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What People Want, What They Get, And The Administrative State, Cristie Ford Jan 2021

What People Want, What They Get, And The Administrative State, Cristie Ford

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Social perceptions of the state and of regulation are badly polarized right now. On one hand, the modern administrative state is under attack. Some modern populists criticize the modern state for being antidemocratic, unaccountable, even tyrannical. Paradoxically, others criticize it for very different reasons: because it is ineffective, or because it binds economies and societies up in “red tape”. On the other hand, the need for a modern, properly-resourced, effective administrative state is also clearer than ever. The financial crisis taught hard lessons about the limits of self-regulation and the need for public sector actors to safeguard the public interest. …


Environmental Law, Jocelyn Stacey Jan 2020

Environmental Law, Jocelyn Stacey

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In commemoration of their 50th anniversary, this chapter examines the Federal Courts’ role in shaping environmental law in Canada. The chapter uses well-known environmental principles – the precautionary principle, sustainable development and access to (environmental) justice – as focal points for examining environmental law as well as the legal culture of the Federal Courts. The chapter identifies four distinct interpretive roles that the Federal Courts have ascribed to the precautionary principle and it argues that three of these roles have the potential to generate more coherent and transparent doctrine that upholds the rule of law in the environmental context. In …


Remedies In Canadian Administrative Law: A Roadmap To A Parallel Legal Universe, Cristie Ford Nov 2018

Remedies In Canadian Administrative Law: A Roadmap To A Parallel Legal Universe, Cristie Ford

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Administrative law in Canada, as in many other common law countries, centres around judicial review doctrine. Sometimes, one may even get the sense that administrative law and administrative law remedies begin at the point at which a party to an administrative action seeks judicial review of that action through the courts. Yet an overly tight focus on court action misses the hugely important first step in real-life administrative action: the varied and sometimes creative, purpose-built remedies that a tribunal itself may impose.

This chapter, which has been revised and updated for the third edition of this leading text on Canadian …


Judicial Review Of Government Actions In China, Wei Cui, Jie Cheng, Dominika Wiesner May 2018

Judicial Review Of Government Actions In China, Wei Cui, Jie Cheng, Dominika Wiesner

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China’s laws and policies on the judicial review of government actions are often used as a bellwether of the government’s attitude towards the rule of law. Accordingly, in gauging the direction of legal reform in the Xi Jinping era, recent media reports have highlighted changes in litigation against government agencies as evidence of positive movement towards the greater rule of law, albeit only contradicted by other evidence of political repression and increasing authoritarianism. We provide a selective review of changes in China’s administrative litigation system in the last few years, including the amendment in 2014 of the Administrative Litigation Law …


An Error Of Law And The Credibility Of The Civil Resolution Tribunal, Douglas C. Harris, Sophie Marshall Apr 2018

An Error Of Law And The Credibility Of The Civil Resolution Tribunal, Douglas C. Harris, Sophie Marshall

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No abstract provided.


Can Pragmatism Function In Administrative Law?, Jocelyn Stacey, Alice Woolley Jan 2016

Can Pragmatism Function In Administrative Law?, Jocelyn Stacey, Alice Woolley

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This article draws out the ways in which Justice Rothstein grappled with complexity in administrative law. It argues that Justice Rothstein took a pragmatic approach to complexity in administrative law. Specifically, he sought to articulate a framework for judicial review that was workable for administrative decision-makers, litigants, their lawyers and reviewing courts. In addition, he looked to past experience with judicial review, evidenced in judicial precedent, rather than focusing on abstract theoretical norms.


The Promise Of The Rule Of (Environmental) Law: A Reply To Pardy's Unbearable Licence, Jocelyn Stacey Jan 2016

The Promise Of The Rule Of (Environmental) Law: A Reply To Pardy's Unbearable Licence, Jocelyn Stacey

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This short reply clarifies and defends the argument presented in "The Environmental Emergency and the Legality of Discretion in Environmental Law." It responds to the arguments that were made, and that could have been made, in Pardy's critique "An Unbearable Licence".


