A posting on this week’s Legal Blog Watch highlighted the announcement from Harvard Law School on the reform of its first year curriculum. The revisions, which are the most significant change to first year courses in over 100 years, mean that hours will cut from the core courses – contracts, torts, civil procedure, criminal law and property.

The new courses – “Legislation and Regulation”, “International/comparative courses” and “Problems and Theories” – certainly represent important areas of study for law students. The fact that legal research and writing are not mentioned specifically does not mean that these topics are not included . . . [more]

There was a brief posting on law.com today (Oct 10/06) on the integration of LawBase (matter management software) with Google Maps. The fact that this integration is called a “mashup” is what originally caught my attention. However, when I decided to do a little “research”, my focus changed. Mashups are apparently “hot technology” – I was therefore surprised that I couldn’t find any discussion of this functionality on the LawBase website. I then resorted to a google search to see what was available and of course found a web page with a “news release” on this development. Unfortunately, as far . . . [more]

[cross posted on the VLLB]

I’m very proud to announce that two of my Vancouver colleagues have jumped on the law library blogging circuit. Similar to Anh Huynh and Kay Samuels who have been helping out on Connie Crosby’s blog, two of our more ambitious VALL members, Emma Wood & Rob Golbeck, have started their own blogs!

Check out Emma’s Ballad in Plain E and Rob’s LibTech Life. For those reading along at home, make sure you grab a copy of Emma’s feed, and Rob’s feed. Both sites will be a part of my blog . . . [more]

A source one doesn’t see cited much these days is Ambrose Bierce’s The Devil’s Dictionarywhich is a wonderful source of ‘alternative’ definitions for a host of words and phrases. Bierce define’s “lawyer” for instance as “one skilled in circumvention of the law”. My favourite entry though is for “fairy” which includes the following note: “In the time of Henry III, of England, a law was made which prescribed the death penalty for “Kyllynge, wowndynge, or mamynge” a fairy, and it was universally respected.” From time to time I have looked for this law, although, alas I have concluded that . . . [more]

I’ve just come across a site that I’m pretty sure we haven’t talked about on Slaw before. It’s Global Courts, and it organizes links to the decisions of supreme courts (and some courts of appeal) around the world. It’s a project of a Norwegian judge, and also features brief discussions of electronic filing and electronic courtrooms.

There’s a good deal of overlap with WordLII and CommonLII — I haven’t checked exactly how much — but even so, it might be a handy shortcut to top court decisions, and in at least some cases has links that the Information Institutes . . . [more]

Take a look at this recent post from 3L Epiphany wondering why no-one in the blogosphere has bothered to assemble a commentary on Hudson v. MichiganInterestingly Slaw had noticed the case..

Suppose there were a blog devoted exclusively to the case of Hudson v. Michigan (the “Blog”). This blog would become the online authority about the case and its ramifications. Every time a lower court relies on or distinguishes Hudson, the Blog could name and analyze the new decision (and link to it if it’s online). Lawyers and law professors could analyze Hudson and its

Ten days ago, His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama came to the Buffalo Law School to speak about Law, Buddhism, and Social Change.

This was the first time that the Dalai Lama has ever visited a law school and indeed the first time he has addressed legal themes. A video of his remarks is availableHis Holiness’ remarks start around 28 minutes into the video.

Buffalo has pioneered scholarship into how Buddhist thought intersects with and informs the law. Professor Rebecca French is teaching in Buffalo this term, the first course on Buddhist law that has ever been taught in . . . [more]

A recent article on Lorraine Neidecker’s correspondence with Louis Zukofsky sent me back to The Objectivist Anthology, and one of the most curious uses ever made of the West Reporter SeriesFor younger members of Slaw and those reliant on most Canadian law libraries these were a vast set of legal cases from the United States that provided the wall coverings for many a lawyer’s office and led to the extraordinary legal publishing empire of the West Publishing Company..

The poet Charles Reznikoff spent part of his career as a contributor to the Corpus Juris and became fascinated with . . . [more]

Columbia law prof (and McGill B.Sc. grad) Timothy Wu has put all of Judge Richard Posner‘s 2000 plus opinions into an online database that’s searchable at Project Posner. Why, you might ask. Putting costly Westlaw aside, surely there are plenty of other sources from which an interested American might get the Posner mot if wanted.

Bizarrely, it just ain’t so.

Cornell’s Legal Information Institute — the mother-ship LII — sends a seeker straight to court, not via Go and not getting any bucks at all, as it happens. The LII link to the opinions of the 7th Circuit . . . [more]

It’s Thanksgiving Day, and most Slawyers will be taking it easy like me, I hope. I’d like to thank you all, contributers and readers (I never say “lurkers”), for making Slaw something I really enjoy being part of.

And because this is a blog about law and IT, much of the time at least, I offer you an online list, courtesy of the federal government, dealing with the “Proclamation and Observance of General Thanksgiving Days and reasons therefore,” starting back in 1799 in Lower Canada (“In signal victory over our enemy and for the manifold and inestimable blessings . . . [more]

After a week of writing and reading thousands of words, a few pics wouldn’t go amiss, right? I can’t be sure I’ll get the number right, if it’s 1:1000, but I can come pretty close by tripping through various “photo of the day” offerings, which, if you saw them all each day would be… um… 7 x 1 x n, I think.

These are just thumbnails of today’s pics, but if you click on them, you’ll find the originals, and the site to visit each day to get them.

And for a treat, our own Globe and Mail’s “day in . . . [more]

In looking further at what Google is up to at the Frankfurt Book Fair this week, I stumbled on its own “Top 10 List” derived from the Google Book Search. The list – based on searches done between September 17 and 23rd – is somewhat eclectic (even bizarre) and bares scant resemblance to other book lists like Amazon’s best sellers. or the New York Times Bestseller List. I confess that I have read none of them though we do own one (in a different edition).

So Google’s Top 10 Books are . . . [more]