I don't know how long this has been going on, but some courts are sending judgments to CanLII with hyperlinked tables of contents. Plain old text TOCs are nothing new, of course: long — long, long. . . — judgments pretty much demand them. But courts seem to have discovered that, because they create and submit their judgments to CanLII in MS Word format, it's fairly easy to construct a hyperlinked table of contents.

A search for [table of contents] turns up recent "hot" TOCs from Newfoundland and Labrador, British Columbia, and Ontario.

This is, of course, a welcome trend, if trend it is. Now all we need in our open access judgments is hyperlinks back to the TOC from within the document, links to each paragraph to enable precise citation, hyperlinked citations . . . and a few other features besides.

Simon Fodden is the founder of Slaw. He taught law at Osgoode Hall Law School for more than 30 years before he retired to focus on writing, publishing, and IT and law.
[click on the author's name for more information]

up

2 Comments on “Hot TOCs in CanLII”

  1. James says:

    Maybe not all good? The switch from typewriting to word processing seems to be blamed for the ever expanding average judgment length. Being able to hyperlink even more text might make the length of judgments that much longer in the future…

  2. David Cheifetz says:

    Simon,

    I'm not sure it's all that recent, though I hope its becoming more common.

    Looking for something else, I just stumbled across a 2006 case with hyperlinks between table of contents and sections. Morgan v. City of Toronto, 2006 CanLII 41574. Unfortunately, it, like the 3 you mention link only for movement from TOC to section. There's no link back. If, in fact, the judges clerical staff are doing this, then I wonder why there's not even a bookmark back to the table of contents heading. It could be reused at each section heading.

SlawTips      

SlawTips Cash Flow Reports – Part 1
Thursday, May 17

Following on our earlier Top 10 Financial Errors posts, this is the first in a series of 10 posts dealing with Cash Flow Reports and in particular, cash flow management.… »»

Practice

SlawTips Just the Facts
Wednesday, May 16

Today’s research tip is about facts. When research is assigned to juniors (and librarians for that matter) it is important to share facts that are critical to the research. It … »»

Research

SlawTips Minimize That Darn Office Ribbon for More Room on Your Desktop
Wednesday, May 16

If you are using Office 2007 or 2010, The Ribbon is now a part of your life. Some of you will be happy about this – some of you won’t.… »»

Technology

noted on Slaw    

MLB Selected Case Summaries    

These summaries of selected recent cases are provided each week to Slaw by Maritime Law Book.
More information.

  • Aliens - Exclusion and expulsion - Power to detain and deport - Minister’s certificate - Review - Evidence

    In 2002, Harkat was detained pursuant to a ministerial security certificate issued under the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act (IRPA) as a person inadmissible to Canada on grounds ...

  • Contracts - Formation of contract - Signing - Electronic signature

    The plaintiff expressed an interest in purchasing the defendant’s (vendor’s) condo. The parties agreed to carry on their discussions through e-mail. Following an exchange of e-mails, the plaintiff claimed that the defendant was contractually bound to ...

  • Barristers and Solicitors - Relationship with client - Confidential communications - General

    The petitioner was a Receiver appointed in March 2009 by a California court over the assets of GJB Enterprises Inc. (a “Ponzi scheme”) and its principals, the Berkes (the GJB parties). The court ordered ...

  • Practice - Costs - Funding before judgment - When interim or advance costs available

    The plaintiffs were “direct to home” satellite based subscription program providers. Rex and other defendants offered “grey market” services to Canadian residents to facilitate the unauthorized reception in Canada of the plaintiffs’ ...

TalkLaw/ParLoi    

This is a listing of a few upcoming events in Canada of interest to lawyers, law students, legal librarians, and others involved in the practice of law.

Clicking on any event in the list below will give you access to more information and to links allowing you to see the full entry and to add the event to your own calendar.

Click this link for a fuller version of the TalkLaw/ParLoi calendar of events and for instructions as to how to add events and calendars to your own calendar.