Charter Values and Administrative Justice

Abstract

What would the Charter of Rights and Freedoms have looked like if it had been designed for administrative justice? This is a question underlying this study. Ever since the Canadian Supreme Court made clear in Slaight Communications that discretionary decisions of public officials were to be subject to the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and expanded the reach of the Charter to most adjudicative tribunals, the Court has wrestled with the coherence of the relationship between the Charter and administrative justice. The Court attempted to synthesize its position and chart a new path forward beyond a traditional application of the Charter to incorporate a potentially broader but inchoate set of "Charter values" in its 2012 decision Doré. With this decision as a point of departure, the author’s elaborate a new framework for the development and application of Charter values in the distinct sphere of administrative justice.

Keywords: Charter of Rights and Freedoms, Charter values, administrative justice, administrative law, constitutional law, public law, Slaight Communications, Doré

JEL Classification: K19, K23, K39