{"id":3019,"date":"2018-12-07T17:26:45","date_gmt":"2018-12-07T17:26:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ruleoflaw.ca\/?p=3019"},"modified":"2018-12-07T20:24:19","modified_gmt":"2018-12-07T20:24:19","slug":"the-administrative-law-trilogy-the-stare-decisis-trap","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ruleoflaw.ca\/the-administrative-law-trilogy-the-stare-decisis-trap\/","title":{"rendered":"The Administrative Law “Trilogy”: The Stare Decisis Trap"},"content":{"rendered":"

This week, the Supreme Court of Canada finally heard the consolidated appeals in Bell\/NFL <\/em>and Vavilov. <\/em>ARL, expertly represented by Adam Goldenberg, put forward our submissions on the matter, which focus on a return to the basis of the law of judicial review: its statutory character.<\/p>\n

During the hearings, one particular line of questioning posed a problem for this\u00a0 argument, which asks the Court to critically analyze all of its precedents, even those pre-Dunsmuir<\/em>. Justice Moldaver, for example, suggested that one of the parties\u2019 submissions in Bell\/NFL <\/em>would \u201ctake us back 30 years.\u201d That comment was made as if it was undesirable to look to the foundations of the law of judicial review. Justice Gascon chided the same counsel for framing his submissions as a \u201cminor adjustment,\u201d suggesting that it was, in fact, a major overhaul. Again, the comment was stated as a decisive fact, acting as a criticism of the merits of the legal position.<\/p>\n

This line of thinking, to my mind, is odd for at least two reasons.<\/p>\n

First, when the Court granted leave to these cases and consolidated them, it invited a critical appraisal of its standard of review cases since Dunsmuir.<\/em> Like all of the common law, Dunsmuir<\/em> is a product of what came before it. Dunsmuir<\/em>, for example, incorporates CUPE\u2019s generally deferential posture and it does not completely do away with the pragmatic and functional factors outlined in Pushpanathan<\/em>, Pezim<\/em>, and Southam<\/em>. The Court\u2019s invitation of a critical appraisal should be taken seriously.<\/p>\n

The line of questioning invited by Justices Gascon and Moldaver does not inspire confidence that the Court is serious about a full-blown reappraisal of Dunsmuir<\/em> and what it contains. It may very well be that the line of questioning was aimed at protecting Dunsmuir <\/em>from assault, on the grounds that it is not only good law, but workable and constitutionally acceptable law. But I heard no such robust defence of Dunsmuir<\/em>, and it would be difficult to sustain one given the widespread discord it and its progeny have caused in the lower courts and among the academic community. To my mind, if the Court invited review of Dunsmu<\/em>ir, it should review. Weak appeals to stare decisis<\/em> are not helpful.<\/p>\n

On that note, the line of questioning is odd for a second reason: this seems like the perfect case, rare in the common law system, to tear down the precedent and critically interrogate first principles. I am alive to the concern this raises about reliance interests, certainty in the law, and the other virtues of a strong stare decisis<\/em> rule. But the law of judicial review in Canada is so derelict of principle and unworkable that the reliance costs on it must be minimal. The costs of advice under the regime are already high, because (1) it undergoes constant change and (2) it is difficult for a lawyer to say to a client, with any acceptable probability, what the outcome of a case would be.<\/p>\n

Given the already-high costs imposed by a strict rule of stare decisis<\/em> in this case, it is a good opportunity to go back to first principles and create a modern law of judicial review. The key touchstones should be consistency with constitutional precepts and workability. But there is a challenge: reassessing the law of judicial review may invite a re-assessment of the foundational principles laid down in CUPE.<\/p>\n

CUPE was about a labour board in a commercial context. Today, the administrative state is a much different beast. The same rule of deference formulated in light of the expertise and position of a labour board in the 1970s cannot be applied to the decision of an immigration official to deport someone in 2018. The positions of the immigration officer and the labour board are so vastly different that a law formulated in light of the former, 40 years ago, is difficult to apply to the latter today.<\/p>\n

The challenge is for judges on the Supreme Court who were born in bred in the Keynesian 70s to accept another model of judicial review. CUPE is a sort of foil for this bygone era. The conception of administrative law, at that time, was its potential for redistributive social justice, and nowhere was the terrain more fraught than in the economics of labour. Deference to these sorts of decision-makers could be justified as a tool to empower them in the face of conservative judges. But today, administrative law is called on to do much more. Now, there is a worry (Vavilov<\/em> is an example), of an administrative state that directly impacts the most personal individual rights. Administrative decision-makers can make life-altering decisions that bring to bear the most repressive arms of the state against vulnerable people. This has nothing to do with redistributive goals, the labour movement, or any other social goal. As such, it is difficult to apply the social-justice rationale of deference to these decision-makers.<\/p>\n

The new administrative law, conceived as a sort of control on satellite decision-makers, must be attuned to the new administrative state. Accordingly, the judges should not keep themselves to any strict rule of stare decisis.<\/em> They should \u00a0review the interaction of any proposed framework with the intricacies of the modern administrative state. Anything less would be a wasted chance.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This week, the Supreme Court of Canada finally heard the consolidated appeals in Bell\/NFL and Vavilov. ARL, expertly represented by Adam Goldenberg, put forward our submissions on the matter, which focus on a return to the basis of the law of judicial review: its statutory character. During the hearings, one particular line of questioning posed …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1321,"featured_media":2899,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[35,34],"tags":[264,328,71],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ruleoflaw.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3019"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ruleoflaw.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ruleoflaw.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ruleoflaw.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1321"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ruleoflaw.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3019"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.ruleoflaw.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3019\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3020,"href":"https:\/\/www.ruleoflaw.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3019\/revisions\/3020"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ruleoflaw.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2899"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ruleoflaw.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3019"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ruleoflaw.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3019"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ruleoflaw.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3019"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}