In R. v. Sullivan, 2022 SCC 19, the Supreme Court of Canada authoritatively addressed the effect of declarations of unconstitutionality. Along with colleagues from Torys LLP, I intervened on behalf of the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association to argue that declarations of unconstitutionality issued by superior courts mean that unconstitutional laws are of no force […] Read more

Over the past few months, the Administrative Law in the Common Law World Blog has hosted a symposium on my recent book on judicial review. The contributions were uniformly excellent. I hope my response matches up… In Understanding Administrative Law in the Common Law World (Oxford University Press, 2021), I set out to offer a […] Read more

In a draft book chapter I am working on with co-author Kseniya Kudischeva, we discuss the increased importance of factual assessments in public law. This is the fourth of four substantive parts (see Part I here, Part II here and Part III here). Comments and thoughts welcome. We turn lastly to a distinctly Canadian phenomenon, […] Read more

In a draft book chapter I am working on with co-author Kseniya Kudischeva, we discuss the increased importance of factual assessments in public law. This is the third of four substantive parts (see Part I here and Part II here). Comments and thoughts welcome. In our increasingly complex and fast-changing world, legislatures and executives have […] Read more

In a draft book chapter I am working on with co-author Kseniya Kudischeva, we discuss the increased importance of factual assessments in public law. This is the second of four substantive parts (see Part I here). Comments and thoughts welcome. In federal systems, factual assessments can never be entirely off limits in judicial review of […] Read more

Like many Canadian law faculties, the University of Ottawa has been delivering a significant amount of its teaching virtually or bi-modally during the COVID-19 pandemic. I have been teaching administrative law in a flipped classroom format for the last two years: students consume recorded lectures beforehand and participate via Zoom in small- and large-group class […] Read more

Teaching term is over and exam season is upon us. Here is this year’s exam for Administrative Law. You have six hours… In the fictional Canadian province of Lower Canada, there occurred in 2020 an outbreak of a highly contagious and extremely dangerous flu-like disease known as VICOD. In Lower Canada, the Public Health Act […] Read more

The few historically oriented discussions of public administration in Canada tend to take the regulation of railways in the 1850s as their starting point.  But there were early pre-cursors to the administrative state. The dominant theory of Canadian economic development is that the country was built on the production and export of various ‘staples’. From […] Read more

In a draft book chapter I am working on with co-author Kseniya Kudischeva, we discuss the increased importance of factual assessments in public law. Here is the first of four substantive parts. Comments and thoughts welcome. Common law judges have traditionally been highly reluctant to interfere with factual assessments made by administrative decision-makers. This reluctance […] Read more

The remarkable decision in Acadian Society of New Brunswick v Canada (Prime Minister), 2022 NBQB 55 deserves comment, especially for its treatment of justiciability and remedy. Here, DeWare CJ declared that the appointment of a unilingual Anglophone Lieutenant-Governor for the bilingual province of New Brunswick was unconstitutional as it violated a variety of New-Brunswick-specific provisions […] Read more