In a week that is likely to be dominated by the public law implications of Brexit — the UK Supreme Court will hand down its much-anticipated decision in the Article 50 litigation tomorrow — I thought it would be timely to draw your attention to some related international law issues. Brexit, and more particularly Scotexit, […] Read more

When Emilie Taman sought to run for office in the last Canadian general election, she was refused permission to do so by the Public Service Commission. That refusal has now been set aside: Taman v. Canada (Attorney General), 2017 FCA 1. However, as I will explain, it has been set aside in a way which […] Read more

A topic to which I had not given a great deal of thought before I taught it last Term as part of an LLM seminar on “Legislation” is the form of emergency legislation. As someone who lived through the 2000s and spent time in U.S. universities whilst the executive branch claimed significant authority to act […] Read more

When I was a doctoral student, I spent months trying to track down an essay by Harold Laski: ‘The Limitations of the Expert’ (1931) 162 Harper’s Monthly Magazine 101 (Fabian Tract No. 235). I eventually found it in a rare books collection at Harvard University while I was there as a visiting researcher. Finally finding […] Read more

I recently received my complimentary copy of a new edited collection, Matthew Groves and Greg Weeks eds., Legitimate Expectations in the Common Law World (Hart Publishing, Oxford, 2017). The title is available for pre-order here. The editors write: The recognition and enforcement of legitimate expectations by courts has been a striking feature of English law […] Read more

Francophile readers of this blog will no doubt enjoy JP blog, a new blawg operating under the auspices of Jus Politicum. Those of you, Francophile or otherwise, who are interested in official responses to maladministration will find a great deal of interest in two recent posts by Professor Olivier Beaud on the recent decision of […] Read more

In area of judicial control of non-statutory powers, the “boundaries” of judicial review are “uncertain” (Wade & Forsyth, Administrative Law, 11th ed. (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2014), at p. 532. There have been various efforts to shed light on them over the years. Particularly useful illumination can be provided by the underlying purposes and values […] Read more

Here is the final installment of my posts on rights protection in administrative law: you can also read posts one, two and three. My proposed “public law model” would draw on the strengths of administrative law and constitutional law. Abella J. was quite right to set out in Doré to try and draw on the […] Read more

Some contributors to the recent debate about the status of EU nationals in the United Kingdom post-Brexit have proposed that a distinction be drawn between those who were in the UK before the referendum and those who have come more recently. See the Judicial Power Project; and British Future (esp pp. 16-17). The basic idea […] Read more

You will recall that in Slaight Communications, discussed in my previous post, Dickson C.J. endorsed Lamer J.’s neat analytical framework, with its clear distinction between administrative review and constitutional review, but noted that the evolution of administrative review might put the framework under pressure. So it proved. A blow-by-blow account of the development of Canadian […] Read more