One of the great strengths of the common law system is its ability to grow through the dialectical process of judicial determination of conflicting positions. This feature is absent in dispute resolution mechanisms such as mediation.

A perfect illustration of the growth of the common law will be the determination by the UK Supreme Court of an appeal to be heard on 5 and 6 March 2013. The case involves a decision in which the English Court of Appeal sharply rejected the practice – adopted and developed in the Family Division over 25 years – of treating the assets of . . . [more]

Each Monday we present brief excerpts of recent posts from five of Canada's award-winning legal blogs chosen at random* from forty-one recent Clawbie winners. In this way we hope to promote their work, with their permission, to as wide an audience as possible.

This week the randomly selected blogs are 1. First Reference   2. Small City Law Firm Tech   3. Kelly Santini LLP’s Employment Law Blog for the Suddenly Unemployed   4. ABlawg.ca    5. Entertainment & Media Law Signal

Given the constant flow of events in the world of information and the waves of change confronting librarians, I search for a unifying theme. Can I find something that manages to pull it all together for me? As a law professor I talk to my students about that moment of insight when all of the pieces fall into place, when what had previously been a jumble of unconnected information suddenly shifts into a discernible pattern. Even if the fine details of the final product are unclear, there will be a structure, the subject will make sense. Where is such a . . . [more]

One Sunday each month OnPoint Legal Research provides Slaw with an extended summary of, and counsel’s commentary on, an important case from the British Columbia, Alberta, or Ontario court of appeal.

BOSWORTH V. JUROCK, 2013 BCCA 4

1. CASE SUMMARY

Areas of Law: Class Actions; Real Estate Development; Condominiums

Description: Class actions by individual strata lot owners were permitted under the Class Proceedings Act, despite representative action provisions of the Strata Property Act.

Background: The Appellants were Oswald Jurock, David Barnes, Ralph Case, Standard Apartments Ltd., Proper Tee Investments Ltd., and Greenwich Holdings Ltd. The . . . [more]

Summaries of selected recent cases are provided each week to Slaw by Maritime Law Book. Every Sunday we present a precis of the latest summaries, a fuller version of which can be found on MLB-Slaw Selected Case Summaries at cases.slaw.ca.

This week’s summaries concern:
New and innovative drugs / Medical marihuana :

Takeda Canada Inc. v. Canada (Minister of Health) et al. 2013 FCA 13
Food and Drug Control – Drugs – New and innovative drugs – What constitute
The Minister of Health, through the Office of the Patented Medicines and Liaison, refused to list Takeda’s Canada Inc.’s . . . [more]

Slaw is proud to announce that we are collaborating with OnPoint Legal Research Law Corporation so that this Sunday, and one Sunday a month hereafter, we can present their elaborate summary of an important case from the British Columbia, Alberta, or Ontario court of appeal.

OnPoint Legal Research is an online firm that has been offering legal research, analysis and drafting services to Canadian lawyers for more than thirteen years. You can learn more about the firm on their About Us page.

The summaries we will be presenting draw from OnPoint’s newsletters and comprise a full description of the . . . [more]

It’s safe to say that most Slaw readers are familiar with the concept of Stare Decisis in the common law tradition. From the Latin, “to stand by things decided”, the concept of a legal system in which lower courts are bound by the determination of higher courts concerning questions of law leaves little room for the lower courts of a single jurisdiction to influence appreciation of the law across the country.

As Master in Chambers Funduk famously observed in a 1989 ruling:

[51] Any legal system which has a judicial appeals process inherently creates a pecking order . . . [more]

A good lawyer, with knowledge of how and when to use the right tools, has a competitive advantage. Those tools might be varied, and are not limited to IT.

Jordan Furlong’s article “The Law of the Pencil – Innovation and Client Service in the New Millennium”, mentions the urban myth of NASA spending millions on a “space pen”, while the Soviets used a pencil. Law firms (and others) have also been known to blow millions on IT that could have been spent more wisely.

The humble pencil might be far superior to alternatives in certain circumstances, ie to . . . [more]

Okay, this one’s a little odd.

It consists, essentially, of two links to YouTube videos. Together these offer you a seven-hour train ride from Bergen to Oslo, as seen from a camera installed on the front of the locomotive. That’s it.

Only in Norway, you say. Well, you may be right. That country’s been in the blogs recently as the source of some pretty peculiar film and television. The one that’s caught commentators‘ (caustic) imaginations the most is the 12-hour TV show of logs burning to ash in a fireplace.

This train ride is somewhat more lively, I assure . . . [more]

On February 11, 2013, an adjudicator of the Alberta Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner decided that Alberta's Legal Aid Society is subject to the Personal Information Protection Act (PIPA), with consequences for all non-profit organizations that conduct activities with a commercial character.

David and I both touched on Google Glass in April of last year, the company’s new project to push computing technology into our eyewear. A new video, released yesterday, offers some additional insight into what it might be like to wear such a product. [embedded below]

These video clips are obviously targeting the capture of lifestyle moments, but with respect to lawyers, I’ve been wondering if there could be any value in the courtroom? In particular, whether enhanced “team communication” could be had when larger teams are involved. We sometimes see the second chair role using laptops, exchanging email, . . . [more]

In Custodia Legis, the blog of the Law Library of Congress in Washington, has an interesting post on Canonical Rules on the Resignation of a Pontiff, and the Election of a New Pontiff (part 1 of 2 posted yesterday).

It is written by by Dante Figueroa, Senior Legal Information Analyst at the Law Library of Congress:

Since the last papal resignation was nearly 600 years ago, this month’s announcement took the world by surprise and resulted in many questions. I will address several of the most important juridical questions arising from Pope Benedict’s resignation, for which there are responses

. . . [more]