Since the Supreme Court of Canada’s decision in Vavilov, I have given a number of presentations to administrative tribunal members on the implications of the revised understanding of reasonableness review. Here is the heart of the presentation, focusing on four key post-Vavilov issues In Vavilov, the majority identifies “two types of fundamental flaws…that may show […] Read more

I am very happy to say that my project on machine learning in public administration is going to be funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. The most recent list of Insight grant awards is here. Regular readers will have seen some of this material before but I thought it would be worth […] Read more

Over at the United Kingdom Constitutional Law Association blog, I have written a post about my forthcoming article on the “Culture of Justification” in administrative law, penned in response to a recent post by Professor Jason Varuhas. As he observes, the procedural and substantive law of judicial review has changed greatly in recent decades, a […] Read more

Predicting the long-term consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic has become a cottage industry. It is also something of a fool’s errand as the medium- to long-term outcomes depend in large part on how many waves of COVID-19 sweep over us and how bad the effects are. Nonetheless, for what little they are worth, let me […] Read more

With the support of the Centre for Law, Technology and Society I will be moderating a discussion of the recent Federal Court of Appeal decision in Entertainment Software Assoc. v. Society Composers, 2020 FCA 100, a case at the intersection of copyright law and administrative law. I will be joined by Carys J. Craig (Osgoode […] Read more

I am currently working on a chapter for “Leading Works in Public Law”, a collection edited by Ben Yong and Patrick O’Brien. My chapter is on SA de Smith’s Judicial Review of Administrative Action. Here is a draft of the third section, on “The Significance” The Significance Judicial Review of Administrative Action was “the first […] Read more

Although this year’s Osgoode Constitutional Cases Conference was cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the annual issue of the Supreme Court Law Review containing papers from the Conference is going ahead. My paper is entitled “Vavilov and the Culture of Justification in Contemporary Administrative Law“. Here is the abstract: The Supreme Court of Canada’s decision […] Read more

Recently, Mark Mancini and Léonid Sirota at Double Aspect took issue with the arguments we made in our posts on the Vavilov decision which Paul Daly had kindly published at Administrative Law Matters. Paul has since generously offered us space to respond. We aim to keep our rejoinder short and spicy, but we also want […] Read more

I am currently working on a chapter for “Leading Works in Public Law”, a collection edited by Ben Yong and Patrick O’Brien. My chapter is on SA de Smith’s Judicial Review of Administrative Action. Here is a draft of the second section, on “The Context” The Context As noted, Judicial Review of Administrative Action began […] Read more

I have posted “Governmental Power and COVID-19: The Limits of Judicial Review” to SSRN. Here is the abstract: The goal of this Chapter is to explain why those hoping for a high level of judicial engagement with the forms of power being used to combat the cultural, economic, medical, social and other fallout from the […] Read more