Ps V Ontario: Rethinking The Role Of The Charter In Civil Commitment, Isabel Grant, Peter J. Carver Jan 2016

Ps V Ontario: Rethinking The Role Of The Charter In Civil Commitment, Isabel Grant, Peter J. Carver

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In PS v Ontario, the Ontario Court of Appeal held that section 7 of the Charter requires that persons who are civilly committed for six months or more must have access to a meaningful review process that has jurisdiction over the conditions of their detention. In this paper, the authors argue that this decision has broad implications for provincial civil commitment regimes across the country. In particular, the fact that the court analogized to the Criminal Code Review Board jurisprudence opens the door to a fuller recognition of the profound deprivation of liberty that is involved in all civil commitments. …


Transubstantiation In Canadian Public Law: Processing Substance And Instantiating Process, Mary Liston Jan 2016

Transubstantiation In Canadian Public Law: Processing Substance And Instantiating Process, Mary Liston

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Canadian public law blurs process and substance, a result confirming the prevailing view that this dichotomy ought never to be conceived as a simplistic bright-line distinction. Recent developments have created more than just a blurring but, rather, a strong linking or even fusion of the two. This paper probes the implications of these developments in public law. Section two briefly presents the historic and jurisprudential distinctions between process and substance and assesses its current legal import. Here I argue that judicially created analytic frameworks could assist by bringing a process-substance problem to the surface and constraining its potentially pernicious effects. …


The Environmental Emergency And The Legality Of Discretion In Environmental Law, Jocelyn Stacey Jan 2015

The Environmental Emergency And The Legality Of Discretion In Environmental Law, Jocelyn Stacey

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This article argues that environmental issues confront us as an ongoing emergency. The epistemic features of serious environmental issues – the fact that we cannot reliably distinguish ex ante between benign policy choices and choices that may lead to environmental catastrophe – are the same features of an emergency. This means that, like emergencies, environmental issues pose a fundamental challenge for the rule of law: they reveal the necessity of unconstrained executive discretion. Discretion is widely lamented as a fundamental flaw in Canadian environmental law, which undermines both environmental protection and the rule of law itself. Through the conceptual framework …


The Rule-Of-Law Underpinnings Of Endangered Species Protection: Minister Of Fisheries And Oceans V. David Suzuki Foundation, 2012 Fca 40, Jocelyn Stacey Jan 2014

The Rule-Of-Law Underpinnings Of Endangered Species Protection: Minister Of Fisheries And Oceans V. David Suzuki Foundation, 2012 Fca 40, Jocelyn Stacey

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Environmental organizations have experienced a string of recent courtroom successes enforcing the federal Species At Risk Act. This case comment examines one of these cases, Minister of Fisheries and Oceans v. David Suzuki Foundation (“Killer Whales”), to expose the rule-of-law underpinnings of the Federal Court of Appeal’s decision. It argues that, while the decision is on its face an ostensible victory for endangered species protection, the conception of the rule of law on which the court relies is incapable of providing meaningful legal constraints for much environmental decision-making.


Governments In Miniature: The Rule Of Law In The Administrative State, Mary Liston Jan 2013

Governments In Miniature: The Rule Of Law In The Administrative State, Mary Liston

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This chapter discusses several of the key attributes of the rule of law and explores their relevance for Canadian administrative law: the rule of law as an unwritten constitutional principle; the rule of law as a political ideal which structures institutional relations and competencies; and, the rule of law as a distinctive political morality which, in Canada, is understood as a dialogue among the three branches of government. The chapter assesses the Canadian articulation of the rule of law in the jurisprudence of the Supreme Court of Canada, then turns to the contemporary judicial review of administrative action. Recent case …


The Movement Of U.S. Criminal And Administrative Law: Processes Of Transplanting And Translating, Toby S. Goldbach, Benjamin Brake, Peter J. Katzenstein Jan 2013

The Movement Of U.S. Criminal And Administrative Law: Processes Of Transplanting And Translating, Toby S. Goldbach, Benjamin Brake, Peter J. Katzenstein

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This article examines the transplanting and translating of law in the domains of criminal procedure and administrative law. The transnational movement of law is full of unexpected twists and turns that belie the notion of the United States as a legal behemoth. Furthermore, the movement of legal procedures which occurs both within and across countries with common and civil law legal traditions challenges preconceived notions of an orderly divide between legal families. While the spread of elements of the U.S. jury system and methods of plea bargaining reveals the powerful influence of U.S. legal ideas, the ways that these procedures …


Dogs And Tails: Remedies In Administrative Law, Cristie Ford Jan 2013

Dogs And Tails: Remedies In Administrative Law, Cristie Ford

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Administrative law in Canada, as in many other Commonwealth countries, centers around judicial review doctrine. Sometimes, one may even get the sense that administrative law and administrative law remedies begin at the point at which a party to an administrative action seeks judicial review of that action through the courts. Yet an overly tight focus on court action misses the hugely important first step in real-life administrative action: the varied and sometimes creative, purpose-built remedies that a tribunal itself may impose. This chapter seeks to provide a broader overview of administrative law remedies as a whole, including not only judicial …


