The Supreme Court of Canada hasn’t has much of a chance to look closely at the legalities and constitutionality of post-September 11, 2001 legislation and systems to deal with terrorist threats. Canada’s top court is looking at the constitutional challenge to the “security certificate” process over the next three daysFor background see CTV’s site , Radio-Canada and the CBC’s backgrounder.

The legal background of the cases have been relatively little disclosed. Adil Charkaoui’s legal team has posted his factum, and the Harkat team have done the same. Among the intervenors, see the BC Civil Liberties Association factum . . . [more]

For some years now the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (or ABC, also known as Auntie), Australia’s national public broadcaster (not to be confused with its US namesake) has broadcast a weekly radio programme, the Law Report, dedicated to topical legal issues. Transcripts of programmes from 1999 on, and more latterly audio files as well, can be downloaded. Its an excellent way to stay on top of Australian legal issues of the moment. The last programme , today’s (June 13th) covers the ongoing Australian Wheat Board inquiry (into allegations of bribery etc) and a conversation with the South African Corrections Minister. . . . [more]

Library Boy, aka Michel-Adrien Sheppard, and Law Librarian at the Supreme Court of Canada, has posted his thoughts on the lack of French Canadian law bloggers.

Responding to an article (pg. 14) in the most recent edition of the National, Michel-Adrien suggests that the problem may have more to do with the fact that francophones have an easier time building profile with traditional media like TV & radio. Who needs a blog when the most popular forms of media are so accessible?

From the post:

“In Quebec, there is a tight little media world and any lawyer

Nice piece in the American Lawyer identifying the most useful and stimulating blogs coming aout of legal academia.

The Law Professor as Public Intellectual

Law professors who blog are “changing the legal landscape,” says Paul Caron, a University of Cincinnati Law School professor who presides over lawprofessorblogs.com. Although the Internet offers academics unprecedented opportunities for instant discourse with their peers (and for commenting on subjects outside the law), Caron doesn’t expect blogs to replace traditional scholarship. “If you are too lazy to be a good scholar,” he says, “you’re probably too lazy to be a good blogger.” Herewith, a sampling

The papers of two of the presenters at the recent CARL annual meeting in Ottawa are available from their public website:

Lynne Brindley, “The international dimensions of digital science and scholarship”. Lynne is the CEO of the British Library and the article is a description of the projects underway in the British Library in serving the international and scholarly communities.

The second paper was given by Peter Nicholson, President of t he Council of Canadian Academies, entitled “The Changing Nature of Intellectual Authority“.

The premise of the paper is that people today are much less likely to trust . . . [more]

Primary Research Group Has Published Law Library Benchmarks

Stumbled on a useful study which presents data from a survey of 84 law libraries. The results are interesting:

 Close to half of the libraries in the sample have decreased the size of the library within the past five years, and more than half of the law firm libraries have done so. Both small and large libraries have tended to decrease their size.
 More than 70% of the law libraries in the sample increased their budgets in 2005 and only a shade more than 3% decreased their budgets.
 Sixty . . . [more]

I’m blogging live from the Ark Conference on Integrating Information and KM Architectures in the Legal Profession where fellow Slawers, Connie Crosby and Joel Alleyne are on the deck to speak. Hadn’t realized that Joel is also moonlighting as the Practitioner in Residence at the Knowledge Media Design Institute at the University of Toronto.

More as I put a summary together. Keep watching this place.

Joel stressed the importance of including law library staff as integral members of every practice group internal initiative, not merely in Knowledge management but also marketing. He had provocative slides which he promised to make . . . [more]

Paul Bausch has created an improved Amazon RSS feed generator using Amazon’s API. This is a very sophisticated tool that can let you get quite detailed information about books (or anything that Amazon sells) that are about to be, or have just been, released. You can search by keyword or use Amazon’s “power search” syntax to structure the feed. Go here to read Bausch’s explanation about the generator and comments that mention a couple of bugs. . . . [more]

I promised Jane Griesdorf that I would post on legal writing sites and then became too busy.

The Advocates Society each year runs a two day workshop on Factum Writing at Osgoode’s Professional Development Facility, which has been the occasion for some extremely helpful presentations on effective written advocacy – Ontario Court of Appeal Justice John Laskin’s piece being typical.

But for those who can’t attend, where to go?

Courtesy of David Stratas, here is a wonderful feature that Bryan Garner the editor of Black’s Law Dictionary has assembled on his LawProse website.

It’s a great set of . . . [more]

Those of us who have ever been part of a group trying to design a law firm website should check out a wonderful new law firm website launched to coincide with a book by the great law firm blogger Jeremy Blachman – not a familiar name? Well he does have a straight blog, but you’ll likely know him better as the author of the satirical Anonymous Lawyer, the popular blog that mocks large-law firm life.

I particularly liked the Blog’s take on The Meaning of Life, and the wonderful law firm biographies, which hit too close to the . . . [more]

Ken Thomson died this morning. He was 82. We remember Thomson as not only owner of the Globe and Mail, but also chairman of the Board of The Thomson Corporation which owns Carswell and West among other services that have been a significant part of our working lives. He was Canada’s wealthiest man, and one of the richest in the world.

Excerpt from the The Thomson Corporation website:

Kenneth R. Thomson, former Chairman of the Board of The Thomson Corporation, and its controlling shareholder, died this morning at the age of 82 (DOB September 1, 1923).

Thomson became

Google Browser Sync for Firefox is an extension that continuously synchronizes your browser settings – including bookmarks, history, persistent cookies, and saved passwords – across your computers. It also allows you to restore open tabs and windows across different machines and browser sessions.

From Google Labs for those of you with two computers and Firefox on both. For more info see the FAQ. . . . [more]