Just a quick note to say the 2008 Canadian Law Blog Awards are now live at Clawbies.ca. Congratulations to the winners, and also to those who took part in the new nomination process. A complete roundup of the nominations is listed over at the Vancouver Law Librarian Blog, and I would encourage everyone to surf through those peer-to-peer recommendations.

Similar to last year, everyone will have a chance to blog an ‘acceptance speech’ and I will relay those posts on the Stem Blog during the second week of January.

Happy New Year!
Steve . . . [more]

Lake Superior State University in Michigan has just published its 2009 List of Banished Words, aka the “34th annual List of Words to Be Banished from the Queen’s English for Mis-use, Over-use and General Uselessness”.

The list started in 1976 and is based on submissions by the general public.

Among this year’s list are:

• “green” anything
• carbon footprint and carbon offset
• maverick
• bailout
• Wall Street vs. Main Street (I suppose the Canadian equivalent “Bay Street vs. Main Street” would also qualify)
• iconic
• game changer
• it’s that time of the year again (for making lists?)

The previous lists are archived . . . [more]

♬When will my reflections show
Who I am inside?♬

Written by Matthew Wilder and David Zippel, recorded by Christina Aguilera.

We are at an important transition point – when one year ends and a fresh new one is about to begin. The point is an important legal, celestial and financial one – while the world isn’t much different following the crossing of the line from one year to the next, that crossing signifies the closing of a circle, the closing of financial books and the start of determining the passage of time for the consequences of events that . . . [more]

The open access movement in academic publishing continues to gather steam: two books are newly available free online.

Daniel J. Solove, Berkeley Law Prof, has released “The Future of Reputation, gossip, rumour and privacy on the internet.” Originally published in 2007 by Yale University Press, the book

…offers a fascinating account of how the Internet is transforming gossip, the way we shame others, and our ability to protect our own reputations. Focusing on blogs, Internet communities, cyber mobs, and other current trends, he shows that, ironically, the unconstrained flow of information on the Internet may impede opportunities for

The Law Commission of Ontario doesn’t have a very long period to look back — we effectively began our work in February 2008, having spent the previous four and a half months (that included the holiday break!) since our launch getting organized in one way or another — and we really don’t have that long to look forward (since despite the above, the Agreement that created the LCO began in January 2007 and expires in January 2012 and we are in that sense entering our third year). . . . [more]

According to JTA:

In what may be a first for any government the world over, the Consulate General of Israel in New York will be holding a public press conference about the war in Gaza via Twitter. On Tuesday, December 30 during the hours of 1-3 p.m. EST, David Saranga, Consul of Media and Public Affairs in New York, will answer questions written in by users of the popular Internet social messaging Web site.

To participate, create an account at Twitter.com and compose a message to user israelconsulate, including the keyword #AskIsrael in your tweets. For example:

December 30 update: OK, so this does seem like one of those topics only a confirmed law geek could love. But the Post (again) thinks the importance of the Court of Appeal’s decision to the general public is worth underlining in today’s editorial.

_____
The Ontario Court of Appeal, on December 24, released its long-awaited decision in the companion cases of Telezone v. Canada, G-Civil v. Canada, Fielding Chemical Technologies v. Canada, and McArthur v. Canada. Each of the four cases concerned a challenge to the jurisdiction of the Ontario Superior Court to . . . [more]

Caselaw databases are frequently described as being “comprehensive” collections of cases with the meaning of the word “comprehensive” left undefined. The exceptions, of course, are databases based on print series of law reports which are by definition “selective”.

Some but not all database providers do say that they have so many hundreds or so many thousands of judgments covering specific years or time periods. Some say nothing at all. A few provide further details of the number of decisions by court level but, in general, vagueness is the order of the day.

“Vagueness” is not an acceptable standard

Legal researchers . . . [more]

According to the CBC, thousands of homes and businesses in Ontario and Quebec lost power due to high winds yesterday. Many of those still do not have electricity back today, and according to CBC Newsworld reports, may not have power back until Wednesday as they work to get everyone back online. It appears to be a lot of suburban and rural areas affected. This means that some who have gone to a hometown for the holidays may not have Internet access, unless with a Blackberry, iPhone or similar device, and presuming they have a way to keep them charged . . . [more]

On my must-read list are some of the LLRX.com articles for this month. The authors have put together some great resources. Here’s the line-up:

Neurolaw and Criminal Justice
Ken Strutin’s article highlights selected recent publications, news
sources and other online materials concerning the applications of
cognitive research to criminal law as well as basic information on the
science and technology involved. — Published December 28, 2008

Deep Web Research 2009
Marcus P. Zillman’s guide includes links to: articles, papers, forums,
audios and videos, cross database articles, search services and search
tools, peer to peer, file sharing, grid/matrix search engines,
presentations, . . . [more]

The 2009 Harvey T. Strosberg Essay Prize competition was announced earlier this month:

Harvey T. Strosberg, Q.C., Editor-in-Chief of the Canadian Class Action Review, and Irwin Law Inc. are pleased to announce the sixth annual Harvey T. Strosberg Essay Prize competition. The prize of $10,000 is awarded to an outstanding student paper on Canadian class actions.

The competition is open to all Canadian students enrolled in an undergraduate, graduate, or professional program. The deadline for submissions is 2 March 2009.

Please see the Irwin Law web page for details. . . . [more]

This will be a brief post, since I’m on a dial-up connection from Nungambakkam in South India where it’s a balmy 30 degrees – and the word snow doesn’t appear to be in the vocabulary.

The ABA has just published The Little Red Book of Wine Law by Carol Robertson, which might just have been triggered by Slaw’s notes on the same subject and our more recent update.
The ABA President blurbs thus:

“Fans of law, golf and wine alike will enjoy these well-written and entertaining works. I give the Little Green Book to my golf hosts as thank-you