The editors and webmasters who work on the various internet presences of the European Community have written an open letter to the re-elected President, José Manuel Barroso, and the incoming Commissioners on “Harnessing the power of the internet for better communication.” As you might expect there’s some good advice here from people who know first hand what’s happening to communication systems currently. After all, the EU website has some six million pages — which makes it larger than Slaw.

The letter, available in both French [HTML] and English [PDF] begins by reminding (one hopes) the President that:

The audience for

. . . [more]

From the Yale Law Library’s latest exhibition, wonderful images of Justice, as portrayed in a forthcoming book by Judith Resnik and Dennis Curtis, Representing Justice: From Renaisance Town Halls to 21st Century Democratic Courtrooms.

Here is a taste of images from “Praxis Rerum Civilium,” by Joost de Damhoudere, “De Jure Belli ac Pacis,” by Hugo Grotius, and “Dei Delitti e delle pene,” by Cesare Beccaria: . . . [more]

Among the most important pieces of legislation that came into force last January First is the Act respecting the Compilation of Québec Laws and Regulations, S.Q. 2009, c. 40 (version française : L.Q. 2009, c. 40).

Pursuant to this Act, all consolidated statutes published by the Québec Official Publisher have official status “whatever the medium used“, including of course those published online by the Publications du Québec. Consolidations of regulatory texts will have official status on January first 2012. In the mean time, certain regulations will have official status if so stated within the published document. . . . [more]

We posted about the major cuts that Thomson-Reuters announced in early December to trim almost 2 % of its North American workforce. The blogosphere has noted the significant cuts made to Eagan’s library liaisons.

But we’ve seen no formal announcement or confirmation of the rumours of seventy five Carswell staff being let go from Thomson-Reuters’ Canadian legal operation, that was initiated just before Christmas. The rumours suggest that the cuts include twenty-five in the legal editorial group and that the downsizing may still be ongoing.

Funny that the Australians reported the news about the Canadian lay-offs while there’s . . . [more]

Yesterday I happened upon the Legal History Blog, and wanted to share my find. Started in November 2006, this blog has been consistently covering the academic scene in legal history, including the publication of new treatises, for some time. It is a group blog with main contributors Mary L. Dudziak, Judge Edward J. and Ruey L. Guirado Professor of Law, History and Political Science at the University of Southern California Law School, Dan Ernst, Professor of Law, Georgetown University, and Clara Altman, a graduate student at Brandeis University who co-ordinates the Legal History Blog’s accompanying Facebook . . . [more]

A reputable legal researcher recently suggested to the chief executive officer of a legal publishing company that the day was coming soon when his company would be offering its secondary content for free on a kindle. Needless to say, the CEO’s response was “not any time soon”. As an aside, he noted that it is becoming increasingly difficult to pay authors to write secondary content even now. He was frustrated by the growing market expectation that everything, including secondary content, would soon be available for free.

There is a growing assumption in the market that “someone else”, other than the . . . [more]

Concluding twelve years of efforts from a lot of JTAC members, Justice Fran Kiteley, from the Ontario Superior Court and a former JTAC member, rendered the first judgment using neutral citation in R. v. ANDREW DEL RICCIO, 2010 ONSC 01. Congratulations!

A group of Canadian authors has launched an online petition to protest the proposed settlement intended to put an end to a class action copyright lawsuit by U.S.-based author and publisher groups over Google’s plans to make and sell digital copies of millions of books.

In November 2009, the settlement was amended so that it would now apply only to books registered with the U.S. Copyright office or published in the U.K., Australia, or Canada.

The Book Rights Registry board, the entity that will be responsible for paying authors and publishers from revenues earned by the digitization project, would also . . . [more]

It’s been a little while since I wrote about The Law Librarian podcast created by Richard Leiter and available over at BlogTalkRadio and iTunes. I am one of several regular panelists; panelists now take turns participating in the shows depending on the topics. Richard has also expanded the schedule from once a month to once a month plus frequent updates, which will hopefully mean a new show every couple of weeks.

In case you missed them, the last two shows are:

Google Scholar Legal Opinions and Journals: A Conversation with Anurag Acharya (Dec. 4/09)
– Anurag Acharya is a . . . [more]

On the day after tomorrow, at least 100 amendments to statutes and regulations will come into force in Canada, according to a simple search in CanLII. It’s a hodge-podge of rules, of course — a cross-section, if you will, of life under modern rule-making.

Thus, for instance, B.C. mushroom growers are likely to be happier on January 1, because the regulation obliging them to pay a levy to the Mushroom Industry Development Council is to be repealed on that day. Happier, too, will be Costa Ricans who export to Canada, as tariff rates for certain goods will be reduced by . . . [more]

Louise Hamel, manager of the Judges’ Library for Ontario Courts, just announced to Canadian legal publishers that beginning January 2, 2010, the Ontario Superior Court of Justice will assign a neutral citation to their decisions, except for the Small Claims Court.

The Neutral Citation Standard for Case Law was developed in 1998 by the Canadian Citation Committee, an informal group that brought together various specialists in legal information from the judiciary, academia and the publishing industry, including slawers Martin Felsky and Daniel Poulin. The standard was approved in 1999 by the Canadian Judicial Council and has since then been . . . [more]

I don’t know how long this has been going on, but some courts are sending judgments to CanLII with hyperlinked tables of contents. Plain old text TOCs are nothing new, of course: long — long, long. . . — judgments pretty much demand them. But courts seem to have discovered that, because they create and submit their judgments to CanLII in MS Word format, it’s fairly easy to construct a hyperlinked table of contents.

A search for [table of contents] turns up recent “hot” TOCs from Newfoundland and Labrador, British Columbia, and Ontario.

This is, of course, . . . [more]