And now for something long ago and far away. “Somethings,” I should say: the Tarlton Law Library at the University of Texas has an online exhibition of old legal dictionaries that will leave you itching to look something up — again and again. The exhibit features 30 of the some 100 old (before 1800) and rare dictionaries in their collection, stemming from the common law, Roman law, and civil law systems.

[click image to enlarge]

Vocabularius, for example, a small excerpt from which is pictured here, was first published in 1475 and last published early in the 17th century. . . . [more]

World Cup 2010 has been full of intrigue and interest; in posting about the legal aspects of the world cup last week I felt that was too much of interest to post at one time so this post continues the legal aspects of the world cup as we prepare for the round of 16.

It seems that World Cup 2010 has been a boon for South African Law Firms.

FIFA does indeed have a legal committee but I haven’t had much luck trying to discover the terms of reference for the legal committee nor even a description of what . . . [more]

The Public Legal Education and Information Service of New Brunswick (PLEIS-NB), celebrating more than 20 years of service, makes its information pamphlets available online. (Because New Brunswick is a constitutionally bilingual province, there’s a version of the site en français aussi.)

What drew my attention to the site now was the announcement that PLEIS-NB is “helping the public know the law — one tweet at a time!” Of course, advice in 140 characters might be a trifle curt, so they’ve adopted the interesting strategy of tweeting questions, the kind that non-lawyers might ask, and linking those tweets to their longer . . . [more]

A Slaw exclusive: Jason Wilson in lengthy conversation with the VP of Tech at Thomson.

The new Google Scholar Blog announces that it’s now possible to get email alerts when material that matches your query is added to the index. Full instructions are given on the page linked to above; but here I’ll reprise a paragraph from that page, broken down into steps and using a search for a legally relevant matter as an example (i.e. with the “legal opinions and journals” option selected). Click on the green links to see a cropped screenshot of the results and the blue links to see the actual results in a new window.

1. To create an alert for

. . . [more]

World Cup 2010 - Some Legal Aspects

Aspiring authors with an interest in digital self-publishing would be wise to review this June 3rd article from the Wall Street Journal: ‘Vanity’ Press Goes Digital. One of the big factors driving the viability of self-publication is this month’s changed revenue split with Authors by Amazon – rising from 35% to 70% for e-books priced from $2.99 to $9.99.

The article breaks down a lot of the economics involved, especially for authors with a smaller fan base:

“Some people will be tempted by the 70% royalty at Amazon,” Mr. Nash says. “If they already have a loyal fan base,

. . . [more]

Monday’s release of the Queen’s Birthday Honours List in Canberra splendidly elevates Graham Greenleaf to membership in the Order of Australia (General Division). See the Commonwealth Gazette No. S 84, Monday, 14 June 2010

The official announcement cites that it is: “For service to the law through the development of free electronic access to legal information, and as a leader in the protection of privacy.”

Since we neglected to recognize Austlii’s first place showing in the Australia and New Zealand Internet Best Practice Awards, sponsored by auDA and InternetNZ, the Internet domain name administrators for Australia and New . . . [more]

The algorithm for generating CanLII keywords sure spits out some gems. Take this real CanLII keyword string, for example:

• underwear — negligence — wearing blue acid washed jeans — defence — lawyer

How could one not link through to figure out what kind of negligence case could involve a pair of blue acid wash jeans? The fact that the word “underwear” comes before “negligence” makes this list of keywords even better. Could it be that negligence is now part of the “law of underwear”?

Here are some other goodies:

• lifejacket — flip flops — cordless — daughter — bed
• alibi

. . . [more]

Since I’m just back from France I thought it might be fun to point to one of the few government sponsored videos (entitled Crepes) that actually uses humour to get across a point about the necessity for interjurisdictional co-operation in the handling of accident benefits.

It comes from an excellent French blog, Precisement.org.

Les différentes voies de la communication juridique de l’Union européenne
Une histoire de crêpes
Ou la nécessité de coordination des sécurités sociales en Europe exposée en vidéo

It’s all about the need to carry your social security card on holiday. The EU Video . . . [more]

I am a regular user of the services and collection of the Alberta Government Library. The library organization has changed significantly over the years from embedded department libraries to a centralized model under the service branch of the government. The “significant change” trend is continuing in 2010.

There was a library group email list announcement recently that confirmed earlier rumours that three of seven branches (or sites as they are referred to) are closing as of October 1, 2010. Given that this consolidation will have a direct (likely negative) impact on my ability to gather information for my clients, . . . [more]

Rian — the word means “path” in Irish — is the new National Portal for Ireland. The portal aggregates the contents of the digital repositories of seven Irish universities. A search for [law] turns up 312 results, ranging in dates and topics, for example, from a 2007 article “Alternative Sanctions and Social Norms in International Law: The Case of Abu Ghraib” to an article from 1872 “On the practicability of codifying English law, with a specimen code of the law of evidence.”

You can, of course, order search results by date, relevance, item type, and so on. . . . [more]