Recent Posts

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 ...

I am grateful to Asher Honickman for his engaging and thought-provoking review of my book, Ecolawgic: The Logic of Ecosystems and the Rule of Law.  I expected nothing less: Honickman was one of the sharpest and most engaging students in the property class that he mentions having taken with me in his first year of law school. In this comment, ...

Glenn D. Joyal, Chief Justice of the Court of Queen’s Bench of Manitoba, gave the keynote address at last January Canadian Constitution Foundation’s recent Law and Freedom Conference. His talk, “The Charter and Canada’s New Political Culture: Are We All Ambassadors Now?”, was interesting and thought-provoking. Although the prepared text has been available on the website of Advocates for the Rule ...

Please join the Runnymede Society– University of Toronto Faculty of Law for a very special talk with the Hon. Justice Marc Nadon, entitled “Judging and the Rule of Law.” The talk will be held on Thursday, March 16th at 12:30 pm in Jackman Law– J125. Lunch will be served: please RSVP by March 13th to jbaron@runnymedesociety.ca We look forward to ...

In January, Chief Justice Joyal of the Manitoba Court of Queen’s Bench gave an address at the Canadian Constitution Foundation’s Law & Freedom Conference entitled “The Charter and Canada’s New Political Culture: Are We All Ambassadors Now?” The text of the address was published on this website at the time. The Canadian Constitution Foundation has now released the video of the ...

Professor Bruce Pardy has written an enjoyable and thought-provoking book entitled Ecolawgic: The Logic of Ecosystems and the Rule of Law. He argues from a familiar libertarian perspective, but his thesis is original in that he compares markets to ecosystems. His argument is summed up nicely in the abstract to the full text on SSRN as follows: Ecosystems contain their own immutable logic: ...

Legal professor, proficient blogger, ARL contributor, and self-described “law nerd” Léonid  Sirota recently gave a talk at Université de Montréal on the subject of constitutional originalism. This well-received talk was hosted by the Runnymede Society and can be viewed here. Mr. Sirota’s talk was based upon two excellent papers that he co-wrote with Benjamin Oliphant, one of which has been published ...

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 ...