Joe Tomlinson and I have posted “Researching Public Law and the Administrative State” to SSRN: The modern administrative state is vast and complex. Public lawyers who seek to make sense of it face a difficult challenge and, over time, different ways of confronting the administrative state have emerged. Broadly speaking, academic studies relating to the […] Read more

I was invited to contribute to a major symposium on the career of Dr S Ronald Ellis QC today (see the details). Here are my remarks: A few weeks ago, the Supreme Court of Canada released a remarkable decision in R. v. Bissonnette, 2022 SCC 23. The issue was the constitutionality of a sentencing provision […] Read more

I have posted “The Ages of Administrative Law“, my contribution to this year’s Public Law Conference, to SSRN. Here is the third and final substantive part. Thoughts and comments very welcome. Already in the Age of Expansion general principles relating to administrative justice and administrative law had begun to emerge. That process accelerated from the […] Read more

I have posted “The Ages of Administrative Law“, my contribution to this year’s Public Law Conference, to SSRN. Here is the second substantive part. Thoughts and comments very welcome. Central government did not regulate many aspects of public and private life in the 19th century. In Canada, the early years post Confederation were marked by […] Read more

I am working on a paper on Justice Abella’s administrative law jurisprudence. Here is the opening part, describing her approach to judicial restraint. Justice Abella’s advocacy of deferential review of administrative decisions was a consistent theme throughout her tenure on the Supreme Court of Canada. I will address substantive review in this section but I […] Read more

I have posted “The Ages of Administrative Law“, my contribution to this year’s Public Law Conference, to SSRN. Here is the first substantive part. Thoughts and comments very welcome. In his Hamlyn Lectures, Professor Paul Craig has elegantly described how the administrative state existed in embryonic form before even the Glorious Revolution.[1] In this section, […] Read more

I have posted “The Ages of Administrative Law“, my contribution to this year’s Public Law Conference, to SSRN. Here is the introduction. Thoughts and comments very welcome. The advocates of the 20th century welfare state envisaged a government that would take care of its citizens from the cradle to the grave. The contemporary administrative state […] Read more

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