Like Darryl Mountain in today’s Slaw.ca column, I have been thinking about law school lately. Or rather, I have been reminded about past thoughts on this topic. Whether law school should be changed or not is a current hot topic in the U.S. In addition to the New York Times article that Darryl points to, The National Law Journal has also just published the article What is Law School For, Anyway? by Karen Sloan about law schools not keeping up with what is needed in the profession.

One thing I believe the U.S. law school system has gotten right, however, . . . [more]

My fellow slaw columnist Jordan Furlong has written a number of articles over the past few years about the shortcomings of legal education (the latest of which is here). The New York Times has also added to the debate with a recent article entitled “What They Don’t teach Law Students: Lawyering”. One of the themes floating around has been to partially return law school to its roots as a vocational school.

I had the occasion to think about some of these ideas recently when a move to Australia led me to requalify as a lawyer in a different system. . . . [more]

I just returned from the 2012 Liberal Biennial conference in Ottawa, where a number of policy resolutions were passed. One which has received considerable attention is Priority Policy Resolution 117, which passed with 77% of the vote. The text of the resolution reads:

Justice
117. Legalize and Regulate Marijuana
WHEREAS, despite almost a century of prohibition, millions of Canadians today regularly consume marijuana and other cannabis products;
WHEREAS the failed prohibition of marijuana has exhausted countless billions of dollars spent on ineffective or incomplete enforcement and has resulted in unnecessarily dangerous and expensive congestion in our judicial system;
WHEREAS

. . . [more]

JSTOR—Journal Storage, I think—keeps a good portion of English language scholarship, a thousand journals and more, in digital form to serve up to subscribers. Some have felt that corralling scholarship so assiduously behind a paywall is wrong, wrong as antithetical to the fundamental principle of disinterested scholarly inquiry, and wrong as creating a barrier to knowledge that the relatively poorer members of society can’t afford to cross. See, for example, this talk by Larry Lessig at CERN, and the politically motivated “hacking” of JSTOR by Aaron Swartz talked about here on Slaw.

But JSTOR, a non-profit venture aimed at . . . [more]

 

This is a small part of a stretch of ocean that’s being talked about a lot lately in connection with the Northern Gateway pipeline and the possibility of using Prince Rupert as an alternative western terminus. But this isn’t a fillip about pipelines, oil, or even oceans. It’s about those little coloured shapes that look like old-fashioned pen nibs — and even more about a website that tracks them. Some thousands of them all around the globe.

MarineTraffic.com gets data about ships’ positions and movement from AIS (automatic identification system) transponders on board vessels via VHF signals, the kind . . . [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]

Many firms and lawyers alike still approach marketing as a task on a to-do list. Get carpets replaced, schedule articling student interviews, get a marketing speaker for the associates…

Marketing is not any singular item. It’s not holiday cards, a website, client lunches, or even a marketing speaker. None of these activities could stand alone and generate much of anything worthwhile unless your firm is the only gig in town. For the same reason that when you meet someone for the first time, it’s unlikely they will immediately send you work. You need to develop a relationship and find multiple . . . [more]

In Elusive Destiny: The Political Vocation of John Napier Turner, Carleton University historian Paul Litt has written a sympathetic and interesting account of one of Canada’s most gifted political figures. Litt leaves the reader wondering what Canadians missed out on by not having John Turner as Prime Minister for an extended time. Those interested can delve into this book.

Turner did serve as Justice Minister for almost four years (July 1968 – January 1972). He was an activist, reformist and progressive Justice Minister but he also served as Attorney General during the invocation of the War Measures Act during . . . [more]

The 2011 Website Award of the International Association of Law Libraries (IALL) went to the Kenya Law Reports.

The winner was announced in December at an IALL meeting in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

The Award seeks to recognise and promote free legal information websites that are authoritative, comprehensive, up-to-date, useful, and user-friendly.

Other nominees in 2011 included:

• Europeana
• Global Legal Information Network
• HuriSearch
• International Comparative Legal Guide Series
• Legifrance
• openDOAR
• RIS – Bundeskanzleramt Rechtsinformationssystem
• THOMAS
• War Crimes Research Office, Jurisprudence Collections
• WebLaw

A list of winners from previous years can be found on the IALL website. . . . [more]

It’s been a great long time since I claimed any expertise in family law, but the fuss over today’s Globe and Mail front page headline (see the story here) concerning the availability of divorce to foreign same-sex couples married here in Canada has tempted me to put a toe in the waters again, just to check with Slaw readers that my understanding is correct or off base.

And that understanding is the following:

The law of marriage is governed by two sets of rules, one dealing with formal validity and the other with essential validity, or capacity to marry. Just . . . [more]

Site news for those who read Slaw only via RSS or email

1. Comment Watch:

In the last week there were 32 comments. You might be particularly interested in these:

• the discussion about using GPS tracking on company vehicles following the post by Yosie Saint-Cyr, “Employer Monitoring Employees With GPS Tracking”
• the lengthy exchange—15 comments extending into the prior week—on Shaunna Mireau’s post, “Queen’s Counsel Appointments.”

You can subscribe to the comments on Slaw either as a separate matter (RSS, email) or as part of a subscription combining posts and comments (RSS, email). . . . [more]

On December 6, 2011, the Internet Child Pornography Reporting Regulations were registered in the Canada Gazette and came into force. The goal of the regulations is to establish a framework necessary to implement the mechanics for the designated organizations receiving reports and service providers who report to discharge their duties under the Act.