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The principle that public authorities are subordinate to the supervisory power of the superior courts is the cornerstone of the Canadian and Quebec system of administrative law. Such judicial review is a necessary consequence of the rule of law as identified by Dicey in 1885 in his work Introduction to the Study of the Law of the Constitution. This principle is firmly rooted in the common law and is the source of the very foundations of the British system, on which our own is based. Dicey saw the rule of law as having three meanings: first, acts of the government are governed by ordinary law, as opposed to arbitrariness and wide discretionary authority; second, everyone is equal before the law; and third, everyone is amenable to the jurisdiction of the ordinary courts. These rules basically mean that the exercise of governmental authority must be controlled, and as a corollary, that the individual must have the appropriate remedies to protect himself against arbitrary action. In our legal and political system, judicial review of administrative action by the courts of law is based on these principles (see Brun and Tremblay, Droit constitutionnel (2nd ed. 1990), at pp. 626 et seq.; Chevrette and Marx, Droit constitutionnel (1982), at pp. 33 et seq.).
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