Recently, Justice David Stratas of the Federal Court of Appeal released an extremely helpful summary of almost every aspect of administrative law in Canada. Administrative law students, practitioners, and academics would be well-served to carefully read the document. But Justice Stratas’ piece is far from merely descriptive—in it, he provides a number of recommendations for a return to sound and ...

The following is an excerpt from Professor Bruce Pardy’s book, Ecolawgic: The Logic of Ecosystems and the Rule of Law. The footnotes from the original version have been omitted. The full text can be accessed here. Bruce Pardy is Professor of Law at Queen’s University. He has written extensively on a wide range of legal topics, taught at law schools ...

Many of Donald Trump’s actions during his first weeks as President have understandably unsettled much of the world. However, there are already hopeful signs that they will be resisted by some combination of public protest, the courts, and/or, at the very least, his successor. So the recent nomination of 49-year old Court of Appeals Judge Neil Gorsuch to the United ...

The federal government has officially announced that it is bringing back the Court Challenges  Program, which provides money to individuals or groups who pursue litigation in which they assert certain constitutional or quasi-constitutional rights. In comparison with past iterations, the program will subsidize claims based on a broader range of rights ― not only equality and language rights under the ...

The Canadian Constitution Foundation will host its annual Law & Freedom Conference between January 6 – 8, 2017. The conference will be held at Hart House at the University of Toronto, which located at 7 Hart House Circle. This year’s speakers include the Honourable Chief Justice Glenn D. Joyal of the Manitoba Court of Queen’s Bench, Professor Emmett Macfarlane of ...

It’s always easy to seek permission when you know you’ll get it. While not required to do so, the Liberals asked the House of Commons to vote recently on whether to ratify the Paris Agreement, an international climate change accord. In contrast, they do not intend to ask Parliament to approve their plan to send 600 soldiers to Africa on a ...

I am deeply honoured to have been nominated for Samara’s Everyday Political Citizen, an annual contest that profiles ordinary people working to strengthen their communities and our democracy. This nomination is a reflection of the good work ARL has done over the last two years and I share it with all the ARL members and everyone else who has helped contribute to ...

This article appears in the current (Fall 2016) edition of the Christian Legal Journal, a publication of Christian Legal Fellowship, an intervener in Trinity Western University’s litigation in all three provinces.   Any state-imposed limit on a constitutional right or freedom must be “prescribed by law”, according to section 1 of the Charter. This requirement stems from the principle of ...

This summer saw a sharply divided Supreme Court of Canada on many points. The case of Wilson v. Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd., 2016 SCC 29 illustrated this perhaps better than any other, with the Court issuing four separate opinions. Many issues are raised in the case, from whether certain non-unionized federally regulated employees can be dismissed without cause to the number ...

In my last article, “Reaffirming the Case for Constraint“, I replied to Leonid Sirota’s article “How to do Constitutional Adjudication,” which was itself a response to my paper, “The Case for a Constrained Approach to Section 7.” Mr. Sirota also wrote a piece entitled “Seven’s Sins” in response to my original paper. I had intended to reply to “Seven’s Sins” ...