This week the randomly selected blogs are 1. Michael Geist   2. ABlawg.ca   3. University of Alberta Faculty of Law Blog   4. Environmental Law and Litigation    5. Youth & Work

Google now lets you search a news archive that consists exclusively, it seems, of newspaper archives, digital or scanned, provided they aren’t held behind a paywall. This may have been available before now, but I’ve only become aware of it today. And I have to say that for anyone seeking to inquire into the last hundred years or so, this is a treasure trove. Google doesn’t say how many newspapers are in the database, but I count something like 120 beginning with “A” alone (among which is a plentiful supply of Canadian publications). For each publication, you’re told how many . . . [more]

This week's summaries concern: Expert evidence / Retroactive maintenance / Stay of proceedings:

On one Sunday each month we bring you a summary from Supreme Advocacy LLP of recent decisions at the Supreme Court of Canada. Supreme Advocacy LLP offers a weekly electronic newsletter, SupremeAdvocacyLett@r, to which you may subscribe.

Summary of all appeals and leaves to appeal granted (so you know what the S.C.C. will soon be dealing with). For leaves, both the date the S.C.C. granted leave and the date of the C.A. judgment below are added in, in case you want to track and check out the C.A. judgment. (Feb. 13 – Mar. 14, 2014 inclusive).

APPEALS

Criminal Law: . . . [more]

L'accusé savait qu'il était séropositif et il a sciemment tu ce fait au plaignant, avec lequel il a eu une relation sexuelle non protégée, contaminant ce dernier, qui, depuis, est devenu séropositif également; reconnu coupable d'agression sexuelle grave, il voit le verdict confirmé en appel.

Yesterday we concluded the Third Annual UCLA Cyber Crime Moot Court Competition in Los Angeles. This year the moot problem dealt with access of a public website through a scraper program to collect e-mail addresses for the purposes of illustrating security vulnerabilities.

The first issue in the case was roughly modelled after United States v. Auernheimer, 2012 WL 5389142 (D.N.J. 2012), which is expected to appear before the Third Circuit in the near future. In this case, a data breach at AT&T resulted in the theft of personal information of approximately 120,000 AT&T customers through the use of a . . . [more]

Last month saw the collapse of a foundational member of the Bitcoin community, Mt. Gox. A class action lawsuit, that will likely be one of many, has been filed in Illinois against former the bitcoin exchange industry leader, its parent companies, and Mark Karpeles, Mt. Gox’s sole director (Gregory Greene v Mt. Gox Incet al, U.S. District Court, Northern District of Illinois, No. 14-01437). The exchange has filed for bankruptcy protection in Japan and, subsequent to the institution of class action proceedings, in the United States as well.

Although the bankruptcy filing temporarily suspends the class action, . . . [more]

. . . which might have made an excellent Friday Fillip if I’d remembered in time. But here are a couple of things even so to brighten your Friday and bring the week full circle.

First up, a great series of columns on the elements of mathematics by Steven Strogatz from the pages of the New York Times back in 2010, making the bugbear quite cute and approachable. And one of those elements, of course, is Π, that mysterious fruit of circles. Strogatz explores an aspect of that in this column on infinity and calculus.

Then, if you’re intrigued, you . . . [more]

This topic was inspired by Lyonette Louis-Jacques’ post on Homebrewing Laws Worldwide. Shortly after reading her post, I found an article about a Wisconsin law in effect in the 1930’s that required restaurants to serve a small amount of butter and cheese at every meal. This law was probably meant to support dairy farmers recovering from the Great Depression and was only in effect for two years. Since I am a part-time Wisconsin Cheesehead, I set out to do some research on the law of cheese and cheese making. Prior research had confirmed that cheese and beer are . . . [more]

As lawyers, we are trained to be adversaries, but more and more we are also trained to work collaboratively. Litigation is expensive and time consuming. Alternative dispute resolution is almost always a preferred method of dealing with a dispute, and in that vein, we have all read the book “Getting to Yes” by Roger Fisher and William Ury. The book promises a:

proven strategy for coming to mutually acceptable agreements in every sort of conflict – whether it involves parents and children, neighbors, bosses and employees, customers or corporations, tenants or diplomats.

There is good reason this book is almost . . . [more]

I’ve used Wikipedia since its inception but only came across its portals the other day. Remember portals? They were like books — no, more like books of notes for books — in which the portaler structured a topic and linked out to webpages chosen to be relevant and interesting (“curated” we would have said last year). I suppose that they fell into disuse for a bunch of reasons, two of which would be Google and link rot: In a somewhat scary way, a Google search result is a kind of portal, especially when supplemented by a Knowledge Graph, itself . . . [more]

On the first day of class at University of Calgary Law School this week, one of the first things I wrote on the white board was one word: Why?

Of course, I got a number of eye-rolls from students.

But as the course has continued, “why” has become a common part of the class lexicon.

Can we “five why” this issue?

Why do law firms do what they do?

Why are they structured as they are?

Why did Heenan Blaikie disintegrate?

Why are partnerships difficult to govern?

Why can’t outsiders invest in law firms?

Why am I in law school? . . . [more]