internal standard of review | Page 5
Vavilov On the Road
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
Tribunal Competence and Expertise
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
Exam Season
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
Vavilov and the Culture of Justification in Administrative Law
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
The Inner Morality of Administrative Adjudication
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
Plural Public Law: Relevance and Influence
I gave my inaugural lecture as the University Research Chair in Administrative Law at the University of Ottawa last month. You can watch the lecture here (after some introductory remarks from Dean Sylvestre, Chief Justice Wagner and Justice Bich). The comments from my respondents, Justice Stratas and Professor Cartier can be found here. This is […] Read more
Vavilov Hits the Road (Updated August 20) (Pinned to the Top of the Blog)
See now “One Year of Vavilov“ Courts around Canada are beginning to apply the Vavilov framework. It is still (just about) too early to draw any firm conclusions. Nonetheless, even at this early stage in the life of Vavilovian judicial review there have been some interesting decisions. I have cbeen coming back to this post […] Read more
Human Rights in Administrative Decision-making II: Organizational and Ontological Reasons for the Inevitability of Administrative Discretion and Judgement
This is the second post in a series. The first post can be found here. Even if we were to allow, for the sake of argument, that statutory provisions are always clear, discretion and judgement could not be eliminated from administrative decision-making. With respect to the administration of statutes – their implementation by front-line officials […] Read more
And Now, Live from the Public-Private Divide…R (Liberal Democrats and Scottish National Party) v ITV Broadcasting Ltd [2019] EWHC 3282 (Admin)
Britain is currently in the throes of a general election in which, an unkind Transatlantic observer might say, the question for many voters is ‘who is the evil of two lessers?’ It is quite likely, indeed almost certain, that Boris Johnson or Jeremy Corbyn will be occupying 10 Downing Street come January 1, 2020, notwithstanding […] Read more
Thinking about Administrative Justice: the Power of Mashaw’s Models
There are many available definitions of administrative justice, a term which “has, until recently, been shrouded in obscurity”[1] and provoked “considerable disagreement”.[2] On the one hand, the term can be used to denote “the justice inherent in decision making”,[3] or “those qualities of decision making process that provide arguments for the acceptability of its decisions”.[4] […] Read more