Recent Developments in the Law of Judicial Review

Co-authored by Christiaan A. Jordaan. Following the Supreme Court of Canada's reworking of its approach to judicial review in Dunsmuir v. New Brunswick (Board of Management), 2008 SCC 9, there was some concern that the new approach would not be workable for the entire spectrum of actors subject to administrative law. Some also worried that the Dunsmuir decision would inaugurate a trend toward more intrusive review by the courts. In the succeeding years, these concerns have abated as the Dunsmuir approach has been flexibly applied to a wide range of circumstances, and recent Supreme Court jurisprudence displays a continuing trend toward less intrusive review. The authors prepared this paper for the Canadian Institute's Fundamentals of Administrative Law & Practice, and previously presented papers on this topic to the same conference in each of 2009, 2010 and 2011.