follows that any substantive change […] Read more

At the behest of Canadian Heritage and Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada, I have authored a report, Best Practices in Administrative Decision-Making: Viewing the Copyright Board of Canada in a Comparative Light, with a viewing to contributing to the 2017 five-year legislative review of Canada’s Copyright Act. Download it here. Here is the abstract: […] Read more

I have posted before on unsuccessful efforts, in Australia and Canada, to invoke statistical evidence in order to demonstrate bias on the part of an administrative decision-maker. In the Australian and Canadian scenarios, the claims of bias were based on evidence showing that immigration officials invariably rejected asylum applications. An interesting recent Irish case, C.S.B […] Read more