Here is a long post on the relevance of administrative law values (see my articles, here and here) to the difficult issue of jurisdictional error in English administrative law. Comments welcome! A useful starting point for a discussion of jurisdictional error is the following proposition: “any grant of jurisdiction will necessarily include limits to the […] Read more

Here is the first of several extracts from a paper I am working on, on the subject of convergence and divergence in English and Canadian administrative law At first glance, administrative law in Canada, where courts regularly defer to administrative decision-makers’ interpretations of law and judicial review of administrative action is organised around the concept […] Read more

With my colleagues Professor Kenneth Armstrong, Professor John Bell and Professor Mark Elliott, I have produced  a Brexit briefing paper on ‘Implementing Transition’. Following the Prime Minister’s speech in Florence on 22 September 2017, there is growing, albeit not universal, political consensus around the notion of a transitional – or ‘implementation’ – period. The intention […] Read more

The move by the judges of Quebec’s Superior Court to bring an action claiming that the jurisdiction of the Court of Quebec (a statutory court created by the province) unconstitutionally encroaches on the Superior Court’s jurisdiction has created great excitement in the province (see here). A swift backlash, prompted by the spectacle of judges suing […] Read more

Here is another snippet from my ongoing work on Hogan and Morgan’s Administrative Law in Ireland. The underlying issue here is the extent to which Ireland can implement EU Directives by delegated legislation. Ordinarily, only the Oireachtas (Parliament) can legislate or otherwise change the law: art 15 of the Constitution. Sometimes, however, the use of […] Read more

A few weeks ago, I spoke with Janina Boughey about her new book, Human Rights and Judicial Review in Australia and Canada: The Newest Despotism? You can listen to our conversation here: Here is the description of the book: It is commonly asserted that bills of rights have had a ‘righting’ effect on the principles […] Read more

This is the third in my series of posts on the EU (Withdrawal) Bill. The introduction to the series is here. The first post, on the conceptual problems with the Bill, is here. The second post, which focuses on substantive problems, can be found here. What I refer to as procedural problems are essentially shortcomings […] Read more

This is the second in my series of posts on the EU (Withdrawal) Bill. The introduction to the series is here. The first post, on the conceptual problems with the Bill, is here. There are several substantive problems with the Bill, relating to the scope of the powers granted to ministers, the conditions on the […] Read more

This is the first of three posts on the EU (Withdrawal) Bill: see my introduction to the series here. This is a work in progress, so any and all comments are very welcome. There are several conceptual problems with the Bill: first, it is not clear what “retained EU law” is; second, the point at […] Read more

UPDATE: You can now read all the posts in the series, first on the conceptual problems, then on the substantive problems, and finally on the procedural problems. The European Union (Withdrawal) Bill is currently making its way through Parliament. Unsurprisingly, the Bill survived Second Reading. Unsurprisingly, because failure to legislate for Brexit would cause chaos […] Read more