Administrative Tribunals and the Constitution: Reclaiming the Grail
Advocates' Quarterly, Vol. 29, pp. 54-71, 2004
18 Pages Posted: 5 Dec 2012
Date Written: 2004
Abstract
This article comments on two 2003 Supreme Court of Canada decisions — Nova Scotia (Workers' Compensation Board) v. Martin and Paul v British Columbia (Attorney General) — in which the threshold issue was an administrative tribunal's jurisdiction to hear constitutional challenges. The article argues that the Court, in mandating a presumptive standard for such jurisdiction where the tribunal's enabling statute authorizes it to consider general questions of law, reached a sensible conclusion for the many Canadians whose only contact with adjudicative decision-making is through the administrative justice system.
Keywords: constitutional law, administrative law, jurisdiction
JEL Classification: K19
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation