R (Bancoult) v Foreign and Commonwealth Secretary (No 3) [2018] UKSC 3 is the latest episode in a saga — tragedy, really — involving the Chagossians, an island-dwelling group of people forcibly removed in the 1970s by the British government from the Chagos Islands, a British territory in the Indian Ocean, evidently to serve Britain’s […] Read more

I have recently made two forthcoming papers available on SSRN. Both are in French*. Both originated as talks given at the Université de Montréal, one in 2016 and the other more recently. The English abstracts are below. First, Reprendre le contrôle : ennuis et ironies (the Ironies of ‘Taking Back Control’): This text is based on […] Read more

This is the third post on Irish administrative law arising from my draft paper for the Oxford Handbook of Irish Politics. Comments welcome! Alternative Dispute Resolution Great attention has been paid in recent years in the common-law world to alternative dispute resolution, which we can for present purposes define quite simply as means of resolving […] Read more

This is the second post on Irish administrative law arising from my draft paper for the Oxford Handbook of Irish Politics. Comments welcome! Institutional Pluralism Counterbalancing the centripetal qualities of Article 34.3.1 and Article 34.3.2, are the centrifugal tendencies of provisions elsewhere in the 1937 Constitution. Article 34.3.4 envisages “Courts of local and limited jurisdiction […] Read more

One of the most striking things for me about returning to Britain in 2016 after six years in Canada was how I needed to produce a passport to do just about anything, from opening a bank account to examining a PhD student. These are not the identity checks familiar to people the world over, for […] Read more

Earlier this month, I spent a week on a research visit to Paris II Panthéon-Assas, one of France’s leading legal academic institutions, where I was based at the Institut Villey. One of my tasks was to teach, with my sponsor, Professor Denis Baranger, two classes on comparative constitutional law. We had hoped to discuss justiciability, […] Read more

Readers may know that UK universities have been badly affected by strike action in recent months. I have been on the picket lines myself and the general disruption from the strike action in part explains why I have been blogging much less than usual. Thankfully, the strike action has now been suspended and, though further […] Read more

This is the first in a series of three posts on Irish administrative law, taken from a paper prepared for the Oxford Handbook on Irish Politics. Comments very welcome! My focus in will be on the constraints of public law. My touchstone is drawn from Harry Arthurs’ groundbreaking historical work on “legal centralism” and “legal […] Read more

Normal service is now resuming on the blog after the very successful Dunsmuir Decade symposium. I am very happy to say that “Updating the Procedural Law of Judicial Review of Administrative Action” will be published soon in the University of British Columbia Law Review. Here is the abstract: The substantive law of judicial review of […] Read more

Michel Bastarache was a judge of the Supreme Court of Canada from 1997 to 2008 and is now counsel at Caza Saikaley LLP At the outset, I should express my gratitude to Professors Daly and Sirota for the invitation to contribute to this remarkable project, including such a superb array of leading lawyers, scholars, and […] Read more