Yesterday police cleared out the protests in New York for Occupy Wall Street. The same day, the National Lawyers Guild (NLG) received a court injunction allowing the protesters to return. A copy of the injunction can be found here.

Coincidentally I was on The Agenda with Steve Paikin last night talking about whether we should be evicting protesters from our parks. You can see the episode here.

A press release from the NLG New York City Chapter is available here. . . . [more]

There’s an old saying among lawyers (and law profs) that claims “you can’t suck and blow at the same time.” But it would seem that inventor Sir James Dyson is managing to expel steam from his ears even while his vacuum cleaners continue to inhale a decent share of the “hoover” market. The reason for his turbulence is that his share has been somewhat lessened in Britain thanks to a recent decision of the court of appeal for England and Wales. In Dyson Ltd v Vax Ltd [2011] EWCA Civ 1206 the court decided not to overturn a trial . . . [more]

What are you doing at 6:00 PM (ET) on Monday, November 14, 2011? If you’re in Toronto, consider coming to Fraser Milner Cagrain at 77 King Street West to hear Human Rights Adjudication in the 21st Century, a talk by Timothy Endicott, Dean of the Faculty and Professor of Legal Philosophy (for Lawyers and Non-Lawyers alike)

The timetable is 6pm Wine and Cheese Reception, 6.45pm Talk and Discussion. $20 at the door but please let us know if you’re on the fence so we know how many to cater for. Here is the log-in.

Timothy Endicott is a Canadian . . . [more]

A few days ago, Antonio Cassese, a renowned international war crimes expert, died at his home in Florence, Italy at the age of 74.

A well-known professor of international criminal law, he was appointed in 1993 as a judge on the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, based at the Hague. It was the first international criminal tribunal since the ones that followed World War II.

Among his early decisions, seen as controversial at the time but widely accepted since, were several that changed basic precepts of international criminal law. One was that war crimes could be punished

. . . [more]

This past weekend, the State of California passed legislation banning minors from using tanning beds. This law will take effect on January 1, 2012. This is the most restrictive law on the use of indoor tanning beds in the United States (other states have some restrictions on the use, but no outright ban). Law-makers cite health concerns associated with this activity to justify the legislation.

Prior to this law, minors between the ages of 14 and 17 had to get parental consent before being able to use tanning beds, with the activity prohibited for those under the age of 14. . . . [more]

Fenerbahçe S.K. is a football club based in Istanbul; aka the Yellow Canaries. Fenerbahçe are defending league champions in the Turkish Süper Lig. On July 21, 2011, Fenerbahçe’s fans rushed the field in a protest against perceived slights of the team by the media. As you might be aware international football has been plagued with fan violence in recent years and football’s governing bodies have taken steps to punish teams where such violence has taken place. In response to the incident on July 21, the Turkish FF (TFF- Türkiye Futbol Federasyonu) sentenced Fenerbahçe to a closed door match, . . . [more]

One of the most fundamental of human rights is the right to participate in the making of the laws that govern you; and the basic right behind that is the right to vote. This might seem so clear to us now that it needs no mention, but equally clearly that hasn’t always been the case, one of the glaring illustrations being the relatively recent nature of women’s suffrage. Canada allowed women the vote only in 1917; the United States in 1920; France in 1944; and Switzerland in 1971. (There’s a good chart on Wikipedia that let’s you sort by country, . . . [more]

Texas, it seems, has a problem with barratry. What, you may ask, is barratry? It is — or once was — a crime, a tort, and an act of professional misconduct. And if you were unclear about all that, you’re in good company. The former Associate Chief Justice of Ontario confessed in McIntyre Estate v. Ontario (Attorney General), 2001 CanLII 7972 (ON CA) that, “I include myself among those who had never heard of the tort of barratry until I read the material on this motion.” He went on to explain:

[23] Barratry is related to, but clearly

. . . [more]

Mirela and her staff at NYU have kindly uploaded my updates to my Researching Canadian Law Guide on their GlobaLex website.

Updated guides have also been added for Bhutan, Latin America, Kenya and Sweden.

I regularly use these foreign law guides (along with the international law guides) when doing international and foreign legal research. . . . [more]

In the age of social media like Facebook and Twitter, school administrators are asking whether such electronic communication is appropriate between students and teachers. They are wondering where boundaries for such communication should be placed. Many school boards are choosing a strict path, forbidding or restricting any communication via social media between students and teachers.

Lawyers from the Center for Constitutional Rights have filed a complaint on behalf of SNAP, a survivor support group, at the International Criminal Court (ICC) alleging that senior Vatican officials – including the current Pope – have committed crimes against humanity on the basis that “Vatican officials tolerate and enable the systematic and widespread concealing of rape and child sex crimes throughout the world.”

The 84-page complaint is available here (PDF) and makes for interesting, if not depressing, reading. Included in the complaint as part of the factual background is an overview of the abuse that has occurred in . . . [more]

The European Court of Justice has issued a ruling in Case C‑442/09 Bablok et al v. Freistaat Bayern (Monsanto intervening) that might well cause difficulty for food producers and for Monsanto, the owner of patents to many genetically modified organisms used or sold in the food chain. The plaintiff, a beekeeper, sued the Bavarian state for compensation because pollen from a government owned test field of Monsanto’s GM corn (maize) found its way into his honey, polluting it.

The court agreed that the trace amounts of pollen from the Monsanto corn, even though the pollen was no longer alive or . . . [more]