Commentary on developments in administrative law, particularly judicial review of administrative action by common law courts.
In its decision in MZAPC v Minister for Immigration and Border Protection [2021] HCA 17, the High Court of Australia ventured once again into the murky territory of materiality in administrative law (a topic I address in detail in this paper). The issue in this case was who bears the onus of establishing materiality, the […] Read more
In “One Year of Vavilov“, I observed that “some portions of Vavilov are liable to become battlegrounds between different factions of judges, those who favour more intrusive review on questions of law in one camp, their more deferential colleagues in the other” (at p. 15). One of those portions is the one on judicial review […] Read more
Here is the final video from this year’s Administrative Law & Governance Colloquium, featuring Dr. Jennifer Cobbe on “Reviewable Automated Decision-making”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bBXZVYyRa-4 Thanks to the hundreds of participants this year, and to my partners, the Centre for Law, Technology and Society, the Centre on Governance and the Centre for Public Law. Read more
For those of you who weren’t able to join us live, here is Professor Teresa Scassa’s presentation on “Administrative Law and the Governance of Automated Decision-making” for this year’s Administrative Law & Governance Colloquium: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sn9AErX6ds0 This year’s Colloquium finishes up tomorrow, with Dr. Jennifer Cobbe (University of Cambridge) on “Reviewable Automated Decision-making”. Register here. Or […] Read more
My week got off to an early start last Monday, as I joined the Centre for Comparative and Public Law at the University of Hong Kong for a discussion of Understanding Administrative Law in the Common Law World at 6am Ottawa time. Dr Cora Chan and Professor Jason Varuhas offered incisive comments (and I did […] Read more
The last in this year’s Administrative Law and Governance Colloquium takes place on Tuesday next, April 5 at 11.30 eastern time. My guest will be Dr. Jennifer Cobbe from the University of Cambridge. She will be discussing “Reviewable Automated Decision-making”, based on her important articles on the subject (see e.g. here and here). Here is […] Read more
Hart Publishing is kindly offering a discount for Administrative Law Matters readers who may be interested in acquiring Ian Loveland ed., British and Canadian Public Law in Comparative Perspective (Hart, 2021). This is a very useful collection. As someone who has had a foot in both jurisdictions, I wholeheartedly echo Professor Loveland’s observation in the […] Read more
I have posted a new paper to SSRN, reflecting on the lessons of the pandemic for the Canadian legal system. It is to appear in a French-language collection edited by Jean-Bernard Auby. You can download the full paper here. In Section 4, I offer some thoughts about the medium- and long-term consequences of the pandemic […] Read more
Here is the introduction to my new paper on SSRN, “The Administrative State after the Carbon Tax References“. Regular readers will have seen the posts which make up the bulk of the paper (see e.g. here), but this introductory material is new and attempts to place the administrative law aspects of the References in broader […] Read more
I have posted a new paper to SSRN, reflecting on the lessons of the pandemic for the Canadian legal system. It is to appear in a French-language collection edited by Jean-Bernard Auby. You can download the full paper here. In Section 3, I offer an ethical reflection on the Canadian response to the pandemic. Section […] Read more