In Doré v. Barreau du Québec, 2012 SCC 12, the Supreme Court of Canada held that alleged infringements of Charter rights by administrative decision-makers should be reviewed on the deferential reasonableness standard. What matters is not whether the decision survives the rigours of the proportionality test set out in R v. Oakes but whether it […] Read more
This week, I am going to post three pieces on matters left unresolved by the Supreme Court of Canada in its seminal administrative law decision, Canada (Citizenship and Immigration) v. Vavilov, 2019 SCC 65. First, internal appeals, second, administrative decisions allegedly infringing Charter rights and, third, procedural fairness. There are three observations to make about […] Read more
This week I was invited to do a Faculty workshop at Penn State Law on my paper “The Vavilov Framework and the Future of Canadian Administrative Law“. Having written the paper for a Canadian audience who knew most or all of the backstory to Vavilov, I had to give some thought to setting the scene […] Read more
This is the third and final post in the Guest Posts from the West Coast series. In the curious time of COVID-19, Canadian municipalities have leveled the virus’ spread by enforcing distancing rules, fining non-compliant businesses, and maintaining garbage collection, among other mundane tasks. City decision-makers are clearly ‘governments’ – and important ones, too. But, […] Read more
This is the second post in the Guest Posts from the West Coast series. T’ain’t no big thing / To wait for the bell to ring Without a doubt, Vavilov[1] is the ‘sexier’ case in the recent Supreme Court administrative law trilogy. It has everything that Canadian readers of law could hope for: espionage, intrigue, […] Read more
This is the first in the Guest Posts from the West Coast series. Vavilov is an important decision, and one that we can be optimistic about. The discussion around it has also been a glorious coming-together of administrative law nerddom in Canada. But let us remember: Administrative Law belongs to the people.[1] Regular Canadians are […] Read more
This week the blog will feature a series of guest posts from administrative law experts at the Peter A Allard School of Law at the University of British Columbia: in order of appearance, Professors Cristie Ford, Mary Liston and Alexandra Flynn. Professor Liston has written a short introduction to set the scene: The pre-COVID-19 genesis […] Read more
I am currently working on a chapter for “Leading Works in Public Law”, a collection edited by Ben Yong and Patrick O’Brien. My chapter is on SA de Smith’s Judicial Review of Administrative Action. Here is a draft of the first section, on “The Work” The Work Born in 1922, Stanley Alexander de Smith attended […] Read more
The term “culture of justification” first appeared in an article by the South African scholar Etienne Mureinek. He described the culture of justification as one “in which every exercise of power is expected to be justified; in which the leadership given by government rests on the cogency of the case offered in defence of its […] Read more
As I mentioned in a previous post, taken together, competence, compassion, consistency and collaboration are virtues which, where present, establish tribunal excellence and constitute the inner morality of administrative adjudication. Cultivating and maintaining these virtues is, however, a significant challenge. Cultivating Virtue Virtues have to be cultivated. Administrative adjudicators, in this sense, are continually coming […] Read more