Canada has a new anti-spam law. Sending commercial electronic communications without the recipient’s consent is no longer permitted. But “commercial activity” is very broadly defined: “any particular transaction, act or conduct or any regular course of conduct that is of a commercial character, whether or not the person who carries it out does so in […] Read more

Adrian Vermeule and Cass Sunstein have an intriguing new paper on Libertarian Administrative Law: In recent years, several judges on the nation’s most important regulatory court — the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit — have given birth to libertarian administrative law, in the form of a series of judge-made […] 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. A. The Rule of Law My discussion of the rule of law as an […] Read more

There are shades of the Hart vs. Fuller debate in the disagreement between Scalia J. and Breyer J. in last week’s greenhouse gases case: UARG v. EPA. As part of a much wider debate about the relationship between law and morality, Hart and Fuller jousted over a rule prohibiting vehicles in the park. To simplify […] Read more

Commenter Concerned in Canada left an important comment on my post on Charter interpretation by administrative decision-makers. Her underlying concern is broader, however, and is probably shared by many. Here is the comment, lightly edited to focus on the broader concern: [H]ow concerned are you that your radical approach will essentially boil down to administrative […] Read more

The change is now complete. Email subscribers should not have noticed a difference. RSS subscribers might have received a one-time glut of posts over the weekend: my Feedly feed certainly did. If you have had any problems, please do not hesitate to contact me. 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. Here is the abstract: I focus in this essay on judicial review of administrative action, looking at the subject “from the inside, trying to make sense of lawyers’ […] Read more

I gave a presentation a few weeks ago for the Canadian Institute. An odd subject for a partisan of deference like myself, but I enjoyed putting a paper together. Practitioners may find it provides helpful guidance on ways to attack administrative decisions. You can download it here. And here is the abstract: J’essayerai lors de cet […] Read more

An old debate in administrative law concerns the appropriate role of courts in imposing common law restrictions on discretionary powers. For example, when a statute says “X may, in his absolute discretion, do Y”, are any limitations of fairness or rationality implied by the common law? The modern tendency has been to admit that there […] Read more

Here is a problem for deferential approaches to judicial review: what about an administrative decision that is a reasonable resolution of a particular case but which is reached by flawed logic? If the flawed logic is not sanctioned, it remains on the books and may influence future administrative decision-makers: indeed, failing to follow a previous […] Read more