Evolving Capacities: The B.C. Representative For Children And Youth As A Hybrid Model Of Oversight, Mary Liston Jan 2013

Evolving Capacities: The B.C. Representative For Children And Youth As A Hybrid Model Of Oversight, Mary Liston

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This paper explores hybrid models of oversight through an examination of a new institutional creation: British Columbia’s Representative for Children and Youth (BC RCY). The paper argues that societal changes in the conception of children’s worth have significantly affected approaches to child welfare and have also stimulated institutional innovation. The paper begins with a historical overview of the legal and moral status of children, focusing on the child as the subject of government protection, and then considers the evolution of children’s rights in the twentieth century. This conceptual shift from children as passive objects of paternal state care to (near) …


Foreign Administrative Law And International Taxation: A Case Study Of Tax Treaty Implementation In China, Wei Cui Jan 2012

Foreign Administrative Law And International Taxation: A Case Study Of Tax Treaty Implementation In China, Wei Cui

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U.S. taxpayers and the IRS increasingly have to take into account the interactions between U.S. and foreign laws, but they have paid little attention to the administrative law backgrounds of foreign tax laws. In a growing range of cases, the need for such attention has become urgent. This Article describes a novel class of cases encountered by U.S. taxpayers that emanate from tax treaty implementation in China. In these cases, U.S. (and other foreign) investors face certain rules that conflict with common treaty interpretations, and that, at the same time, are not legally binding under Chinese domestic law. The question …


Why Is The Japanese Supreme Court So Conservative?, Shigenori Matsui Jan 2011

Why Is The Japanese Supreme Court So Conservative?, Shigenori Matsui

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The Constitution of Japan, enacted on November 3, 1946, and effective as of May 3, 1947, gave the judicial power to the Supreme Court and the inferior courts established by the Diet, the national legislature, and gave the power of judicial review to the judiciary. Equipped with the power of judicial review, the Japanese Supreme Court was expected to perform a very significant political role in safeguarding the Constitution, especially its Bill of Rights, against infringement by the government. Yet, it has developed a very conservative constitutional jurisprudence ever since its establishment. This article examines why the Japanese Supreme Court …


Constitutional Precedents In Japan: A Comment On The Role Of Precedent, Shigenori Matsui Jan 2011

Constitutional Precedents In Japan: A Comment On The Role Of Precedent, Shigenori Matsui

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Japan is a civil law country, and the precedent of the Supreme Court is not binding on either the Supreme Court itself or lower courts. Judges are supposed to return to the text of the statute for each legal dispute and apply the rules to specific cases. Judicial decisions are not law to be applied by the courts. However, since judges have followed the precedent of the Supreme Court most of the time, these precedents have a de facto binding power even though they are not legally binding. In this Comment, the author focuses on constitutional law precedents to illustrate …


Witnessing Arbitrariness: Roncarelli V. Duplessis Fifty Years On, Mary Liston Jan 2010

Witnessing Arbitrariness: Roncarelli V. Duplessis Fifty Years On, Mary Liston

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In Canadian public law, the foundational case of Roncarelli v. Duplessis stands for the proposition that arbitrariness and the rule of law are conceptually antithetical values. This article examines multiple forms of arbitrariness in Roncarelli, going beyond the usual focus on discretionary power arbitrarily exercised by the executive branch of government. A close reading of the case not only brings to the surface other forms of arbitrariness, notably under-acknowledged forms of judicial arbitrariness, but also illuminates how legal actors attempt to constrain arbitrariness within the activity of judging. Furthermore, repositioning the case in its larger social and political context provides …


‘Alert, Alive And Sensitive’: Baker, The Duty To Give Reasons, And The Ethos Of Justification In Canadian Public Law, Mary Liston Jan 2004

‘Alert, Alive And Sensitive’: Baker, The Duty To Give Reasons, And The Ethos Of Justification In Canadian Public Law, Mary Liston

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This chapter argues that the remarkable phrase ‘alert, alive and sensitive’ – coined by Madame Justice L’Heureux-Dubé in the major Supreme Court of Canada decision, Baker v. Canada (Minister of Citizenship and Immigration) – signifies two important jurisprudential developments. First, the phrase ‘alert, alive and sensitive’ indicates a set of attributes connoting good judgment which can be used to evaluate the quality of judicial and administrative decisions. Second, the phrase comports with an emergent understanding of Canadian public law as an ‘ethos of justification’ in which citizens and non-citizens are democratically, and often constitutionally, entitled to participate in decisions made …