A Law Unto Itself provides a detailed examination of the development and application of land use planning policy by the Ontario Municipal Board (OMB), a key Canadian administrative tribunal. Unlike the many existing analyses that focus on judicial reviews of the administrative process, this text explores the administrative process itself and demonstrates how a tribunal creates and implements policy through its decision-making.

Using a wide variety of case studies, John Chipman analyzes almost 900 of the OMB’s planning-related decisions during two specific time periods (1971-1978 and 1987-2000), illuminating the way in which the OMB frequently overturns municipal land-use planning decisions and imposes its own policies, which are generally protective of private interests, and the way in which it applies provincial planning policies within the context of its own standards. Chipman concludes that the nature of the policies developed by the OMB as well as the changing climate within which it operates together provide evidence that the board has outlived its role as a planning appeal tribunal.

John G. Chipman is an independent scholar who practices municipal and planning law in Toronto, Ontario.

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