I was not looking forward to the Supreme Court of Canada’s decision in Green v. Law Society of Manitoba, 2017 SCC 20 with any great excitement. I suspected that Court would resolve the case narrowly, as a question of vires, and not employ the standard of review framework. I was agreeably surprised, therefore, that in […] Read more

Britain’s withdrawal from the European Union formally begins today with the delivery of an Article 50 notice from London to Brussels. One of the issues that will be up for discussion during the negotiations is the status of EU nationals (like me) who work in the United Kingdom. Unlike others, I am pessimistic about the […] Read more

Late last year, I wrote a series of posts on modes of rights protection in administrative law. The goal was to produce an essay for a collection commemorating the 150th anniversary of the Canadian Constitution, edited by Matt Harrington and to be published by Lexis Nexis, both as a book and as an issue of […] Read more

The procedural intricacies of judicial review of administrative action can create pitfalls for the unwary. Various principles are relevant and sometimes they (seem to) come into conflict with one another. For instance, an applicant should exhaust alternative remedies before applying for judicial review, a principle that is of one with the general move in the […] Read more

What follows is a longer version of a short note written for Per Incuriam, the termly publication of the Cambridge University Law Society. As is well known, perhaps even notorious, there is no general common law duty to give reasons for administrative decisions. Even those judges who seem in favour of recognising a general duty […] Read more

As is well known, the scope of the duty of fairness owed by administrative decision-makers to individuals has expanded greatly in recent decades, so much so that one might reasonably ask whether the duty of fairness knows any bounds. In its very interesting decision in P. & S. Holdings Ltd. v. Canada, 2017 FCA 41, […] Read more

Cross-posted from the Administrative Law Blog. There is a nice passage early on in Amnon Rubinstein’s Jurisdiction and Illegality (Oxford, Clarendon, 1965). Responding to a claim of Hans Kelsen that voidness is a monolithic concept and arguing instead for a distinction between unlawful decisions that are void and those that are merely voidable, Rubinstein writes […] Read more

Stratas JA has published a very useful general guide to judicial review of administrative action in Canada. “The Canadian Law of Judicial Review: Some Doctrine and Cases” can be downloaded from SSRN: It is hard to find a useful, up-to-date summary of the Canadian law of judicial review. This summary attempts in a scholarly way […] Read more

There is a new administrative law blog, the Admin Law Blog, which is a most welcome new addition to the blawgosphere. The editors’ introductory post describes the blog as follows: This is a forum for the discussion of ideas and developments of interest to scholars of administrative law across the common law world. It aims […] Read more

The House of Lords Constitution Committee’s Legislative Process Inquiry recently held a fascinating evidence session on Brexit, with Professors John Bell, Paul Craig and Alison Young. Anyone interested in the mechanics of Britain’s exit from the EU would be well advised to watch. Most of the discussion focused on the proposed “Great Repeal Bill”, which […] Read more