Under the “Carltona principle”, decisions taken in reality by civil servants in a government department are treated in law as decisions of the responsible minister, such that where a statute provides for decisions to be made by a “minister” it is lawful for a civil servant to take them in the minister’s stead (see here […] Read more

Back in 2012 I posted about a paper by Sean Rehaag which identified “wild variations in the treatment of leave and judicial review applications by different Federal Court judges”. Reforms to the leave and judicial review process followed. Professor Rehaag has now returned with a new study, “Revisiting the Luck of the Draw“, covering an […] Read more

A full review of this book will appear in the November issue of the Cambridge Law Journal Administrative law aficionados often find themselves asking existential questions. Should administrative lawyers focus on judicial review – the control by the ordinary courts of administrative action – or should they focus on the internal workings of the administration? […] Read more

I was in London today at a Chillin’ Competition event at the London School of Economics to mark the publication of The Shaping of EU Competition Law by Pablo Ibanez Colomo, where I commented on the administrative law matters raised by the book. As you will see, I think this is an important piece of […] Read more

Two recent cases, one from Canada and one from New Zealand, suggest that a  useful distinction can be made between excluding and channeling judicial review of administrative action. Legislatures often interfere with the supervisory jurisdiction of the superior courts, sometimes to eliminate it altogether (excluding), but more often to regulate it, for instance by imposing […] Read more

A full review of this book will appear in the November issue of the International Journal As I write, in the summer of 2018, there is tremendous noise in British politics: cries of frustration from those opposed to the United Kingdom’s departure from the European Union; howls of outrage from those who fear Brexit will […] Read more

As I am slowly getting back to work after the summer break, I thought it might be useful to share with readers some of the books I have been reading over the holidays. Lorne Sossin and Emily Lawrence have produced a very useful text, Administrative Law in Practice: Principles and Advocacy. As the authors describe […] Read more

Justice David Stratas and I will step once more unto the breach on September 26 in Toronto to discuss recent developments in Canadian administrative law (and, where relevant, developments elsewhere in the common law world). You will find details on how to register (in person or via webcast) here. We hope you can join us! […] Read more

What should an appellate court do in an appeal from an application of the proportionality test by a lower court? In his judgment for a unanimous UK Supreme Court in R (AR) v Chief Constable of Greater Manchester Police [2018] UKSC 48, Lord Carnwath concluded that the appellate court need not conduct the proportionality analysis […] Read more

Following up on last week’s post on the public/private divide in Irish law and, indeed, last month’s post on the scope of judicial review in Canada, readers may be interested in  the most recent treatment by the Irish Supreme Court of the scope of judicial review, to be found in the fascinating case of O’Connell […] Read more