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The Supreme Court’s Leaves (Or Lack Thereof)
The Supreme Court has gone yet another week without granting leave to any cases. I am not an empiricist, and this is not something I’ve been tracking, but I gather that the Supreme Court has granted leave to less cases over time in general (not to suggest that this week is particularly representative of anything).…
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The Disuse of Knowledge in the Administrative State
Regulation is not the right tool for intelligently dealing with complexity
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Post-Truth, Redux
A faithful application of Vavilov reasonableness review exposes the rot at the core of Canada’s administrative law
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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…
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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…
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The UK Way
What a recent decision of the UK Supreme Court can teach us about courts, legislatures, and rights
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Citizens and Judicial Independence
A lawyer’s attempt to spy on a judge is a threat to judicial independence
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Esprit d’Escalier
Just two years after its notorious decision in Gray’s case, the Supreme Court took a more skeptical view of the executive’s claims of broad emergency powers
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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,…
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Common Power Grabs
A defence of Ontario’s use of the notwithstanding clause as “common good constitutionalism” is the same old tripe, under a new sauce
Double Aspect 