Administrative Law Matters

Commentary on developments in administrative law, particularly judicial review of administrative action by common law courts.

From Blogger

Mind your Metadata, Counsel!

These days, we are all very aware of the importance of metadata. Administrative decision-makers should be too: a failure to be fully aware of the implications of metadata nearly did for the respondent in Demaria v Law Society of Saskatchewan, 2013 SKQB 178.The applicant challenged, on numerous grounds, the Law Society’s refusal to admit him […] Read more

From Blogger

More on Discretion: Sentencing

The Supreme Court of the United States handed down Peugh v. United States today. The individual in question was sentenced according to the harsher set of sentencing guidelines that were in force at the time of sentencing rather than the milder set that were in force at the time he committed the offences. The majority […] Read more

From Blogger

Some Thoughts on Rational Decision-making

Adrian Vermeule has a new paper, Rationally Arbitrary Decisions (in Administrative Law). Here is the abstract: How should administrative law cope with genuine uncertainty, in which probabilities cannot be attached to outcomes? I argue that there is an important category of agency decisions under uncertainty is which it is rational to be arbitrary. Rational arbitrariness […] Read more

From Blogger

The Ever-Growing Administrative State

In his dissent in Arlington v. FCC (noted here), Chief Justice Roberts decried the rise and rise of the administrative state. This criticism nourished an op-ed in the Washington Post by George Washington University Law School’s Jonathan Turley. Here is a taste: The rise of the fourth branch has been at the expense of Congress’s […] Read more

From Blogger

Boilerplate Reasons

The President of France, M. Hollande, has recently suggested that where the administration fails to reply to individual decisions silence should be taken as indicating consent: “dans de nombreux domaines, le silence de l’administration vaut décision d’acceptation et non plus décision de rejet”. The reasoning is obvious: citizens deserve responses from the machinery of the state; […] Read more