There are three principal avenues by which administrative decisions are externally reviewed: petitions to cabinet, appeals to a court, and judicial review by a court. External Review of Administrative Decisions: Petitions to Cabinet, Appeals to Court, and Judicial Review consists of three full chapters excerpted from the larger six-volume service Practice and Procedure Before Administrative Tribunals by Robert W. Macaulay and James Sprague, which canvass the legal principles governing the conduct of these three principal avenues of external review.

All three forms of review have evolved significantly in the last twenty years. Underlying the modern Dunsmuir deference is the evolution that has taken place in administrative decision-making in accordance with the evolving scope of the concepts of fairness and administrative process. It is against this evolutionary backdrop that the modern concepts of judicial review have developed and continue to be developed. Today the complexity of administrative law is no longer the concept of natural justice and fairness, but rather is the relationship of the courts to the new form of administrative decision-making.

The text offers a discussion of the roots and nature of the external forms of review, who can avail themselves of those reviews, what can hope to be secured thereby, and the principles underlying their operation.