The Supreme Court of Canada is hearing Prime Minister of Canada, et al. v. Omar Ahmed Khadr tomorrow, November 13 — a Friday the 13th, as it happens. There is a webcast of the hearing scheduled to begin at 9 a.m. EDT.

You can read the SCC Case Information Summary to get a quick overview of the matter. The appellant’s (i.e. government’s) factum is online [PDF], as is that for Khadr [PDF].

The appeal is from a judgment of the Federal Court of Appeal: Canada (Prime Minister) v. Khadr, 2009 FCA 246 (CanLII), which in turn was an . . . [more]

Chatting with Angela this morning about judgments, and then the Ontario Reports undermines my certainty about my prior views.

One expects that such issues as what is a judgment, and what is an endorsement, would have been determined years ago, when the basic rules of precedent were laid down by common law courts.

However, this morning’s copy of the Ontario Reports has me wondering. There are 80 pages of reported judicial decisions in part 10 of volume 96 of the Ontario Reports, Third Edition.

However, four of those decisions from the Superior Court totalling 61 pages are nominally endorsements. I . . . [more]

Here is this morning’s Interim Management Statement from Reed Elsevier. Note the interested bolded statement on R&D in the legal research sector.

LexisNexis has seen a modest decline in underlying revenues with softer legal and corporate markets in the US and internationally. Overall revenues benefit from a full year contribution from the ChoicePoint business acquired in September last year.

The US Legal Markets business has seen a continuation of the first half trends. Revenues in the core law firm market have held up, although these are under some late cycle pressure reflecting the downturn in the legal services industry. Directory

Following on our comments this week on law and access, a show on BlogTalkRadio called The Law Librarian has a podcast available of today’s discussion on OA legal resources with Carl Malamud and others. They talk about his Law.gov initiative, the Obama admin., and others. A good listen. . . . [more]

I have been asked (by an American colleague) if I know of any synopsis of “Canadian cybersecurity laws”. I am told that this expression means some mix analogous to the US Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, covering as well wiretaps, crimes, specific requirements for securing data. Core is private sector rather than critical infrastructure or national security.

It is conceivable that there is a chapter or more in the various collections of learning on IT or e-com law on the topic, which Canadian members of this blog are familiar with. Care to name them? Is there a book in Sunny . . . [more]

One of my colleagues, found a colourful way to describe his growing disconnect with finding legal information on his own: “It’s like trying to find a piece of hay in a haystack.”

A Law Librarian blog post offers an excellent visual representation of this concept:

These two haystack comments make me think of teaching legal research. The topic has been on my mind a lot lately. And recent debate here at Slaw about sources of legal material tells me that others are likely thinking about it too.

On the weekends, I am a farmer. There is no hay on my . . . [more]

One of the things I enjoy about reading the Language Log, a cooperative blog by academic linguists, is the ease with which some of the authors slip into high dudgeon. (I suppose I might be like that, too, if my subject were language, in which everyone is an expert.) The latest target of Geoff Pullum’s indignation is U.S. Supreme Court Justice Kennedy, who, it turns out, doesn’t know his active from his passive, when it comes to voice.

The offending passage occurred in the judge’s dissent in Jones v. United States 526 U.S. 227 (1999) where Kennedy is interpreting a . . . [more]

Cross-posted on The AvoidAClaim blog (www.avoidaclaim.com)

As part of a brief endorsement dated November 3, 2009 in RE: IN THE ESTATE OF Evelyn O’Reilly, et. al., Justice D. M. Brown of the Superior Court Of Justice–Ontario provided some useful direction on the form and content of an order in applications to prove a lost will under Ontario Rule 75.02. Ontario lawyers handling this issue on estate matters will find Brown J.’s comments helpful. . . . [more]

University of Toronto law professors Ben Alarie and Andrew Green have posted a draft of a new paper to the Social Science Research Network.

The paper is entitled Interventions at the Supreme Court of Canada: Accuracy, Affiliation, and Acceptance:

“Do interveners matter? Under Chief Justice McLachlin the Supreme Court of Canada has allowed an average of 176 interventions per calendar year and interveners have cumulatively made submissions in half of the cases heard by the Court. This level of activity suggests that interveners are doing something. But what is it that they are doing?”

“In the abstract, there are

I am amazed that the three minutes extracted from an interview that I gave in the summer of 2009 with the thought that parts of it would be used in a tribute video to be shown at the 2009 AALL Convention has caused such a kerfuffle. [Ed. note: see Berring’s Scepticism on the Future of Free Legal Information, Berring, CanLII and Kobe Beef, Berring, free legal information, and making good choices] (Glad to see that someone used one of my favorite words). The context of the remarks matters because they were meant to be light in tone. . . . [more]

I was using Delicious for work and personal research. Then I read an article in Econtent magazine about iCyte and I just had to give it a try. Now, I’m hooked on it. If you do alot of online research, you have to try it. Why I love it:

• It lets you select and save text on a webpage. Instead of saving the entire page, iCyte allows you to save the most important parts of a webpage.
• Webpages are saved on the iCyte server, so you don’t lose them even if they’ve been changed or deleted.
• You have the option

There seems to be an increasing number of positions for librarians in the area of copyright and licensing.

IFLA (located in The Hague) is currently looking for a Copyright Policy Officer. The University of Michigan has an opening for the Head of Electronic Acquisitions and Licensing. The Ontario Colleges Library Service has an opening for an Electronic Resources Librarian (in Toronto).

The blog www.copyrightanswers.blogspot.com now lists such positions — if you are interested, further info and links are in the blog. And if you know of other positions, please share them. . . . [more]