by Ashley Major

Ashley Major is a Canadian student completing an internship at Independent Academic Research Studies in London, England. Upon the completion of this internship, she will graduate with a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Human Justice from the University of Regina. She plans to attend law school in the future, specializing in human rights law. Her main focus is on addressing human rights violations against women, particularly sex trafficking.

In Canada, there have been discussions as to whether or not we live in a “rape culture”. Although difficult to define, this term refers to a society in which . . . [more]

This is a post in a series appearing each Friday, setting out some articles, videos, podcasts and the like that contributors at Slaw are enjoying and that you might find interesting. The articles tend to be longer than blog posts and shorter than books, just right for that stolen half hour on the weekend. It’s also likely that most of them won’t be about law — just right for etc.

Please let us have your recommendations for what we and our readers might like.

. . . [more]

You may have heard about helicopter parenting – the overprotective parent who hovers over their child on the playground, maybe takes them to university, stays in the dorm for a few weeks, maybe even to law school… Well Justice McGee of the Ontario Superior Court of Justice will have none of this! In 2011, she issued an ex parte order preventing a party’s mother from representing him in a family law case. Mom had represented son in his Nova Scotia divorce proceeding. The divorce proceedings were acrimonious and the ill-feelings between Mom and her former daughter-in-law are evident in the . . . [more]

I just learned of the existence of a bulletin called Connected, which is published by two US-based organizations, the National Center for State Courts and the Conference of Court Public Information Officers.

According to the inaugural April 2011 issue:

“This newsletter will provide news, information and resources on topics such as how courts are using new media, the impact of new media on court proceedings, ethical implications of judges and court staff using new media, and court policy issues relating to new media.”

The focus is American but there is occasionally material about non-US matters, as in . . . [more]

http://www.charterproject.ca/

WHY SHOULD I CARE ABOUT THE 30TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE CANADIAN CHARTER OF RIGHTS AND FREEDOMS?

LOVE IT, HATE IT, OR JUST DON’T KNOW WHAT YOU THINK, IT’S TIME TO JOIN THE DISCUSSION!

As millions today around the world are protesting for basic freedoms, on April 17, 2012, Canadians will mark 30 years with the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, a document which seeks to guarantee fundamental human rights, from speech, to religion, to association.

At the University of Windsor, Faculty of Law, the Class of 2012 knew that their graduation coincided with the Charter’s 30th anniversary and decided . . . [more]

Lacking The Right Stuff, Sylvio Langevin finds his Galaxy Quest over just as he launched his Mission to Mars. With the prospect of A New Hope subject to leave of the Men (and women) in Black, perhaps he should seek Serenity, abandon his quest and make The Voyage Home.

In a Langevin (Re), a decision released last week but published on CanLII just yesterday, the Quebec Superior Court declared Langevin a “quarrelsome litigant” and barred him from bringing any further action without leave.

That order alone, though infrequently issued and a factually and legally . . . [more]

AALL Spectrum was kind enough to publish in their March 2012 edition my article called “Legal Project Management for Law Librarians” (PDF, 4 pages).

Legal project management (LPM) has already been a popular topic on SLAW for some time now (click here for past stories).

Although the foregoing article is a shortened version of my longer paper from last year entitled “Project Management in Law Firms: A New Role for Librarians?” available on my website, in the 10 months or so between articles I have seen a steady and growing interest in LPM in Canadian . . . [more]

The law faculty at l’Université de Montréal (UdM) has obtained accreditation (with conditions) from the Council of the Federation of Law Societies of Canada (FLSC) to implement their new national common law program and degree of Juris Doctor (J.D.).

In 2011 the Education Advisory Board released a report, Redefining the Academic Library: Managing the Migration to Digital Information Services, which looked at trends in academic libraries and the direction in which they were going. Although I work in a private law library while the report deals with academic libraries, I found the report very interesting; a number of challenges that it identifies are also faced by private law libraries.

The usual suspects are here: rising journal costs, the challenge of being a library in the age of Google and Amazon, and trying to do more with less. The . . . [more]