The first Friday of February is a tradition at Dalhousie University which I’ve mentioned previously here at Slaw. The first Friday in February is Munro Day, a Dalhousie holiday in honour of the benefactor who rescued the university from a precarious financial position in 1879. This time there is a short video to go along with the Munro Day link celebrating Dalhousie’s rich history. In the spirit of George Munro, last fall Seymour Schulich made a transformative donation to the Law School at Dalhousie University which has since been renamed the Schulich School of Law at Dalhousie University. . . . [more]

One of the great funny men of all time, in my opinion, was George Carlin — he’s famous for his Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television, the “hippie-dippie weatherman,” and many trenchant routines satirizing the powers that be.

Towards the end of his life he had a routine about being “a modern man, a man for the millennium.” It consisted of a lengthy string of clichés delivered at a machine-gun pace from memory without a slip, a true tour de force.

Here’s the video, followed by a transcript so that you, too, can practice telling the world who/what/how . . . [more]

An English court has refused an injunction against the publication of the story of an alleged affair between a well-known football player and a teammate’s girlfriend: Terry v. Persons Unknown [2010] EWHC 119 (QB).

English law has recently given a good deal of protection to the privacy of celebrities, so some people have wondered if that protection is being reduced by this decision. Out-law.com says No.

One of the reasons (among several) for refusing the injunction in this case was that the application appeared to aim at protecting the player’s commercial sponsorships, rather than in protecting his feelings . . . [more]

A Times-Colonist report reveals the outdated, inconsistently applied, and sometimes mis-applied access to court records policy in a number of BC courts. It seems BC is way behind the curve on this, as compared to the rest of Canada. Today’s article is only the first of a four-part series. The article includes a link to an interactive Googlemap.

Reaction has been swift:

Associate Chief Judge of the BC Provincial Court

BC Judges

And here is a Google News search that should follow the issue. . . . [more]

From the people who brought you Hovercards before Twitter — indeed, before they even had a name — now comes “Save as PDF.” We’ve added a small link below each post in the “Share:” section that invites you to download that post as a PDF file. Now you can collect all of your favourites in a format that lets you file them, search them, make them larger or smaller, and generally enjoy the heck out of them offline. And notice, we placed it before the “Print” button — because we like saving trees.

Hovercards? Well, in case you hadn’t noticed: . . . [more]

If we’re at all edgy here at Slaw, it’s likely to be at the lip of the technology cliff that we’re writing. But a small piece in today’s Globe and Mail sent me hareing off to the edge of the known world of rights. The article referred to the fact that Switzerland had recently changed its constitution to protect the dignity of plant life, which, if true, would take the already difficult business of rights one step beyond Lemmings’ Leap.

What’s put the Swiss Republic into the news this time is an upcoming popular referendum (March 7) on whether domesticated . . . [more]

The Tucson Citizen has published what they call a ‘wordless editorial’, which I’ll presume to be commentary on the US Supreme Court’s recent decision on corporate political spending.

The single image offered is replicated below:

. . . [more]

There is an excellent article over at the Stream comparing the electronic sources of the English Reports. Just like Drew Jackson, I love it when someone asks me for a case I know is one of the weird citations that are incorporated into the E.R.’s. I always feel like a superstar, which helps balance the “I have no idea what I’m doing” moments.

We have talked about the HeinOnline and CommonLII sources of this data on Slaw.

The usefulness of these, and other digitized collections of aging print, hit home for me this week. I was looking for some old . . . [more]

As everyone will doubtless know, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled against permitting the District Court for the Northern District of California to broadcast on YouTube the challenge to California’s Proposition 8, as had been originally planned. That doesn’t mean that the screen’s gone blank, though. Cunningly, MarriageTrial.com is filming a re-enactment using transcripts from the actual trial (transcripts you can download so you can sing along!).

The MarriageTrial.com site currently offers you Episode 1 in 3 Chapters, essentially giving the opening statements of the various parties. As well there are a couple of summaries to bring . . . [more]

For the record, I don’t intend to buy one. At least, not for a few more years and not until the inevitable upgrades, improvements, fixes, and content distribution changes have run their course. But well before the iPad 3.o arrives, the original version will have had a serious impact on the computer industry, on the production and distribution of content, and yes, on the legal profession.

I won’t recap everything that’s been said about the iPad in the mainstream and legal communities — Reid Trautz and The Wired GC have two solid takes — but it’s worth noting that the . . . [more]

Legal publishers pairing themselves with applications that embed their subscription-based resources isn’t new. West KM does it, as does LN’s Quickfind. Now out of LTNY we hear about the latest tool addition, Lexis for Microsoft.

Do these tools add valuable functionality for firms? Even if we hesitate on a few of them, the overall answer is probably ‘yes’. But an issue that seems rarely talked about is that of usage rates – the measure by which most flat fee pricing for online database services is based. The end effect of many of these tools is that they drive . . . [more]

I just read Ted Tjaden’s post about Ontario courts assuming jurisdiction over out-of-province defendants.

Professor Janet Walker, of Osgoode Hall Law School, is preparing a report on this issue. She undertook the project as the inaugural OHLS LCO Scholar in Residence at the Law Commission of Ontario. This is not officially an LCO project (it was not approved as a project and its recommendations will not be subject to approval by the LCO’s Board of Governors), rather the LCO has supported the project by posting on our website, facilitating consultation, translation into French and will issue the final report. . . . [more]