It is boom time in Canada for cases involving the constitutionality of regulatory regimes. Joining the recent decision in Guindon (see here) is last week’s judgment in Goodwin v. British Columbia (Superintendent of Motor Vehicles), 2015 SCC 46. At issue here was British Columbia’s regime of roadside breathtesting of drivers. Driving suspensions are imposed, with […] Read more

I will be contributing a chapter, with the working title, “A Pluralist Account of Deference and Legitimate Expectations” to a forthcoming Hart Publishing collection edited by Matthew Groves and Greg Weeks. In the third section of my draft I explain my pluralist approach. As always, comments are very welcome. Download the draft in its entirety […] Read more

Kevin Stack has an excellent new paper entitled “Purposivism in the Executive Branch: How Agencies Interpret Statutes“. Here is the abstract: After decades of debate, the lines of distinction between textualism and purposivism have been carefully drawn with respect to the judicial task of statutory interpretation. Far less attention has been devoted to the question […] Read more

Commission des droits de la personne et des droits de la jeunesse c. Côté, 2015 QCCA 1544 is an instructive case on the role of the principles of statutory interpretation in unreasonableness analysis — and, moreover, a decision which also caused me to make a further update to this post. Here, the parents of an […] Read more

Last week’s decision of the European Court of Justice in Schrems v. Data Protection Commissioner, C-362/14 deemed invalid an important self-certification regime for companies transferring personal data to the United States from the European Union. Several aspects of the decision are of general interest. Schrems is an Austrian student who, like most of us, has […] Read more

I will be contributing a chapter, with the working title, “A Pluralist Account of Deference and Legitimate Expectations” to a forthcoming Hart Publishing collection edited by Matthew Groves and Greg Weeks. In the second section of my draft I focus on the sometimes confusing values that appear in the cases. As always, comments are very […] Read more

The latest issue of Policy Options has a section on judicial appointments. There are superb contributions from a high-profile slate of academics and practitioners. I also have a piece, in French. Here is the conclusion: L’observateur de l’histoire du mouvement conservateur aux États-Unis, Steven M. Teles, dirait sans doute que les conservateurs canadiens se trouvent […] Read more

We all know the famous observations of legal historians about the influence of procedure on the development of the the common law. Maine’s remark about substantive law being “gradually secreted in the interstices of procedure” and Maitland’s quip about the buried forms of action that “still rule us from their graves” remind us that procedural […] Read more

I will be contributing a chapter, with the working title, “A Pluralist Account of Deference and Legitimate Expectations” to a forthcoming Hart Publishing collection edited by Matthew Groves and Greg Weeks. Here is the first section of my draft. As always, comments are very welcome. Download the whole paper here. Introduction Legitimate expectation, Lord Fraser […] Read more

Last week’s important Supreme Court of Canada decision on tribunal standing prompts some more general thoughts on my part. There was no oral argument on the standing issue during the hearing, which is striking given the extensive discussion in Rothstein J.’s majority reasons. Standing was argued in the written submissions, but it did not feature […] Read more