Research

Canadian administrative law has developed sophisticated tools for identifying unlawful administrative action and evaluating the adequacy of justification, but far less attention has been paid to whether judicial review actually corrects the unlawfulness that justified intervention. The paper examines remittal, the presumptive remedy after successful judicial review, and outcome persistence: cases in which substantially similar outcomes return after reconsideration.

It argues that reconsideration and correction are analytically distinct, identifies a justification–correction gap in contemporary administrative law, and develops a framework for assessing corrective success by reference to the original error, the range of lawful outcomes, the nature of the deficiency and the institutional context of reconsideration.

Administrative decision-makers in Canada face increasingly demanding standards of justification, while courts remain comparatively insulated from equivalent scrutiny. The paper develops the concept of judicial omission: the capacity of courts to shape outcomes not only by what they decide, but by the material facts, arguments and issues they decline to address.

It argues that appellate deference, particularly the palpable and overriding error standard, can turn omission into effectively unreviewable decision-making, and that judicial legitimacy must rest on justification, accountability and reason-giving rather than on institutional status alone. It concludes by calling for a recalibration of appellate review.

Canadian administrative enforcement can impose sanctions that function like punishment without triggering the constitutional safeguards of criminal process. Through R v Wigglesworth, Martineau v Canada (Minister of National Revenue) and Guindon v Canada, the paper shows how access to heightened protection turns on the legal characterization of a proceeding rather than on the seriousness of its consequences.

Procedural fairness, justification and judicial review operate only after the state has chosen its form of enforcement, and cannot recreate protections that never attached. Extending the analysis to international sanctions and blacklisting regimes, the paper argues that public law should pay closer attention to the state’s prior choice of enforcement design.

Current research asking when political repression becomes persecution, and when responsibility may properly attach to an individual rather than be inferred from position or association.

Autonomous weapons systems and artificial intelligence create an accountability problem in armed conflict. Using treaty interpretation, jurisprudence and comparative state practice, the paper tests whether the Geneva Conventions, the Rome Statute and customary international law can accommodate machine-driven violence, and how mens rea, command responsibility and indirect perpetration operate when decisions are dispersed across commanders, programmers, corporations and machines.

Drawing on case studies from several contemporary conflicts, it identifies a growing evidentiary and culpability gap, and proposes affirmative duties of oversight in human–machine interaction, criminal jurisdiction over corporations, and hybrid regional enforcement mechanisms.

The paper asks whether Canadian anti-money-laundering and financial crime law can classify, detect and prove laundering through prearranged market transactions that deliberately allocate a loss to one brokerage account and a corresponding gain to another. It defines this as profit-and-loss laundering and distinguishes it from conventional mirror trading.

Its central argument is asymmetrical: on proved facts the loss-side case is comparatively strong, while the gain-side proceeds nexus is legally plausible but unresolved. Combining doctrinal analysis, an inflated option-premium model and institutional mapping of market, intelligence and enforcement actors, it identifies a cross-system synthesis gap and proposes a network-sensitive analytical framework.

The paper examines how resource extraction, particularly mining and oil development, contributes to the sexual exploitation of Indigenous women in Canada, and how industrial operations on or near Indigenous territories interact with vulnerabilities rooted in colonial structures and regulatory inaction.

Combining doctrinal analysis, critical Indigenous feminist theory and policy critique, it evaluates gaps in Indigenous rights, environmental governance, human rights protection and industry regulation, and proposes reforms grounded in Indigenous self-determination and gender justice.