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. Institutional Review: Bias[1] Different jurisdictions formulate the test for impartiality differently, but as a […] Read more

I have a short paper on SSRN on the gun registry case that will be heard by the Supreme Court of Canada in the Fall. Here is the abstract: Section 29 of the Ending the Long-Gun Registry Act orders federal and provincial officials to destroy gun-registration records collected collaboratively over a period of two decades. […] Read more

Last week’s Federal Court ruling in Canadian Doctors for Refugee Care v. Canada, 2014 FC 651 that cuts to refugee healthcare were “cruel and unusual” punishment [ed: treatment, not punishment] that violated the Charter has understandably created a great deal of noise. The case will go on appeal, possibly to the Supreme Court of Canada. […] Read more

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