Here’s the paper-thin justification: the law is not always and only framed in words; sometimes images become relevant, even crucial. Accordingly, Slaw, as your premier law blog, feels it a public duty to report on Google’s brand new Image Search function. As described (in words) on the Official Google Blog, there are half a dozen innovations:

Dense tiled layout designed to make it easy to look at lots of images at once. We want to get the app out of the way so you can find what you’re really looking for.

Instant scrolling between pages, without letting you get

What Slaw talks about, the world talks about tomorrow. Well not quite. No illusions about our reach.

So we’ll just put it down to coincidence or the zeitgeist that John Gregory’s mention of Henry VIII Clauses (he initially undervalued the monarch at a mere VII) here triggered global interest. But a few days later, the English legal press revealed that the Lord Chief Justice spoke on just this subject.

Lord Judge, who as Lord Chief Justice is head of the English judiciary, was speaking at the annual Lord Mayor’s dinner for the judiciary, the day before John Gregory’s comment; . . . [more]

At a session at the Fourth International Legal Ethics Conference at Stanford Law School yesterday afternoon Freddy Mnyongani Senior Lecturer of the Jurisprudence Department at the University of South Africa told us that today has been marked by the United Nations as Mandela Day, in honour of the great man’s 92nd birthday.

On Mandela Day people are called to devote just 67 minutes of their time to changing the world for the better, in a small gesture of solidarity with humanity, and in a small step towards a continuous, global movement for good. . . . [more]

I’m trying to find out why I’ve received, on my office email, last week, political spam in the form of a few messages that purported to be email from Rob Ford’s campaign, whining about his treatment by the Toronto Star.

I assume that was part of mass emailing. There’d be no reason to specifically send that form of email to me. I’m as likely to vote for Ford as would have been for, say, Jakobek. One of my partners? Maybe. Me? No.

Assuming the email is from his campaign, directly or indirectly, I wonder what list of email addresses it . . . [more]

For those who aren’t on the Federal Courts or other mailing list that provided the information, 

The Federal Courts Reports are pleased to announce that in an effort to meet the changing needs of its users, full volumes of the Federal Courts Reports are now available on its Web site at: http://reports.fja-cmf.gc.ca/eng/. The Federal Courts Reports continue to be available in print, but you can now access the same content online beginning with [2007], Volume 4, Part 1, including numerous value-added features such as a side by side (French and English) layout, the contents of the volume, and lists

I don’t want to bring you down on a Friday, but for a bunch of reasons I’d invite you to look at a particular website despite its somewhat discouraging content. For one thing, it shows art as an argument, with all the power and imprecision that “artguments” can have. For another, it’s an impressive use of information technology, something that we touch on from time to time here at Slaw. Then there’s a legal connection, because the site’s in aid of a multilateral treaty. 

Enough prolegomenon.

Isao Hashimoto’s “1945-1998” shows you every nuclear explosion that took place between those dates . . . [more]

“[5] I have reviewed the time spent which is 15.9 hours and frankly, I am surprised that so few hours are being claimed …. ” (2010 ONSC 3935).

A round of applause for the successful party’s lawyer, please.

In somewhat the same vein, put up a hand if you’re in favour of a new rule of lawyer’s professional conduct which states that lawyers acting for the winning side in a law suit are allowed to comment on the merits of the result for the media – print, electronic, and otherwise – only if the lawyers concede, on the record, that . . . [more]

Since the advent of the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act, there has been uncertainty among lawyers, private investigators and insurers about what impact this law has on the litigation of private tort claims. There has been some guidance from the Ontario courts in the Ferenczy decision, but the law was still unsettled. The only case to address this, Ferenczy v MCI Medical Clinics, was all about whether information collected (allegedly) in violation of PIPEDA would nevertheless be admissible. The court concluded that PIPEDA does not apply to the collection of surveillance information by a PI to . . . [more]

Rona Ambrose, Minister for Status of Women, held a press conference today at the Punjabi Community Health Service Centre in Mississsauga, Ontario, during which she addressed so-called honour killings. The speculation — see the National Post story, for example — is that her publicity exercise was in reaction to the release last week of a report by the Frontier Centre for Public Policy entitled Culturally-Driven Violence Against Women. An executive summary is available here; and the whole 21-page report is available in PDF.

During the press conference, Minister Ambrose said that the government is considering . . . [more]

I have been following a discussion about the concerns regarding the government’s cancellation of the long-form questionnaire for the 2011 Canadian Census. The following message just went out over the Canadian law libraries listserv CALL-L. I have reproduced it here with the author’s permission:

Dear Colleagues,

I am writing to draw your attention to a serious issue that has arisen regarding the upcoming 2011 Canadian census. The government has decided to cancel the census long-form questionnaire and replace it with a voluntary survey, which cannot be counted on to produce reliable information.

The decision poses a severe

or, as I might title it today, “The Good, the Bad, and the American.” And it’s about nothing more contentious than language.

The Good? There are, of course, all sorts of species of “good” in writing. For us in law, one kind of a sometime good is plain language. For decades now, supporters of plain language in law have been urging lawyers to, well, learn to write so that others can understand them easily. Which isn’t easy. The U.S. government has a site replete with examples and tools and a page referring to foreign resources — none of which is . . . [more]

CourtCanada, a private software development company, has sued Ontario’s Ministry of the Attorney General for breach of contract, claiming $10,000,000 in damages and a further $2,000,000 in punitive damages. CourtCanada supplies the Ministry with OSCAR, the Online System for Court Attendance Reservations, currently operating in the Estates List and the Commercial List of the Superior Court.

The plaintiff alleges that expansion of OSCAR throughout the Civil and Bankruptcy Lists was expected under the agreement and that the Ministry wrongfully cancelled that expansion. Moreover, CourtCanada alleges that the Ministry has “attempted to sabotage OSCAR in the Commercial List,” as an . . . [more]