In a previous post, I examined how judicial review of administrative action could protect rights in a pre-Charter world. Let us fast forward now to Slaight Communications Inc. v. Davidson, [1989] 1 SCR 1038, the first major treatment by the Supreme Court of Canada of judicial review of administrative action under the Charter. As is […] Read more

I have not mentioned as many books and articles as I would have liked to over the course of the year. Let me try to make up for this by recommending a book to put in the Christmas stocking of the administrative lawyer in your life: Law’s Abnegation by Adrian Vermeule. The blurb says: Ronald […] Read more

A majority of the Supreme Court of Canada took the opportunity presented by Windsor (City) v. Canadian Transit Co., 2016 SCC 54 to raise serious questions about the status and role of Canada’s federal courts. A purely jurisdictional issue arose here for consideration. The company was incorporated under federal law as the owner and operator […] Read more

I am speaking next week at an event on Brexit organised by the Philippe Kirsch Institute in Toronto. In my presentation, which will be based on the lengthy analysis in this post, I will lay out the legal and political faultlines that have been exposed by the litigation over the triggering of Article 50. Four […] Read more

The role that administrative policies can play in the exercise of discretion is a perennial question in administrative law. It has been given a new lease of life in the United Kingdom by the introduction of the Human Rights Act 1998. The interface between the Act and administrative policies was recently considered in Hesham Ali […] Read more

In preparing for next Term’s lectures on substantive review, I have been reviewing some of the recent English material on proportionality and reasonableness. Here are some thoughts. A debate has long rumbled on whether proportionality should replace Wednesbury altogether as the applicable standard for substantive review. In R (Association of British Civilian Internees (Far East […] Read more

The government and the claimaints in Miller (the Article 50 case) have now made their written statements of case available (see here). One remarkable feature is that both the government and the claimants rely heavily on arguments made by various distinguished writers (including some of my Cambridge colleagues!) on the United Kingdom Constitutional Law Association’s […] Read more

I am giving the keynote lecture (via videoconference) at the Law Society of Upper Canada’s 24th Immigration Summit tomorrow, on “The Signal and the Noise in Administrative Law“: There has been an unfortunate trend in recent Supreme Court of Canada administrative law cases. While academics, practitioners and lower-court judges try to establish coherent frameworks to […] Read more

I am preparing a piece for a collection, edited by Matthew Harrington, celebrating the 150th anniversary of the Canadian constitution. My topic is rights in administrative law. My goal is quite simple: to identify pre- and post-Charter modes of rights protection and assess their advantages and disadvantages. The pre-Charter era is exemplified by Smith & […] Read more

Edmonton (City) v. Edmonton East (Capilano) Shopping Centres Ltd., 2016 SCC 47 was thought to represent an opportunity for the Supreme Court of Canada to revisit (again!) its standard of review framework. The underlying question was whether an Assessment Review Board could increase the value of a property assessment where a taxpayer had applied for […] Read more