Product details
Biographical note
Ron Ellis is an administrative law lawyer, teacher, academic, arbitrator, and former chair and CEO of a major administrative judicial tribunal. He has been teaching, speaking, and writing about administrative justice system issues for more than thirty years.<p>The issues addressed in <em>Unjust by Design</em> are of critical, though largely unappreciated importance. Ron Ellis faced a significant challenge of persuasion: the tediousness of administrative law is dangerous because it can mask significant injustice ... But precisely because these are the workaday issues of our society, it is critical that they not be ignored and left subject to a decision-making system so bereft of basic elements consistent with the rule of law that their validity is rendered questionable.</p> - Bob Tarantino (Literary Review of Canada, June 2013)
Canadian legislatures regularly assign what are truly court functions to non-court, government tribunals. These executive branch "judicial" tribunals are surrogate courts and together comprise a little-known system of administrative justice that annually makes hundreds of thousands of contentious, life-altering judicial decisions concerning the everyday rights of both individuals and businesses.
This book demonstrates that, except perhaps in Quebec, the executive branch's administrative justice system is a justice system in name only. Failing to conform to rule-of-law principles or constitutional norms, its judicial tribunals are neither independent nor, in law, impartial and are only providentially competent.
Unjust by Design describes a system in transcendent need of major restructuring. Written by a respected critic, it presents a modern theory of administrative justice fit for that purpose. It also provides detailed blueprints for the changes the author believes would be necessary if justice were to in fact assume its proper role in Canada's administrative justice system.
Introduction
1 Defeating the Rule of Law in the Administrative Justice System: Executive Branch Strategies and Tactics
2 Administrative Justice: Getting the Context and Terminology Clear, the Concepts Straight, and the Prescription Right
3 Administrative Judicial Tribunals: The Inside Story
4 Prelude to Reform
5 The Reform Proposal
6 Implementing the Reform Proposal: A Strategy for Change
7 Meanwhile, a Toolkit for Litigators
Notes
Select Bibliography
Index