As I was shovelling snow on the NS Public Highways last week, (btw Connie, the best shovel is 24-in. Yukon Ergonomic Snow Pusher, lightweight, gets 2 feet of snow at once) I got to thinking about blogs, the usefulness of which is a popluar Slaw topic. So in the midst of a particularly heavy shovel full, I decided to do a little legal lit. review of traditional sources (Canadian context) and review some caselaw where Blogs are being mentioned.
It seems that Blogs have not yet made a forceful entrance in the Canadian courtroom. My fairly quick and dirty search, revealed three cases: Martinez v. Canada (Minister of Citizenship and Immigration), 2005 FC 1050 , Vaillancourt c. Lagacé, 2005 IIJCan 29333 and R. v. Gibb [2005] O.J. No. 3057, on this point. In both Martinez and Gibb blogs have been cited as evidence, Vaillancourt c. Legacé seems more interesting as one party is concerned about their name appearing in a blogue. All of these cases occurred in 2005.
A lit review of Canadian Sources reveals roughly 30 entries over the past 2.5 years (2004-2006: Nothing prior to 2004. If there is interest I will post the list). Interestingly most of the cites are from legal newspapers or newsletters. The few occasions where a Blog has been mentioned in the more traditional journals, have been as a source or as a reference to a particular blog that an individual posts to.
When one casts the net to include American jurisprudence and secondary literature on this topic, the results become much more extensive (a future post). For now I am interested to watch the occurence of blogs in the Canadian context and expect an exponential jump in the numbers in 2006.
