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Keeping Faith
A master class in public meaning originalism, delivered by the US Supreme Court’s Justice Elena Kagan
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Happy Canada Day!
The anniversary of an imperfect constitution drafted by imperfect men is well worth celebrating
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The Ivory Tower Prisoner’s Dilemma
Why law journals are useless, and why we can’t do without them
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Results-Oriented Conservatism: A Defence of Bostock
Should textualism lead to more “conservative” outcomes as a matter of course? No. Those who wish to transform textualism—a methodology of interpretation—into a vessel for conservative policy outcomes are in the wrong business. Instead of being in the business of law, they are in the business of politics. For years, a small group of Canadian
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Immuring Dicey’s Ghost
Introducing a new article on the Senate Reform Reference, constitutional conventions, and originalism ― and some thoughts on publishing heterodox scholarship
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ESA II: The Standard of Review and Rogers
In Entertainment Software Association, Stratas JA for the Court set out a number of important comments about statutory interpretation and international law. I dealt with those comments in a previous post. I write again about this case to highlight Stratas JA’s comments on the standard of review. Particularly, Stratas JA was faced with the propriety
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The Continued Relevance of “Jurisdiction”
This post is co-written with Leonid Sirota One of the innovations of Vavilov was its dispatch of so-called “jurisdictional questions” from the standard of review analysis. A long-time feature of Canadian administrative law, jurisdictional questions were said to arise “where the tribunal must explicitly determine whether its statutory grant of power gives it authority to
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Entertainment Assoc, 2020 FCA 100: A New Canadian Textualism
In Entertainment Software Assoc v Society of Composers, 2020 FCA 100, Stratas JA (for the Court) made a number of interesting comments about statutory interpretation in the administrative state and the role of international law in the interpretive activity. In this post, I review these comments, and agree with them wholeheartedly. This case is an
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Doré Revisited: A Response to Professor Daly
Over on Administrative Law Matters, Professor Paul Daly argues that Doré actually “emerges strengthened” from Vavilov. Professor Daly’s post responds to my own paper (The Conceptual Gap Between Doré and Vavilov) and post, where I argue the opposite. In this post, I would like to respond critically to Professor Daly’s interesting and provocative arguments. I
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Through Which Glass, Darkly?
Introducing a new article on the Rule of Law in two decisions of the supreme courts of Canada and the United Kingdom
Double Aspect 