Canada’s online legal magazine.

Archive for January, 2020

The Power of a Smile

One smile is all it takes to improve your mood, energy, and overall health.

One smile is all it takes to help someone have a better day.

One smile is all it takes to make a difference in this world.

One smile can make a powerful impact that ripples past our immediate surroundings.

In 2019, Eliud Kipchoge created a new world record and succeeded in becoming the first person ever to run a marathon (26.2 miles or 42.2 kilometers) in less than two hours. He tackled and prevailed against a challenge which not long ago, seemed unattainable. Watching Eliud Kipchoge . . . [more]

Posted in: Practice of Law

Friday Jobs Roundup

Each Friday, we share the latest job listings from Slaw Jobs, which features employment opportunities from across the country. Find out more about these positions by following the links below, or learn how you can use Slaw Jobs to gain valuable exposure for your job ads, while supporting the great Canadian legal commentary at Slaw.ca.

Current postings on Slaw Jobs (newest first):

. . . [more]
Posted in: Friday Jobs Roundup

Introducing CanLII’s Latest Research Tools: Decision Highlights and a Powerful New Noteup ✨

We are very excited – and this is a word we don’t use lightly here at CanLII – to present two improvements to the search experience on CanLII.org.

Legal research generally involves (1) understanding what a case is about, and (2) analysing how a case had been considered in subsequent cases.

To help out, we’ve come up with a few features for conducting efficient legal research.

1) Decision highlights and paragraph-level note-ups: A faster way to understand what a case is about.

Decisions are getting longer, at least according to some people (ahem), and this can make it more . . . [more]

Posted in: Legal Information: Publishing

Federal Accessible Transportation Regulation

The federal Accessible Transportation for Persons with Disabilities Regulations (ATPDR) was registered under the federal Accessible Canada Act (ACA) on June 25, 2019. Most provisions of the ATPDR will come into force on June 25, 2020, while other more complex requirements (i.e., self-serve kiosks) will be phased in over three years (June 25, 2020, June 25, 2021 and June 25, 2022). This is the only accessibility standard currently registered under the ACA. . . . [more]

Posted in: Miscellaneous, Substantive Law, Substantive Law: Legislation

Thursday Thinkpiece: Loss & Damage From Climate Change–A Maturing Concept in Climate Law?

Periodically on Thursdays, we present a significant excerpt, usually from a recently published book or journal article. In every case the proper permissions have been obtained. If you are a publisher who would like to participate in this feature, please let us know via the site’s contact form.

Loss & Damage from Climate Change: A Maturing Concept in Climate Law?
Forthcoming in a special issue of Climate Policy: Loss and Damage after the Paris Agreement

Dr. Meinhard Doelle, Professor of Law at Schulich School of Law, Dalhousie University; Marine & Environmental Law Institute, Dalhousie University
Sara L Seck, . . . [more]

Posted in: Thursday Thinkpiece

Thanks for All the Fish

When the late Simon Fodden (RIP) asked me to write a column for Slaw, “Canada’s online legal magazine,” I welcomed the opportunity. I could write for a Canadian and global legal audience about foreign, comparative, and international law (FCIL) information resources and about FCIL librarianship as a career. I could help fill in an information gap for this very special law librarian career path. I joined Slaw in 2010, its fifth year in existence, as a “Legal Information” columnist. My first column was on “The State of Digitization of United Nations Documents” (June 29, 2010), wherein I . . . [more]

Posted in: Legal Information

Model Protective Order for Federal Court

The Federal Court is trying to clarify the scope and typical terms of confidentiality and protective orders for use in the court. Keeping confidential information can be a key consideration in intellectual property proceedings where the adverse party is often a direct competitor and the subject matter of the dispute touches on trade secrets and business plans.

Since my previous column on this subject (see Protecting Your Confidential Intellectual Property Information in Court, May 2017), a split between various Prothonotaries and Judges led to significant uncertainty as to the preferred options for keeping information confidential in court proceedings.

In . . . [more]

Posted in: Intellectual Property

Book Review: Enforcing Exclusion: Precarious Migrants and the Law in Canada

Several times each month, we are pleased to republish a recent book review from the Canadian Law Library Review (CLLR). CLLR is the official journal of the Canadian Association of Law Libraries (CALL/ACBD), and its reviews cover both practice-oriented and academic publications related to the law.

Enforcing Exclusion: Precarious Migrants and the Law in Canada. By Sarah Grayce Marsden. Vancouver: UBC Press, 2018. 237 p. Includes bibliographic references and index. ISBN 978-0-7748-3774-3 (softcover) $32.95.

Reviewed by Andrea Black
Dentons Canada LLP, Montreal
In CLLR 44:4

Enforcing Exclusion should be on every immigration lawyer’s bookshelf. It is . . . [more]

Posted in: Book Reviews

The Decade in Legal Education (2010-2019)

The end of a year is a time to reflect upon the previous 12 months. The end of 2019 also provides the opportunity to reflect on the past decade.

Is it an exaggeration to say that the past decade has seen more changes in legal education in Canada than at any point in the past half-century? Since the opening of Queen’s, Western, and Ottawa in the 1950s? Or perhaps since the transfer of Osgoode Hall to York University by the Law Society of Upper Canada in 1965?

The decade that ended saw the opening of two new law schools (Thompson . . . [more]

Posted in: Legal Education

Wednesday: What’s Hot on CanLII

Each Wednesday we tell you which three English-language cases and which French-language case have been the most viewed* on CanLII and we give you a small sense of what the cases are about.

For this last week:

1. Tremear v. Park Town Motor Hotels Ltd.1982 CanLII 2683 (SK QB)

[19] To constitute a defence, there must have been an express or implied understanding between the parties whereby the plaintiff gave up her right of action for negligence. The evidence here does not support any such understanding or agreement. There is nothing to warrant a finding that the plaintiff . . . [more]

Posted in: Wednesday: What's Hot on CanLII

The Wondrous World of Creating Constitutional Law

Senator Mike Duffy is suing the Senate for the pay he lost when he was suspended from the Senate. His lawsuit raises the constitutional issue of parliamentary immunity, on the basis of which Justice Sally Gomery of the Ontario Superior Court dismissed his claim. Duffy’s appeal is based on the loss of Senate immunity if it has engaged in wrongdoing, as the Senate did, he says, in taking its direction from the executive (Prime Minister Stephen Harper). (For this story, see The National Post).

For no particular reason whatsoever, this case made me think about how so much of . . . [more]

Posted in: Miscellaneous

As the Law Is Blind to Research’s Intellectual Property Distinctions

This is the third in a series of blogs based on excerpts from an early and ongoing draft of a book (here for comment) in which I develop a case for amending copyright in the United States so that it is once again serving research and scholarship. The book’s working title is Copyright’s Constitutional Violation: When the Law Fails to “Promote the Progress of Science” (While Promoting Practically Everything Else). What follows is a key piece of the argument for reform. For now that there is an agreement that open access serves science best (as per my last . . . [more]

Posted in: Legal Publishing