Commentary on developments in administrative law, particularly judicial review of administrative action by common law courts.
Before the COVID-19 pandemic hit, I was looking forward to hosting some of the country’s leading scholars and practitioners on administrative law for a day-long conference picking apart the implications of Vavilov for various areas of administrative decision-making. The event has been rescheduled for December 18. Please save the date! The title of the conference […] Read more
I am an associate professor at the Faculty of Law, University of Ottawa, where I hold the University Research Chair in Administrative Law & Governance. Educated in Ireland, the United States and the United Kingdom (where I also taught administrative law) before settling in Canada, I have developed a comparative perspective on judicial review of […] Read more
Here is the running order for this year’s Judicial Review Update (me and Justice Stratas of the Federal Court of Appeal). The event is online only. Sign up here. Vavilov, One Year On Statutory Appeals The Classification Game Yee v Chartered Professional Accountants of Alberta, 2020 ABCA 98 Planet Energy (Ontario) Corp. v Ontario Energy […] Read more
As I find myself drafting the introductory chapter to the next edition of Administrative Law in Context, here are some thoughts on the evolution of administrative law… The advocates of the 20th century welfare state envisaged a government which would take care of its citizens from the cradle to the grave. The contemporary administrative state […] Read more
The Supreme Court of Canada’s decision in Vavilov v. Canada (Citizenship and Immigration), 2019 SCC 65 made what seemed to be dramatic changes to the law relating to statutory appeals. Deference had previously come to reign supreme, even where an appeal to the courts from an administrative decision-maker had been provided by the legislature. Vavilov […] Read more
The Fall conference season has well and truly begun. I have participated in a variety of private events since the trees began to shed their leaves and, in the coming weeks and months, I will be speaking from a number of publicly accessible platforms: Friday, October 16, Centre for Law and the Contemporary Workplace, Queen’s […] Read more
For the past few years I have been working on a book on judicial review of administrative action, building on my Public Law Conference papers on administrative law values (here and here). It is designed to be a comprehensive study of the core features of administrative law in common law systems (Australia, Canada, England, Ireland […] Read more
In Prospect Magazine, I have a piece entitled “The inexorable rise of judicial review“, discussing the UK’s Independent Review of Administrative Law. Here is an extract, discussing the complex background to the Review: We should begin by noting that the period of development since the middle of the 20th century has been marked by procedural […] Read more
This is an excerpt from my forthcoming article, “The Appellate Standard of Review in Public Law Cases“. Download it here from SSRN. I blogged in 2018 on the English (AR) and Australian decisions (SZVFW) mentioned below. In the previous section, I described the broader context surrounding the decisions in AR and SZVFW. I suggested that […] Read more
This is an excerpt from my forthcoming article, “The Appellate Standard of Review in Public Law Cases“. Download it here from SSRN. The Canadian approach to appellate review in public law cases resembles the approach robustly defended by the High Court of Australia in SZVFW.[1] An appellate court must step into the shoes of the […] Read more