A number of blogs in the United Kingdom are reporting that guidelines regarding blogging by members of the judiciary in England and Wales have come down from the Judicial Office. See here for a blog article found on The Guardian‘s website that recaps the situation and provides an interesting commentary.

According to these guidelines, which have not been made available to the public, when blogging, magistrates and judges must not identify themselves as members of the judiciary and must avoid making comments that could damage the public’s confidence in the judiciary.

This last part is not particularly surprising. Judges . . . [more]

One of the reasons I’m no great fan of winter is that it moves you away from nature, at least the quick and the colourful; embrace winter how you will, the smells, sounds, and hues of flora and fauna are all seriously muted. In summer nature is very much in your face, flashing, cheeping, biting, croaking and generally redolent. This is when you take the car trips on which you count the cows, when you fish (and release), when the garden’s profusion nearly overwhelms.

So it seemed a good idea to offer you and the family something straightforward about this . . . [more]

This is a post in a series appearing each Friday, setting out some articles, videos, podcasts and the like that contributors at Slaw are enjoying and that you might find interesting. The articles tend to be longer than blog posts and shorter than books, just right for that stolen half hour on the weekend. It’s also likely that most of them won’t be about law — just right for etc.

Please let us have your recommendations for what we and our readers might like.

The Quebec Bar Association has launched the Votre Justice (Your Justice) website to raise access to justice issues during the provincial election campaign. Quebecers will be electing Members of the National Assembly on September 4th, 2012.

The Association has identified four issues.

For each one, the website describes the current situation, outlines the Association’s position, suggests questions for debate, and (when available) summarizes the proposals of the 5 main parties (Parti libéral du Québec, Parti québécois, Québec solidaire, Option nationale, and Coalition Avenir Québec).

The issues are:

• underinvestment in the justice system
• changes to the tax system to increase accessibility

Privacy breaches are often caused by simple things that should be easy to avoid. Take, for instance, the Elections Ontario lost USB keys. The Ontario Privacy Commissioner’s recent news release points to “systemic failures“, and failure to build privacy into their routine information management practices. The details point to a series of simple failures, including failure to follow a policy that required encryption, a lack of understanding of front line staff of how to encrypt or what that meant, and a continuation of the same practices after the loss. The Commissioner recomended that Elections Ontario retain a third . . . [more]

As everyone in Canada will know, the Canadian women’s soccer team lost to the US team in a way that has excited some comment, first of all by a couple of star members of the Canadian team who were highly critical of a decision made by the Norwegian referee. FIFA — Fédération Internationale de Football Association — the governing body of football let it be known that it will examine the players’ comments with an eye to possible suspensions. Today, however, we learn that no actions will be taken by FIFA until after the game in which Canada competes with . . . [more]

safely, on Mars – the Mars Rover named “Curiosity”, that is – even if the Americans can’t spell.

Here’s explanations of how it was to work. It did.

http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/24364591/highlight/281462

http://www.space.com/16503-photos-mars-science-laboratory-curiosity-landing-guide.html

And, here’s a video stream of a collection of very relieved, very happy, people in blue shirts.

http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/24512027/highlight/282919

I doubt the missing “u” made a difference; however, those who once drove British Leyland vehicles may remember the crack about the best British workmanship going into the parts that fall off.

Fortunately, nothing fell off here.

  . . . [more]

You’re off for a week’s holiday to Halifax. You’re on a five-day business trip to Vancouver, L.A., and then Chicago. You’re headed to Rio on the spur of the moment and a last-minute cheapo ticket. And so you’ve got to pack some . . . stuff: clothes, shoes, reading matter, a discreet pharmacopeia, tablet computer with associated wires and adapters, and then that small collection of odd things such as your eye mask, your alarm clock, your hotel door stopper . . . . The mound grows. And the question presents itself: what do you pack it into?

Carry-on is . . . [more]

This is a post in a series appearing each Friday, setting out some articles, videos, podcasts and the like that contributors at Slaw are enjoying and that you might find interesting. The articles tend to be longer than blog posts and shorter than books, just right for that stolen half hour on the weekend. It’s also likely that most of them won’t be about law — just right for etc.

Please let us have your recommendations for what we and our readers might like.

As social media expand they bring lawyer stuff with them to bedevil the previously innocent denizens of the world, rather as missionaries were carried along with waves of colonialism to people who were just fine without them. The latest site for the social-medium-IP-dance is nail polish, of all things. Ciaté, a British cosmetics company, was in the process of trade marking their latest nail polish, Caviar Manicure — a product that has you sprinkle coloured beads onto your glue-spread nails. Bloggers began to write about this caviar manicure process; and some of them got a shirty email from Ciaté, instructing . . . [more]

Every two years for the past few years I’ve written something before the Olympic games about the IOC’s social media and web rules, which are overly controlling, out of touch, and behind the times. This year is no exception. Even though we are just a few days in, there have been several stories vying for the most outlandish social media excess medal. For example:

Carmi Levy wrote an article just before the games began entitled The IOC’s social media anti-lesson for business that starts off with:

As the final hours tick down until the 2012 Olympic games get started in . . . [more]

It has been a number of months since we have blogged about Omar Khadr. The Canadian government promised his return a number of months ago, but they are now delaying.

Senator Roméo Dallaire is running a petition online via the Change.org website:

The case of Omar Khadr—a Canadian citizen and former child soldier—is a stain upon our society and shows a blatant disregard for Canada’s obligations under international law.

…

After years of dragging its feet, Canada finally agreed to his return in 2010, so long as he served one additional year in Guantánamo. No one forced the government’s