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DUNSMUIR FOCUS FEATURE:
INTRODUCTION
It would be a gross understatement to say that the Supreme Court of Canada's
decision in Dunsmuir v New Brunswick1 has had a significant impact on adminis-
trative law. Dunsmuir is, by far, the most cited case ever rendered by the Court,2
referred to in almost 15,000 reported decisions,3 dissected in more than 500 aca-
demic articles,4 and discussed at length in an untold number of conferences and
continuing legal education seminars.
Perhaps the breadth of judicial and academic consideration of Dunsmuir
ought not to be surprising given that, through its reformulated standard of review
analysis, the Court laid out a framework that purported to properly calibrate the
contested distribution of decision-making power between the legislative, execu-
tive, andjudicial branches of government.5 The Court also fundamentally altered
the relationship between government employees and their employers by finding
that no duty of procedural fairness is owed to dismissed employees when the law
of contract otherwise applies.6 Given that the Supreme Court has announced its
intention to soon reconsider Dunsmuirin a trilogy of cases in which it has granted
leave to appeal,7 the need to fully understand the merits, demerits, and broader
impact of the decision is even more urgent. This focus feature, which was orig-
inally germinated in a conference organized by the Canadian Institute for the
Administration ofJustice,8 represents a modest contribution to the rich scholar-
ship that already exists on this important issue.
In his article, Matthew Lewans situates Dunsmuir in the broader context of
earlier landmark decisions decided by the Supreme Court of Canada, begin-
ning with Roncarelli v Duplessis.9 In so doing, he makes the compelling argument
that Dunsmuir severed an important link between the principles of procedural
* Counsel, Shapray Cramer Fitterman Lamer LLP
1 2008 SCC 9, [2008] 1 SCR 190 [Dunsmuir].
2 John Mastrangelo, 'The Most Cited Decisions of the Supreme Court of Canada' (2016),
online: Osgoode Hall Law School <http://www.thecourt.ca/cited-decisions-supreme-court-
canada/>. According to Mastrangelo, in 2016, Dunsmuir had been cited 12,238 times on
CanLII and 9,600 times on Westlaw. The second most cited case, R v W(D), [1991] 1 SCR
742, had been cited 8,000 times on CanLII and 8,594 times on Westlaw.
3 According to the CanLII database, as of 18 July 2018, Dunsmuir had been cited in 12,674
court decisions and 2,143 decisions of administrative tribunals. See CanLI, online: Federa-
tion of Law Societies of Canada <http://www.canlii.org>.
4 According to Google Scholar, as of 18 July 2018, the term 'Dunsmuir v New Brunswick'
appears in 549 scholarly articles. Google Scholar, online: Google <scholar.google.ca>.
5 See e.g. Dunsmuir, supra note 1 at paras 27-31.
6 Ibid at paras 80-2.
7 See 2018 CanLII 40807 (SCC).
8 The conference in question was the National Roundtable on Administrative Law (27 May
2017, Vancouver), entitled 'These are the Principles, if you don't like them, we've got others.'
9 [1959] SCR 121.
(Winter 2019) 69 UTLJ C UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO PRESS
Robert Danay*
DOI: 10.3188/utli.69.1-intro](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/utlj69&div=1&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)
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