French Abstract: Dans divers régimes réglementaires canadiens, le législateur – autant au fédéral qu’au provincial – a créé un droit d’en appeler d’une décision à l’intérieur d’un organisme administratif. Quelles normes doit alors appliquer l’instance d’appel?La problématique de la norme de révision à l’intérieur d’un organisme réglementaire est devenue de plus en plus pressante depuis […] Read more

Regular readers know of my fascination with the “internal standard of review” problem: how does an appellate body within the administration go about reviewing first-instance decisions? The issue will shortly be before the Federal Court of Appeal, in the context of refugee appeals. I have a paper (in French) on the subject which will appear […] Read more

Once more unto the ‘internal standard of review’ breach. Do the principles regulating judicial review by courts of administrative decision-makers apply when there is an appeal within an agency, and if so, to what extent? I tackled this question last year in the context of the Refugee Appeal Division. Now, the Federal Court has pronounced […] 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

In Canada, it has historically been very difficult to shed light on the decision-making processes of the highest levels of government. Cabinet decision-making is protected by conventions of confidentiality, public-interest immunity and, at the federal level, the regime under the Canada Evidence Act. Even when constitutional principles, such as judicial independence, are in play, disclosure of cabinet-level […] Read more

In the first year after Vavilov was released, I read pretty well every decision in which the Supreme Court of Canada’s reformulation of administrative law was cited. The result was “One Year of Vavilov” and a soon-to-appear chapter in Colleen Flood and Paul Daly eds., Administrative Law in Context, 4th ed.  Since then, I have been less assiduous in […] Read more

Here is my blog post on the doctrinal law relating to tribunal competence and expertise for the Tribunal Watch Ontario/Windsor Law webinar on independence and impartiality. Here is what Tribunal Watch Ontario’s Statement of Principles says Adjudicators must be optimally competent and the tribunal equally competent in the exercise of its mandate. Adjudicators must have […] Read more

I am currently knee-deep in exam scripts, having taught Administrative Law twice in the Winter Term (once in English, once in French). I thought readers might be interested in taking a look at the final exam I set (70%, with a mid-term accounting for the other 30%). A is an inmate in a federal penitentiary. […] 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

If we want to develop a morality of administrative tribunal adjudication, we need to look elsewhere than the law of judicial review, with its concern for clamping down on “bad” decision-making. Imagine instead a “good” administrative adjudicator concerned about the acceptability of their decisions to the individuals appearing before them and to Canadian society: they […] Read more