Mark Mancini
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Alexion: No Blank Cheques Here
In Alexion Pharmaceuticals Inc v Canada (Attorney General), 2021 FCA 157, the Federal Court of Appeal clarified the law of judicial review post-Vavilov (particularly as it applies to reasonableness review) and set out an important reminder: administrators are not a law unto themselves. In order to make sure that this is the case, particularly in Continue reading
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The Core of It: Quebec Reference and Section 96
At the end of June, the Supreme Court of Canada released its decision in the Court of Quebec case (what I call, unoriginally, the Quebec Reference). The main question in the case: does art. 35 of the Code of Civil Procedure, which grants the Court of Quebec exclusive jurisdiction over all civil disputes up to Continue reading
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“Administrative Sabotage” and the Ontario Human Rights Tribunal
Recently, Professor David Noll (Rutgers Law) posted a fascinating article called “Administrative Sabotage” on SSRN, forthcoming in the Michigan Law Review. You can view the article here, and Professor Noll wrote a fascinating thread outlining its main arguments. The abstract: Government can sabotage itself. From the president’s choice of agency heads to agency budgets, regulations, Continue reading
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Bill C-10 and the CRTC Debacle
Does it get much worse? Continue reading
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The Politics of Law
Is law truly just a function of politics? Should it be? Continue reading
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For What It’s Worth
University of Toronto professor Richard Stacey recently released an article in the University of Toronto Law Journal (paywalled, which is truly unfortunate), arguing that (among other things) the Supreme Court of Canada’s decision in Vavilov “affirm[s]” the Supreme Court’s controversial decision in Doré (340; see also 351). To be specific, Stacey says (340-341): Read together, Continue reading
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Overcoming Justice Abella’s Admin Law Legacy
On the occasion of her retirement, what can we learn from Justice Abella’s administrative law generation? Continue reading
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Ontario’s COVID-19 Discretion Tragedy
Ontarians watched with a mix of horror and confusion on Friday as Premier Ford and medical officials announced what could only be described as drastic measures to, apparently, curb the spread of COVID-19 and its related variants. While the government has flip flopped on these measures since, and it is unclear if further changes are Continue reading
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Interpretation and the Value of Law II
This post is written by Leonid Sirota and Mark Mancini. We read with interest Stéphane Sérafin, Kerry Sun, and Xavier Foccroulle Ménard’s reply to our earlier post on legal interpretation. In a nutshell, we argued that those who interpret legal texts such as constitutions or statutes should apply established legal techniques without regard for the Continue reading
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Against Pure Pragmatism in Statutory Interpretation III: A Way Forward and Walsh (ONCA)
About a month ago, I wrote two posts attacking the concept of “pragmatism” in Canadian statutory interpretation. So my argument goes, the seminal Rizzo case, while commonly said to herald a “purposive” approach to interpretation, is actually methodologically pragmatic This is because the famous paragraph from Rizzo, which contains a list of things an interpret Continue reading
Double Aspect 