Lawyers like to argue, to write, to publish; that’s a known fact. When it comes to blogging, there is something special, something uniquely appealing that ought to be pursued; something that makes the connection between the legal community and society better. And that has been nicely stated by Dahlia Lithwick in The American Lawyer, June 1st 2006 edition:

If you combine a journalist’s fear of offering a personal opinion with her even greater fear of boring the reader, the result can be legal writing that is too constrained, while at the same time fixates on the details of the

Deadline for Seventh Annual Justicia Awards Extended

OTTAWA, June 2, 2006 – The deadline for entries for the seventh annual Justicia Awards for Excellence in Journalism has been extended until June 15, 2006.

The Justicia Awards recognize outstanding broadcast and print stories that foster public awareness and understanding of any aspect of the Canadian justice system and the roles played by institutions and participants in the legal system.

The awards are sponsored by the Canadian Bar Association, the Law Commission of Canada and the Department of Justice Canada. Two prize winners are selected by an independent panel of judges.

To

There’s an interesting paper by the University of Pennsylvania’s Eric Feldman called “The Tuna Court: Law and Norms in the World’s Premier Fish Market.” It talks about the Tokyo fish market where dealing in tuna is highly fractious. Most theorists would say that disputes in a tight industry of repeat players are best handled by informal, private means; however, Feldman shows that the state-made laws that govern the fish market are used very often with great punctilio, all of which works well:

In short, by presenting a detailed case study of a highly specialized court that operates under

I have a questions for Slawers – what are the Canadian laws regarding links (the hypertext, not the edibile, sort)? Is there any legal ground for prohibiting one site from linking to another? . . . [more]

Here are two recent articles about the ongoing debate about net neutrality.

First, from CIO Magazine, Ben Worthen warns “The democracy of the Web may soon be a relic of the past, a change that may have costly implications for doing business on the Net.”

Then, from CNN Technology, “Coming soon: The Web toll – New laws may transform cyberspace and the way you surf it .”

Why is everyone so relatively silent on this issue? . . . [more]

1. Microgames: 3-D Logic
2. KR Con
3. The Korean Register of Shipping
4. FM10 Openness: Code, Science and Content
5. First Monday
6. FM10 Openness: Code, Science and Content: Links to conference papers
7. Canadian Citation Committee: A Neutral Citation Standard for Canada
8. PC World online
9. PC World Online: Live chat on 100 best products of the year
10. LexUM: Supreme Court judgments
11. Privacy Commissioner: Annual Report on the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act
12. ALL-SIS: S. Kelley, “Developments in Legal Education: Are Blogs Transforming Legal Scholarship?”
13. Parliament of Canada: press release
14. CBC Arts: Parliamentary Library ‘a jewel’ after upgrade
15. CBC-TV: report on Parliament’s Library [Real

It’s getting on for summer and the will to be serious drains away pretty fast on Friday afternoons now. So this week it’s pure escapism that I espouse.

Try your hand at this online game, done in Flash. Though it’s called 3-D Logic, there’s little about it that uses the sort of logic we use in our workaday world.

I’m told that things get tough around level 16, though I can’t report that from my own experience, having only got to level… Well, never mind. . . . [more]

For those of you interested in International Marine Law, which we are here at Dal, KR Con is a useful product from a somewhat unlikely source: The Korean Register of Shipping. KR Con contains a tree view of a significant number of international treaties and supplements related to Marine Law. The database can also be queried using conventional search strategies. Upon ordering you get online access to the database as well as a CD Rom product. . . . [more]

FM10 Openness: Code, Science and Content is a conference, still underway, “convened by the journal First Monday , the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) University Library and the Maastricht Economic Research Institute on Innovation and Technology to celebrate First Monday’s tenth year of operation.

You can find links to upwards of 50 papers dealing with a wide variety of topics touching on open access and publishing. Some of the papers aren’t deposited with the site yet, but the abstracts are there and, presumably, the full text will arrive when ready.

Notice when you go to a page containing an . . . [more]

This just in from “an avid reader of Slaw”:

I am in desperate need of some Slaw collective wisdom. Is there any comprehensive list of Canadian courts abbreviations used in neutral citation. The standard on Lexum’s website list are suggestions (which have been adopted by those courts), but I am looking for a complete list. Australia and England provide comprehensive lists for their court abbreviations for neutral citation. (It is also weird that there is no
updated information as to which courts have adopted neutral citation and which have not.)

C’mon gang. Avid readers deserve help. . . . [more]

The May 31st post on PC World online has an intriguing article: 100 Best Products of the Year (for the July 2006 issue). Powerful computers, handy services, tiny utilities, mammoth HDTVs: the editors’ top picks include all these and a whole lot more. Plus: the 25 worst tech products of all time. You can browse them in numerical or alphabetical order. Even techno idiots like me can enjoy the run-down and advice! There’s even a live chat scheduled for June 6th on the list. Dig in and enjoy the feast. . . . [more]

This press release from the Supreme Court of Canada just came across my desktop:

OTTAWA, 2006-05-31.

The LexUM site, where the Court’s decisions, news releases and bulletins are posted, has been completely reorganized to make it even easier to consult those documents. The new site was launched on May 23, 2006.

The new address is http://scc.lexum.umontreal.ca/en/index.html. We recommend that you update your bookmarks/favourites.

Users who go to the old site’s address will be automatically redirected to the new site. Users who have bookmarked decisions will be informed that the site has moved and will be automatically redirected to the