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, Supreme Advocacy Letter, to which you may subscribe. It’s a summary of all Appeals, Oral Judgments and Leaves to Appeal granted from May 23 – June 26, 2025 inclusive.

Appeals

CRIMINAL LAW: COURT OF APPEAL POWERS
R. v. Bouvette, 2023 BCCA 152; 2025 SCC 18 (40780)

An acquittal was entered herein pursuant to s. 686(2). Quoting Crown counsel at the hearing, “an acquittal is an acquittal is an . . . [more]

Every week we present the summary of a decision handed down by a Québec court provided to us by SOQUIJ and considered to be of interest to our readers throughout Canada. SOQUIJ is attached to the Québec Department of Justice and collects, analyzes, enriches, and disseminates legal information in Québec.

FISCALITÉ : Le jugement de la Cour supérieure ayant rejeté l’appel à l’encontre des décisions de la Cour du Québec qui avaient déclaré les appelants coupables d’avoir contrevenu à la Loi sur l’administration fiscale et à la Loi sur la taxe d’accise est maintenu; c’est aussi à bon droit que . . . [more]

To understand the benefits of competency-based learning, we must first understand what it is. Competency-based learning is like learning to ride a bike. The journey starts with a tricycle, where the rider first learns to pedal. Eventually, they graduate to a bicycle with training wheels. As confidence builds, the training wheels are raised and eventually removed. The novice rider wobbles and falls, scraping a knee. But they learn from each fall, getting back on the bike with increasing confidence and steadiness. Eventually, they can ride smoothly and consistently. Later, the rider may decide to try mountain biking, applying their prior . . . [more]

The number one issue facing scholarly publishing today is research integrity. The crisis is associated with paper mills selling authorships to fabricated papers; reviewer cabals colluding with special issue guest editors; predatory journals, sans reviewers and editors, acting as auto-publish clubs; and papers rife with image and data manipulation. In response, publishers and editors are scrambling to retract thousands of corrupted papers, close complicit journals, and cease special issues. The publish-or-perish culture, often backed by cash incentives (now banned in China), can be blamed, as can publishers pushing papers through to capture open access fees. It all reflects how, in . . . [more]

In a prior post for Slaw, I argued that law schools should make AI more central to the curriculum. We should teach how to use AI effectively rather than resist it or pretend it isn’t there. To do this, we need to take a different approach, which might entail permitting the use of AI on some assignments and exams.

In this post, I want to address a strong counter-argument: encouraging law students and young lawyers to use AI too much, too soon will prevent them from developing the skills they need to do their jobs effectively—or even to be any . . . [more]