Canadian decisions on internal appellate review are coming thick and fast. Another one arrived last week, with some media fanfare: Huruglica v. Canada (Citizenship and Immigration), 2014 FC 799. Here, Phelan J. gave the Refugee Appeal Division a very broad role indeed. Rebuking the Division for applying judicial review standards to an internal appeal, he […] Read more

Here is an interesting case about judicial review of regulations with, in the background, a hint that regulatory power was used to hinder an emerging business model Sobeys West Inc. v. College of Pharmacists of British Columbia, 2014 BCSC 1414. Using its broad statutory powers, the College prohibited pharmacy loyalty schemes, the practice of giving […] Read more

This year, I have produced three lengthy papers focusing primarily on pressing doctrinal issues in Canadian administrative law. The last of these is Canada’s Bi-Polar Administrative Law: Time for Fusion. Here is the abstract: A bi-polarity afflicts the Canadian law of judicial review of administrative action. On matters of substance – interpretations of law and […] Read more

I have a new essay on SSRN, “Administrative Law: A Values-Based Approach“, prepared for the inaugural Public Law Conference at the University of Cambridge later this year. This is the latest in a series of mini-posts. Download the whole essay here. Institutional Considerations Various institutional considerations may be invoked from time to time to supplement […] Read more

Once more unto the ‘internal standard of review’ breach. Do the principles regulating judicial review by courts of administrative decision-makers apply when there is an appeal within an agency, and if so, to what extent? I tackled this question last year in the context of the Refugee Appeal Division. Now, the Federal Court has pronounced […] Read more

Public lawyers may sometimes tend to think that deference is a phenomenon unique to cases involving judicial review of government action. A moment’s reflection should be enough to dispel that notion. For example, judges in civil trials regularly defer to expert witnesses (negligence being a particular case in point) and boards of directors; and appellate […] Read more

Readers may be interested in “The Scope and Meaning of Reasonableness Review“, a new article of mine on judicial review of administrative action which will appear shortly in the Alberta Law Review. (Apologies to RSS and email subscribers who have already received the notification: I hope to fix the ‘double post’ issue shortly.) It is […] Read more

I have a new essay on SSRN, “Administrative Law: A Values-Based Approach“, prepared for the inaugural Public Law Conference at the University of Cambridge later this year. This is the latest in a series of mini-posts. Download the whole essay here. Remedial Discretion Remedies have posed a problem for administrative law since waves of doctrinal […] Read more

The European Court of Justice’s recent ‘Right to be Forgotten‘ ruling has caused much ink to be spilled. Despite the significant criticism it has received, I think the decision was quite sensible, for reasons given here by Eric Posner. It continues to provoke interesting commentary. Consider the following description of the problem from Babak Siavoshy […] Read more

Two recent papers deal with some hard questions in the area of cost-benefit analysis. Here are two recurring problems: (a) deciding which costs and benefits to count and (b) how precisely to count some types of costs and benefits. For example, can ‘collateral’ effects of government action be excluded from consideration? Is it appropriate to […] Read more