On my must-read list are some of the LLRX.com articles for this month. The authors have put together some great resources. Here’s the line-up:

Neurolaw and Criminal Justice
Ken Strutin’s article highlights selected recent publications, news
sources and other online materials concerning the applications of
cognitive research to criminal law as well as basic information on the
science and technology involved. — Published December 28, 2008

Deep Web Research 2009
Marcus P. Zillman’s guide includes links to: articles, papers, forums,
audios and videos, cross database articles, search services and search
tools, peer to peer, file sharing, grid/matrix search engines,
presentations, . . . [more]

The 2009 Harvey T. Strosberg Essay Prize competition was announced earlier this month:

Harvey T. Strosberg, Q.C., Editor-in-Chief of the Canadian Class Action Review, and Irwin Law Inc. are pleased to announce the sixth annual Harvey T. Strosberg Essay Prize competition. The prize of $10,000 is awarded to an outstanding student paper on Canadian class actions.

The competition is open to all Canadian students enrolled in an undergraduate, graduate, or professional program. The deadline for submissions is 2 March 2009.

Please see the Irwin Law web page for details. . . . [more]

This will be a brief post, since I’m on a dial-up connection from Nungambakkam in South India where it’s a balmy 30 degrees – and the word snow doesn’t appear to be in the vocabulary.

The ABA has just published The Little Red Book of Wine Law by Carol Robertson, which might just have been triggered by Slaw’s notes on the same subject and our more recent update.
The ABA President blurbs thus:

“Fans of law, golf and wine alike will enjoy these well-written and entertaining works. I give the Little Green Book to my golf hosts as thank-you

Kevin O’Keefe recently discussed Digital Darwinism as it related to legal researchers, publishers and advertisers. The economic downturn, coupled with technological advances, has resulted in the demise of many major industries that have been the backbone of corporate America.

But O’Keefe also suggests another slightly troubling proposition,

Blogs will be widely cited in briefs and court decisions.

What better way to provide compelling arguments and establish binding precedent than sourcing articles with a milisecond publishing turnaround time?

There is obviously a broad variety of quality and depth in the legal blogosphere.

The credibility and authority of both the author and . . . [more]

When can it be said that a new print publication is in fact “recognized as an authority” by the Canadian legal research community?

This question came to mind when I asked a law librarian attending the annual meeting of the Canadian Association of Law Libraries if she had added Halsburys Laws of Canada to her law library collection. Her answer was that she would do so as soon as Halsburys was “recognized” by the legal research community and not before.

The ultimate form of recognition

Identifying the ultimate form of recognition as an authority is an easy task. It is . . . [more]

I was just on the website of Cornell’s Legal Information Institute (that’s the organization that kicked off the “open law” movement of which our own CanLII is a part). They are asking for financial donations. The notice explains:

Your support helps us help others.

There are over one million links to the LII, from hundreds of thousands of websites.

Today, many of those are sites that help people who are struggling with debt, and the people and organizations who help them: debt counselors, bankruptcy lawyers, consumer self-help sites, and countless others.

The LII stands out because we make law both

The Conference Board of Canada has just released its Index of Consumer Confidence.

The monthly Index of Consumer Confidence is constructed from responses to four attitudinal questions posed to a random sample of Canadian households. The latest results are based on over 2,000 telephone interviews conducted in early December 2008.

According to the News release:

The Index of Consumer Confidence stumbled for the third consecutive month in December, falling 3.3 points to 67.7 (2002 = 100), the Conference Board reported today.

“On a monthly basis, the index has now dropped significantly below early 1990s levels. Only during the recession

The U.S. Mission to Canada is pretty hip, serving up content the way you want it:

• podcast
• facebook
• twitter (@usembassyottawa)
• news feeds (RSS)
• Ambassador David Wilkins also apparently held “web chats”, the most recent his farewell chat held on December 11th (transcript here).

I wonder if the incoming ambassador will take it a step further and open up a Second Life presence ?

As a side note, I notice the U.S. Embassy in London also on Twitter: @usembassylondon; their Twitter updates (“tweets”) are also reposted on their website. . . . [more]

The Call List-Serv is offering the Western Samoa Law Reports, 1930-1949 and 1970-1979 (2 volumes) free for the cost of shipment. Some Samoan cases are available online, though the Index is also on PacificLii.

Samoan law is described in PacificLii.

I’ve not found any reference to any Canadian court having considered a Western Samoan case. But it does seem sad that the inexorable rise of web-based caselaw has put this obscure bit of antipodean jurisprudence in the recycling hopper. Unless someone wants to claim it from the BC Courthouse Library. . . . [more]

There’s a new addition to the roster of domain name suffixes coming: .tel And it’s unique among extensions in at least a couple of ways. First, its distribution is in wholly private and commercial hands — you’ll pay to play — and second, it won’t locate a place on the web. Evidently, dot tel will lead to a collection of your resources located right on the domain name server, and what it serves up will depend on how you come to it and where you come from. The idea is to make the DNS emit information that is responsive to . . . [more]

Wealth of comparative and historical material in Hein Online’s Classics.

I just stumbled over a book I never knew existed:

1884 W. T. S. Daniel, The History and Origin of the Law Reports,
Together with a Compilation of Various Documents Shewing the Progress and Result of Proceedings Taken for Their Establishment and the Condition of the Reports on the 31st December, 1883

We have been debating law reporting for longer than we suspected. . . . [more]

So says Nick Abrahams in his similarly titled post of last week:

Today in what appears to be a first in Australia and perhaps the world, Master Harper of the ACT Supreme Court ordered that a default judgement could be served on defendants by notification on Facebook.

I wonder how long before this happens in Canada? After all, Canada is the country in the world with the highest Facebook penetration, as a percentage of its population… 29% in July 2008! Too bad Facebook doesn’t send back read receipts to lawyers serving documents on Facebook. . . . [more]