Commentary on developments in administrative law, particularly judicial review of administrative action by common law courts.
On Wednesday at 11.30, my next guest in this year’s Administrative Law & Governance Colloquium will be Professor Roberto Gargarella. He will be discussing his book The Law as a Conversation Amongst Equals (Cambridge, 2022): In a time of disenchantment with democracy, massive social protests and the ‘erosion’ of the system of checks and balances, this […] Read more
The next guest in this year’s Administrative Law & Governance Colloquium will be Dr. Paolo Sandro (Leeds) on Wednesday, February 12 at 11.30 (Ottawa time). Dr. Sandro will be discussing his book The Making of Constitutional Democracy: From Creation to Application of Law (Hart, 2022): This open access book addresses a palpable, yet widely neglected, […] Read more
In previous posts, I mused about the possibility of a challenge to Prime Minister Trudeau’s advice to the Governor General to prorogue Parliament from January 6 to March 24 of this year. There is now a challenge and, moreover, it has been expedited by the Chief Justice of the Federal Court: the hearing will be […] Read more
Following on from my previous post, here are some notes on cases involving decisions based on or influenced by political expediency… Padfield v Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food [1968] AC 997 concerned a statute providing that “A committee of investigation shall…be charged with the duty, if the Minister in any case so directs, of […] Read more
I hope to post in the coming week about the challenge to the recent prorogation of the Canadian Parliament. I am speaking at three separate events in February (at uOttawa, the Runnymede Society’s Law and Freedom conference, and the University of Alberta). For now, I have dug out a few pages of old lecture notes […] Read more
I am pleased to say the lineup for this year’s Administrative Law & Governance Colloquium has been confirmed. You can register here for the individual sessions and/or join directly from the links below. The theme is “Justifying Judicial Review”: Western constitutional democracies live in turbulent times, buffeted by populism, technological development, globalization and other challenges. […] Read more
Following from my previous post and based on Prime Minister’s Trudeau remarks this morning, I would think the prospects for any successful challenge are low. The Prime Minister announced this morning that he would be resigning both as leader of the Liberal Party of Canada and from office as soon as a successor is selected […] Read more
There is an end-of-days feeling around Ottawa at the moment. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, it seems, is not long for this (political world). He leads a minority administration and, though he has governed in that way since the last election, the opposition parties now say they will vote no confidence at the first available opportunity. […] Read more
Any foray by the Supreme Court into an area of controversy will invariably leave some questions unanswered. That is the case with Auer as well. Building on my previous note on the decision (see here), three jump out at me. First, the requirements of the presumption of validity are unclear. There is a plausible case […] Read more
Today marks the fifth anniversary of the Supreme Court of Canada’s landmark decision in Canada (Minister of Citizenship and Immigration) v. Vavilov, 2019 SCC 65, [2019] 4 SCR 653. 2019 is really a world away. On the afternoon of the release of the decision, I held a dial-in session where I delivered my thoughts into […] Read more