How many Canadian law students could identify John Humphrey or explain his significance to the law? I certainly couldn’t when we met at a meeting in 1976, convened by the Ontario Human Rights Commission. He was then seventy, a tweedy academic in bow tie, who had come down from the McGill Law School. Only at a break did a friend lean over and tell me that this academic had held the pen for the drafting the Universal Declaration of Human Rights . . . [more]

The Times has continued its excellent series with a whole bunch of new cases: . . . [more]

The Commission on Legal Empowerment of the Poor has released its second report in as many weeks. Volume 1, “Making the Law Work for Everyone” [PDF], the Commission’s main report, was released on June 3, and is also available in French, Spanish and Arabic. Volume 2, “Working Group Reports” [PDF] was released recently.

The Commission is a cooperative venture by prominent politicians and lawyers from dozens of countries around the world — Canada is a charter member — and is “hosted” by the United Nations Development Programme. Lloyd Axworthy, a former Minister of Foreign . . . [more]

That’s what the Globe described the Steele Collection as this morning.

But for Slaw readers, the description better applies to The Times unveiling of the most significant cases reported in the paper from 1785 to 1869, including links to the actual reports from The Times of that period.

David Pannick introduces the concept. . . . [more]

Great news for those of you who spend hours in Toronto’s libraries:

Toronto Star reports that Toronto Public Library has finally caught up with other library systems and bookstores by allowing food and drinks in most areas of its 99 branches. . . . [more]

Paul E. Kennedy, Chair, Commission for Public Complaints Against the RCMP, has released his final report on RCMP Use of the Conducted Energy Weapon (CEW) (i.e. Tasers). (A PDF version is available.

As an aside, why is it that the online news stories fail to contain a link to the original report? I don’t mind doing the ten seconds of research myself, but it does seem odd that a web-based news outlet would ignore an easily available link to the documents in question. Maybe they need librarians. . . . [more]

Redesigned FindLaw.com site helps people find answers, find lawyers . . . [more]

That’s the position of one Massachusetts official offered in the explanation for why the new courthouse in Worcester Massachusetts didn’t provide space for a law library.

Just goes to show that the case for legal research has to be made continually.

It wasn’t heard in Governor Romney’s office, which is why the law library has been the sole tenant of the otherwise abandoned “old” Worcester courthouse for eight months, and lawyers continue to have to trek in and out.

. . . [more]

We’ve noticed Fastcase a couple of times on Slaw, including a piece in 2006.

A recent piece from Forbes uses Fastcase as the poster boys for open source access to the law. But it also speculates what impact services like PreCydent, Public.Resource.org and Collexis Holdings’ Casemaker division will have on the major players. It makes a convincing case that for small to medium firms, the majors may have priced themselves out of consideration, opening a niche for new entrants ((Lest anyone is tempted to organize a flag day for the majors, Forbes reports that Fastcase’s revenue last year . . . [more]

From time to time lawyers need to touch base with sub-political reality, and scientific journals offer one way to do that. WorldWideScience is a cooperative venture among 44 countries under the auspices of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Scientific and Technical Information (sigh: I wish I didn’t wish it was run out of Denmark or Korea or Chile) that offers a federated search of the various countries’ databases. Canada’s contribution, for example, is the National Research Council’s Institute for Scientific and Technical Information and Defence Research and Development Canada’s Defence Research Reports.

I ran a simple search . . . [more]

I am currently in Seattle at the Special Libraries Association annual conference. SLA is a large international organization made up of specialized information professionals.

SLA awards were handed out last night, and I am delighted to report law librarian Sabrina Pacifici was honoured with the J.J. Kellar Innovations in Technology Award for her long-standing work as creator, founder and sole editor of law and technology blog beSpacific and e-zine LLRX.com. Sabrina Pacifici was one of the first in the legal research industry to harness the Internet and especially blogs as a way to communicate with colleagues and bring together . . . [more]

Let me quote from the Thursday news release on the CanLII site:

Thanks to a grant from the Law Foundation of Ontario, the following additions have been made on CanLII:

• All Supreme Court of Canada cases originating from Ontario back to 1876 in searchable HTML and PDF-image format (2,100 cases)
• All Court of Appeal for Ontario cases that were appealed at the Supreme Court of Canada (1,300 cases)
• All reported Ontario Superior Court of Justice cases back to 1994 (3,500 cases)

This project added 100,000 pages of historical material on CanLII. CanLII wishes to sincerely thank the Law Foundation of