In mid-June Irwin Law held a book launch to celebrate the publication of The Lunatic and the Lords by Hon. Richard Schneider. Justice Schneider, as some readers will be aware, presides over the mental health court at Old City Hall in Toronto. His book is an account of the 1843 trial of Daniel M’Naughten for the murder of Edward Drummond, secretary to Prime Minister Sir Robert Peel. The verdict of not guilty by reason of insanity was so controversial that Queen Victoria ordered the House of Lords to review the verdict. The result of this review was the ‘M’Naughten Rules’ . . . [more]

Richard Susskind has been far and away the most interesting speaker I’ve heard this year. He’s been travelling around the world delivering his message of coming change for the legal profession. He spoke at a recent CLEBC course and at the BC Court of Appeal 100th anniversary course.

For those of you who haven’t yet had the Susskind experience, he predicts that the legal profession is undergoing profound changes as corporate clients are under increasing pressure to cut costs, and as private clients cannot afford the bespoke services provided by lawyers. He anticipates that over the next ten years, the . . . [more]

On June 2^nd, 2010, the Canadian federal government introduced a new copyright bill intended to “modernize Canadian Copyright law,” as Tony Clement, Minister of Industry put it in the press release. I want to join the healthy welter of blogging around this latest attempt to “modernize” our act. Now before you read any further, let me say that the one to read in these matters is Michael Geist, especially as he is all over the most draconian aspect of this new bill, namely how the digital lock provisions trump all other rights.

For my part, I want . . . [more]

Maritime Law Book is proud to have been part of the development of the only provincial bilingual law reporter in Canada. Namely, the New Brunswick Reports (2d).

Here is how that development took place. 

New Brunswick has a population of approx. 750,000. And approx. 35% of New Brunswickers speak French as a first language.

In 1969 New Brunswick enacted its first Official Languages Act, making it Canada’s first and only officially bilingual province.

In 1969 the province’s statutes, regulations, by-laws, etc., were in English only. In the courts, pleadings and trials, both civil and criminal, were in English only; in . . . [more]

Publishing trends are not working in favour of the major legal publishers and their recent financial performance confirms this to be the case – revenue is down and staff cuts and outsourcing have replaced publishing as the primary means of maintaining profit margins.

The end of growth

It is a fact that legal and regulatory information is no longer seen as an area of growth and expansion for the multinationals. All three major legal publishers have reported lower publishing revenues while still holding out the prospect of a return to growth in future years. Is it a realistic expectation? Do . . . [more]

[An Unhappy Fisherman’s Exhibit. Picture from a Cour du Québec’s judgment illustrating that the roof bought by the plaintiff was too low for comfortable fishing. Source : 2003 CanLII 42894 (QC C.Q.) (juge Raoul P. Barbe) at para. 8.]

Earlier this year, SCC’s judges cited a CTV news video clip in Canada (Prime Minister) v. Khadr, 2010 SCC 3, (at para. 7.). In that case, the government policy — its refusal to request M. Khadr’s repatriation — was established through a reference to a press conference given by the Prime Minister and available in CTV’s archives (see at . . . [more]

This past March, I was fortunate to get some face time with one of the senior directors for Thomson Reuters’ new Print and Advanced Media division to talk about business. Among the many topics to be discussed was that particularly irksome one, the future of print. When we kicked off our conversation, the director acknowledged that she had had some feelings of trepidation when she signed on to help run a division that seemingly—excuse the pun—has a limited shelf life.

I understood where she was coming from, particularly since I’d just seen Thomson Reuters’ 2009 financial report released the . . . [more]

When a legally facilitated monopoly over the distribution of a certain economic good is judged to be operating against the interests of one substantial segment of the party on whose behalf that monopoly is granted, what recourse is there? In the case of deferential Canada, that recourse would take the form of an imaginative, slightly unrealistic, proposal for a cooperative work-around. And in this particular case, it would work like this, at least on a back-of-the-envelope or blog scale.

The segment of the party on whose behalf this monopoly has been granted is the Canadian academic community, and the monopoly . . . [more]

A new year, a new decade, and the twenty-first century is fully underway. What has crept up on me this year is a new sense of the digital age’s full weight. There’s been enough of this sort of reflection about, surely. If my case is any different, it is because it is not about the tremulous future of the book. Sure, I am struck by the relatively frequent Kindle sightings I find myself making as I walk back up the aisle on one flight after another. But those Kindles are only leading to more reading of books, to judge . . . [more]

It is bound to happen. In trying to move an idea like open access (to research and scholarship) forward, you can reach a point where it seems that such efforts are contributing to the problem, rather than being part of the solution. It would be overstating it to observe that when Moses demanded, “Let my people go,” in ancient Egypt, the Pharaoh’s heart only hardened. Let me just say that at times just before the dawn, there can appear to be little hope of light.

Or so it seemed to me, when the editor at Educational Theory emailed me with . . . [more]

The Canadian government has been holding this summer a public “copyright consultation” on proposed legislative changes to the country’s copyright act, with the consultation period, featuring town hall meetings and online submissions and comments, now drawing to a close on September 13, 2009. For the most sensible of approaches to copyright reform, many of us simply turn to Michael Geist, Canada Research Chair of Internet and E-commerce Law at the University of Ottawa. He is currently running, as a public service, a Speak Out on Copyright site. A recent posting cites Industry Minister Tony Clement’s announcement that, following . . . [more]

The Washington Times is calling it “Iran’s Twitter Revolution”, as the largest political demonstrations since the 1979 revolution have unfolded in Iran since the highly questionable re-election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad announced on June 13, 2009. To date, at least 20 people have lost their lives and hundreds of journalists, academics and activists have been arrested. The Iranian government initially closed down the telephone system in an effort to forestall social protest, only to see the streets fill, day after day, through early June, supported by cyberactivism which the government then tried to curtail: “The [Iranian] hackers in particular . . . [more]