Admin law people (and which of us aren’t?) can rejoice in the arrival of a new blog in their area, the aptly named Administrative Law Matters. Launched around the middle of last month, the blog is a single person effort by Paul Daly (@pauldalyesq), Assistant Professor at the Faculté de Droit of the Université de Montréal, with an emphasis on common-law jurisdictions. Posts appear nearly every day. A welcome addition to the already fine collection of Canadian legal blogs.

[hat tip: Blogging for Equality — a great blog, by the way, that I need to post about . . . [more]

Among the top dozen creditors of Dewey & LeBoeuf which filed for bankruptcy yesterday were some familiar names:

Thomson Reuters $2.363 M

Lexis Nexis $1.413 M

Wolters Kluwer $653 K

I find the relative scale of the debts interesting, as well as the fact that the three publishers must have been prepared to continue to extend credit long after the newspapers were spreading word of Dewey & LeBoeuf’s troubles far and wide.

We’ve had scant experience of law firm insolvencies so I don’t know what has traditionally happened to the library when a firm closes its doors. Or in today’s . . . [more]

I am spoiled. I admit it. My brothers used to call me Precious – I am sure they were being facetious. This character flaw leads to severe disappointment when tools that I like to use are delayed or disappear.

One of my favourite, and hopefully to reappear soon, tools is the Daily Bill Activity Reports of the Alberta Legislature. Following this link, you may think, “There is a 2012 document at the site, why is she complaining?”

The daily activity report doesn’t include the 28th Legislature. We started the 1st Session of this legislature on May 23, 2012, and . . . [more]

openparliament.ca — “This is not a government site. Not even sort of,” says the tagline at the very bottom of the page. And one way you know it’s true is that it’s easy to use. We introduced openparliament.ca back in 2010, a successful volunteer effort by Michael Mulley to make access to data about the doings of MPs as easy as possible.

Now Mulley has added access to the work of parliamentary committees. As you’d expect, everything’s laid out clearly. You pick the committee that interests you, then go to the meeting by date (unless it was in . . . [more]

A frequent topic of posts here at Slaw and elsewhere in recent times has been the nature of print v. electronic publishing and what the future holds. It is a worthy topic that affects us all and fuels much discussion. In the midst of that I simply want to point out a publication that I find interesting in this information world, I’m not attaching special significance to it beyond the fact that it is interesting to point out. Grantland has been mentioned here at Slaw previously in the context of the Slaw feature You Might Like. Named for Grantland Rice . . . [more]

They are, respectively, dropping and falling, these metaphors being used to describe the AUCC/ Access Copyright (AC) deal struck in in mid April. It being a month since that model deal was announced, it seems that mid May was given as a deadline for the schools that previously opted out to express their intent to sign the model deal. The long and strange journey of the AC copyright tariff for universities has been documented here at Slaw and at other locations fairly extensively; if you are interested in this issue you are no doubt aware of the developments. If . . . [more]

Those following the US antitrust litigation against Apple and five of the big publishers in respect of ebook pricing by now will have seen Judge Cote’s decision to deny the defendants’ motion to dismiss the class action suit by consumers. The Opinion & Order, In Re Electronic Books Antitrust Litigation 11 MD 2293 (DLC) makes for quite interesting reading. I read a PDF of the Opinion last night, and the Opinion’s also been uploaded to Scribd.

It’s been a long while since I’ve read one of these, but it’s evident from the Opinion that Judge Cote had no difficulty . . . [more]

While significant in clarifying the defence of necessity in criminal law, Regina v. Dudley and Stephens has had an even larger cultural influence.

That’s the case of the Mignonette, which capsized on its way to Australia and whose shipwrecked crew faced tough choices in an under-provisioned lifeboat.

The latest NYT Best Seller list features a new book The Lifeboat by Charlotte Rogan – the author tells that her inspiration came from her husband’s criminal law text.

What hooked me was stumbling on my husband’s old criminal law texts and reading about the cases of sailors who survived shipwrecks and then

I’ve just returned from the 2012 CALL/ACBD Conference where I always enjoy engaging with my colleagues from across the country and further afield, renewing old acquaintances and making new friends. This year’s conference marked the kick-off of CALL/ACBD’s 50th Anniversary celebrations as part of that celebration we were encouraged to share our reminiscences and I would like to share one of mine here.

My first CALL/ACBD conference was in 2002 in Victoria. My memories from that conference include being somewhat awed by the conference itself and impressed with my new-found colleagues but what rings more than that was the . . . [more]

The 2012 Hugh Lawford Award for Excellence in Legal Publishing was announced earlier this week at the annual conference of the Canadian Association of Law Libraries in Toronto.

This year’s Award goes to JuriBistro UNIK, the global search engine on the website of CAIJ, the network of courthouse libraries in Quebec.

With this single interface, one can simultaneously search Quebec Bar Association continuing education materials, the CAIJ catalogue, the full text of Quebec and federal caselaw and legislation, the full text of secondary literature from publisher Wilson & Lafleur, and the TOPO knowledgebase of answers by CAIJ researchers to . . . [more]

The Pew Internet & American Life Project has come up with some wonderful numbers on our digital habits over the years. A new report titled The rise of e-reading, released on April 4th, is just such an example, and will likely be of interest to many of us here at Slaw. Some of the soundbites included:

• “One-fifth of American adults (21%) report that they have read an e-book in the past year” — up from 17% in mid-December;
• “Readers of e-books stand out in almost every way from other kinds of readers.”

• “They are relatively avid readers of books

Since Sunday I’ve been at the Canadian Association of Law Libraries annual meeting, which wrapped up moments ago. I’m a new member of the organization and this was my first CALL conference. I’m pleased to have put so many faces to names, avatars, and handles. I also enjoyed reconnecting with many people I’ve worked with over the years in several domains all over the country.

The conference presented much enriching content, and also highlighted that many involved in different legal libraries, in different sectors, share many concerns and challenges. This knowledge came to light during networking times and in sessions. . . . [more]