Dunsmuir and Jurisdiction

Abstract

This symposium piece discusses the way the Supreme Court of Canada in its 2008 Dunsmuir decision returned to jurisdiction as a key analytic device with which to conduct judicial review of administrative action. The Court did so, however, without offering a method to distinguish jurisdictional errors of law from non-jurisdictional errors. Without such a method, judicial review is at risk of abandoning its commitment to deference and reverting to an interventionist approach on the back of purported jurisdictional errors.

Keywords: Dunsmuir, Judicial Review, Administrative Law, Jurisdictionn, Deference