In Edwards v. Canada (Attorney General), the Privy Council considered whether “persons” under s. 24 of the Constitution Act included women,

24. The Governor General shall from Time to Time, in the Queen’s Name, by Instrument under the Great Seal of Canada, summon qualified Persons to the Senate; and, subject to the Provisions of this Act, every Person so summoned shall become and be a Member of the Senate and a Senator.
[emphasis]

Lord Chancellor Viscount Sankey of the Privy Council stated,

…their Lordships have come to the conclusion that the word “persons” in sec. 24 includes

Following the European Court of Justice decision earlier this year in Google Spain v AEPD and Mario Costeja González, Google has had a flood of requests to have webpages deleted from their index. More than a third of these requests, or over 60,000 links, come from the U.K.

Google released data today demonstrating where the requests originate from:

To date, Google has evaluated nearly 500,000 links for removal. More than half of all urls reviewed by Google are removed, meaning that there are still many others that they do not.

This data also reveals that the vast majority of . . . [more]

The Prime Minister decided this week to send Canadian aircraft to Iraq and possibly to Syria to strike ISIS targets in these countries. The attacks will be exclusively by air and will not involve land troops. The motion is expected to be debated in Parliament tomorrow.

The threats posed by ISIS is certainly unique, and is not easily solved. Nobody suggests that these airstrikes alone will eliminate the problem. Opposition groups have already rejected the plan, indicating that the case for such involvement has not been properly presented. The self-defence basis and humanitarian grounds for doing so have already been . . . [more]

The 2014 course on International Law and Legal Information from the International Association of Law Libraries is taking place right now in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Of particular interest are the Tweets being posted to Twitter with the tag #IALL2014. Today’s content is focussed largely on human rights issues.

Related links:

• #IALL2014 on Twitter
• IALL 2014 Annual course website
• Full conference programme is here (PDF)
• International Association of Law Libraries (main website)

Writing clearly and concisely is a goal that often eludes lawyers, especially when writing factums.

Justice Barbier of the United States District Court Eastern District of Louisiana ruled on a motion on Sept. 15, 2014 in the complex litigation surrounding the BP oil spill, In re: Oil Spill by the Oil Rig “Deepwater Horizon” in the Gulf of Mexico, on April 20, 2010.

Although denying the motion, Justice Barbier commented on the response by BP, in particular in their formatting:

…the Court must address the format of BP’s opposition memorandum.

The briefing order allowed BP’s counsel to file a

The legal memos from 2004, over a decade ago, outlining the power of the President to use wiretapping, have been obtained through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union and Electronic Privacy Information Center.

The project was called Stellar Wind, and allowed the National Security Agency (NSA) to collect information, even when it was contained in the U.S., as long as one end of the communications was overseas and a party was believed to be connected to terrorism.

Jack Goldsmith, Assistant Attorney General at the time, wrote in a memo from May 2004,

…the

The Australian Law Reform Commission released a report earlier this week on Serious Invasions of Privacy in the Digital Era .

The report proposes a new tort remedy for invasions of privacy that are serious, committed intentionally or recklessly and that cannot be justified as being in the public interest — for example, posting sexually explicit photos of someone on the Web without their permission, a topic much in the news recently because of the massive leak of nude photos of some of Hollywood’s biggest female celebrities.

The document also recommends a range of defences to protect free speech: . . . [more]

The Supreme Court of Texas has refused to provide the identity of an anonymous blogger, in a 5-4 split decision released this week. The blogger initially claimed to be an employee of the Plaintffs’ company. He created a site in 2007 which targeted a business and its CEO, making a number of disparaging comments about the Plaintiffs and alleging involvement in a Ponzi scheme.

The Plaintiffs sought the identity of the blogger through Texas Rule of Civil Procedure 202, which states,

The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in Strasbourg decides thousands of cases every year on an unimaginably vast range of topics. And it has often heard cases on controversial subjects years before Canadian courts have tackled them.

The ECHR has been publishing a series of Factsheets that describe key jurisprudence of the institution broken down by subject.

The ECHR recently added new Factsheets on:

• Persons with disabilities
• Work-related rights
• New technologies
• Gender identity issues

The ECHR hears complaints from individuals living in any of the member states of the Council of Europe about violations of the European Convention of . . . [more]

Today is the finals for the 2014 World Cup between Argentina and Germany.

Although I don’t follow sports much, you cannot but help notice the sea of multicoloured jerseys around you. So I did what any disinterested lawyer would do, and I started taking a look at the laws around the FIFA competition.

Of course FIFA has its own Laws of the Game, a 140 page document which details how the matches will be taking place. I’ll be carrying this handy document to the finals to look closely for any contraventions of the rules, though it’s unlikely any of . . . [more]

Lower courts in both Canada and the US have been deeply divided on the application of their respective Supreme Courts’ precedents on whether the police need a warrant to search the contents of a smart/cell phone seized during a lawful arrest. On June 25, 2014, the US Supreme Court unanimously settled US law in Riley v. California, No. 13-132. The court found that privacy interests at stake outweigh any legitimate governmental interest, absent any “exigent circumstances”.

The Fourth Amendment of the US Constitution provides protection against unreasonable search. A common law exception to the protection under the Amendment . . . [more]

Legal researchers too often overlook law reform commission reports as sources of vital information and analysis.

Law commissions consult widely with stakeholders, sometimes compare how other jurisdictions have dealt with the same problem and they frequently dig into the history of an issue.

Here are a few reports released in the past few weeks.

• British Columbia Law Institute Report Proposes Franchise Act : The report recommends that British Columbia become the 6th Canadian province to adopt franchise legislation. The report analyzes franchise legislation in force in Canada, the U.S., and elsewhere, and contains a detailed legislative proposal with commentary. Alberta,