David Mullan Feted with Festschrift

Photo by: City of Toronto: Media Services

David Mullan has been honoured with a Festschrift for his leading work in administrative law.

Queen's Law Professor Emeritus David Mullan and his work have inspired a book of essays. The book, entitled Inside and Outside Canadian Administrative Law is published by University of Toronto Press, edited by Grant Huscroft and Michael Taggart. The Chief Justice of Canada (Beverley McLachlin), Huscroft, Taggart, and David Stratas of Heenan Blaikie LLP all contributed glowing forewords. The essays address important issues in the area of administrative law, long the focus of Professor Mullan.

David Mullan was born in Australia and raised and educated in New Zealand. Mullan left New Zealand in 1970 to undertake postgraduate work at Queen's Law and joined its faculty in 1971. Since coming to Canada Mullan has become recognized as one of the country's foremost scholars in administrative law. Other than a four-year stretch teaching at Dalhousie Law School from 1973 to 1977, Mullan remained dedicated to Queen's Law, teaching here until January 2004. Mullan was recently granted the title of Professor Emeritus at Queen's.

Professor Mullan's academic focus is administrative law, which he has written about extensively. He is co-author of Administrative Law: Cases, Text and Materials, and author of Administrative Law (Irwin Law, 2001), the Administrative Law Titlein the Canadian Encyclopedia Digestand numerous reports for law commissions, governments and public agencies. His writings have been cited by the courts, including the Supreme Court of Canada. In addition to teaching and writing, Mullan has served as a consultant on a number of law reform projects, as a panelist under Chapter 19 of the North American Free Trade Agreement, as a panel member of the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario, as vice-chair on the Ontario Workplace Safety and Insurance Appeals Tribunal, as a part-time member of the Ontario Human Rights Code Board of Inquiry, and is currently the Integrity Commissioner for the City of Toronto.

Mullan received the Queen's University Alumni Award for Excellence in Teaching in 2000, the Queen's University Prize for Excellence in Research in 1985, the Canadian Association of Law Teachers' Award for Academic Excellence, an honourary LL.D from the Law Society of Upper Canada, the Society of Ontario Adjudicators and Regulators Medal (awarded to individuals who have made an outstanding contribution to the Administrative Justice community) and held the Osler, Hoskin & Harcourt Professorship in Constitutional and Administrative Law. He has also been a frequent speaker at conferences and seminars for members of courts and tribunals.

Contributors to the Festschrift include law professors from various international law schools, including Queen's Law's own Professor Mark D. Walters, as well as judges from Canadian and International courts of justice. Essays in the book cover the broad themes of procedural fairness, scope of review and deference, the interrelationship of administrative law and human rights, the legitimacy of state regulation and tribunal adjudication, and common law comparativism, each themes in Mullan's work. "The result of this tremendous tribute is a truly unique volume of essays on the most cutting edge issues in administrative law, written by the best minds in administrative law in the world - all because this is in honour of David Mullan," noted Stratas.

 

(Sources: Grant Huscroft and Michael Taggart, eds., Inside and Outside Canadian Administrative Law (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2006); www.irwinlaw.com/author.aspx?authorid=20; www.law.uwo.ca/conferences/labour/2005/lecture.html; www.wsiat.on.ca/english/news/newsarchive/dMullan.htm)