This Friday it’s about friends. No, I mean real meat friends, not the phrends on phacebook. And my overbold assertion is that I know something about your friends. Here’s what I know:

Your friends have more friends than you do.

Nothing personal. Just statistical. And, almost paradoxical, given that friendship is by definition a reciprocal relationship (which is part of the reason that “Our Mutual Friend” is as wrong as the phrase “mutual agreement”: “friend in common” for the first, simply “agreement” for the second. But I digress.).

My assertion is known as the friendship paradox, and the statistical truth . . . [more]

(with apologies to Simon F. for the resonance)

Once upon a time in the last millennium – as it happens, the first year of the first decade of the last century – a judge of the now-defunct judicial branch of the House of Lords decided to let a not-too-small cat out of the bag. He wrote:

“[A] case is only an authority for what it actually decides. I entirely deny that it can be quoted for a proposition that may seem to follow logically from it. Such a mode of reasoning assumes that the law is necessarily a logical code,

. . . [more]

Just A Click Away, a Canada-wide initiative on public legal education and information (PLEI) being coordinated by Courthouse Libraries BC, is organizing a two-day intensive conference in Vancouver, British Columbia on February 23 & 24, 2011.

The conference is about how to use Internet and social media technologies to better educate the general public about the law and provide resources for individuals to solve legal problems.

As a run up to the conference, Just A Click Away has been running a webinar series that features different approaches being used to provide online PLEI.

So far, 2 webinars have been . . . [more]

The problems aren’t always caused by unrepresented litigants.

• The Attorney General of Canada v. Maria Valde, 2011 ONSC 328
• “In the Matter of an Application pursuant to section 29 of the Extradition Act for an order committing the Respondent to await the Minister’s decision on whether the Respondent should be surrendered to the Republic of Hungary”
• [1] The Republic of Hungary seeks the extradition of Maria Valde a.k.a. Maria Ramsay to face charges for conduct considered criminal in Canada, namely fraud. For the reasons that follow, I dismiss the application.
• [7] The test for committal

. . . [more]

The perils of a shanked shot reflects a commonly appreciated risk of golf.

On January 4 the Canadian Air Transportation and Security Authority caught their first terrorist with the new Rapiscan at the Calgary airport.

Sorry, did I say terrorist? I meant Granny. She was detained for a secondary search when it was discovered the gel contained in her prosthetic breast was likley more than 3 oz. “Being in public, and being touched like that, it was really, really not called for,” she said.

After all, I was coming home from Christmas with my kids [in Calgary]. I didn’t go into a different country, I didn’t go across the country. I went on

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As with oatmeal cookies, pints of beer, and bags of wine gums, I keep coming back to them. Can’t really stay away long. Oh, I go graphic as often as I can and audio too. But words whistle me in quite regularly in these Friday Fillips. And here I am again banging on about words.

Only last April I “bloviated” about “swale” and “decrement.” A kind reader, Paul Dawson, suggested that if I liked odd words that much I might enjoy the website World Wide Words. I did. I do. And now you might, too.

It’s the work — . . . [more]

Michel Bastarache, a former Supreme Court of Canada Justice, submitted his official report yesterday into allegations of influence peddling in the nomination of municipal and provincial court judges in Quebec.

The commission that he led had been created by Quebec Premier Jean Charest after the province’s former Justice Minister Marc Bellemare alleged that he been forced to name three judges to the bench at the behest of Quebec Liberal Party organizers and fundraisers.

Bastarache rejected the allegations but he did document gaps in the judicial nomination process in Quebec in terms of transparency, writing that the process was vulnerable to . . . [more]

Many Ontario lawyers have visited Osgoode Hall and are used to seeing it as an island in the middle of busy streets and tall skyscapers. Here’s how it would have looked to our 19th century colleagues, courtesy of this 360 degree panoramic photo of Toronto taken from a roof around the corner of York & Adelaide.

Click on the link to see the entire panorama and scroll to the left to see Osgoode Hall. . . . [more]

There are times when, in this age of rapid technological change, I’m tempted to think that Slaw’s five and a half years of life make it a veteran. Some research I’m doing has led me back to one of my root interests in poverty law and to a true legal veteran on the web, PovNet. This anti-poverty group gives legal advocacy a central role, which should make it of interest to Slaw readers. From their website:

PovNet began in 1997 with a meeting attended by community representatives from all over British Columbia. Not a computer in sight. Advocates talked

. . . [more]

I first posted this as a comment but it is better front and centre.

Hmmm…. unless I missed something – ok, missed something else – nobody has pointed out why SLAW didn’t get a CLawBies and why the overall award now has the name it does. They’re related.

Without more setup, then, the explanation from CLawbies. 

You’ll notice a couple of changes in our lineup from previous years. We’ve renamed our top award — “Best Canadian Law Blog or Blogger” — in honour of Professor Simon Fodden, one of the founders and the driving force behind Slaw, which is

. . . [more]

Ontario LCBO to sell beer deemed illegal in several jurisdictions.