Professor Paul Craig has posted “The Nature of Reasonableness Review” on SSRN. Here is the abstract: While there is a voluminous literature on proportionality, there is considerably less on reasonableness as a test for judicial review of discretionary determinations. This paper examines the nature of reasonableness as a test for judicial review of discretion in […] Read more

We have all been there. A vital transaction needs to be made (think course registration, ticket purchase, visa payment) but, as you sit there drumming your fingers impatiently on the table, you are greeted with the message: “Our System is Currently Unavailable”. Now imagine that you wanted to access the system in order to re-register […] Read more

Big news in Québec at the moment is the attempt to remove the embattled mayor of Saint-Rémi. New legislation provides that elected municipal officials charged with certain criminal offences may be removed from office by a Superior Court judge. The judge has discretion in determining whether to remove the individual, which is a marked (and […] Read more

I have always been a bit dubious about claims that administrative law is becoming increasingly rights-based. Whether it should undergo a reorientation is a different question, of course, but it is difficult to discern a demonstrable pattern towards a markedly new approach to judicial review. Jason Varuhas makes this clear in “The Reformation of English […] Read more

There are some interesting snippets in this morning’s Supreme Court of Canada decision in Marine Services International Ltd. v. Ryan Estate, 2013 SCC 44 on the nature of workers’ compensation statutes and their relationship to the law of tort.The issue for the Court was whether the statutory bar created by a provincial workers’ comp scheme […] Read more

In my two earlier posts on the “third source” (here and here) I discussed the appropriate test for classifying government powers and whether they could be treated as arising from statute (as, on a generous reading, Lord Sumption suggested in R. (New London College Ltd.) v. Home Secretary, [2013] UKSC 51. In this post, I […] Read more

In my previous post, I laid out the details of the New London College case and some disagreement amongst the judges of the UK Supreme Court about third source powers. In this post I address the caveat I referred to previously and the possibility that third source powers can be statutory in nature. Mark Elliott […] Read more

Over at Public Law for Everyone, Mark Elliott has an excellent post on the UK Supreme Court’s recent decision in R. (New London College Ltd.) v. Home Secretary, [2013] UKSC 51. The decision features a slight divergence of views between Lords Sumption and Carnwath on the scope of governmental powers. I am going to break […] Read more

Angela Cameron and I have posted our forthcoming Supreme Court Law Review essay on Charter values and administrative decision-making in the context of education law: “Furthering Substantive Equality through Administrative Law: Charter Values in Education“. Here is the abstract: Recent decisions in the realm of Canadian public law have opened the door to Charter values. […] Read more

A long-running battle being waged by employees of Health Canada against their employer’s drug-approval procedures gives a glimpse of the law on the reopening of administrative decisions: Chopra v. Canada (Attorney General), 2013 FC 644.Here, the original complaint made by the employees to the Public Sector Integrity Commissioner was investigated and dismissed (though only after […] Read more