On July 19, 2010, the BC Attorney General released a white paper
containing draft legislation and policy proposals to significantly amend legislation in BC related to family law.

The suggested changes include the following:

– Enabling parenting coordination by agreement or court order;
– Amending the Commercial Arbitration Act to address family arbitrations;
– integrating reproductive technologies into determining a child’s legal parents;
– Replacing the terms “custody” and “access” with “guardianship” and “parenting time”;
– Defining “guardianship” through a list of “parental responsibilities” that can be allocated to allow for more customized parenting arrangements;
– Extending the legislative property . . . [more]

The legal press around the world this weekend featured a variety of stories that caught my attention. Let’s visit India, Sierra Leone, Namibia and England. . . . [more]

For lawyers looking for clients and others considering additional financial consequences of the G20, the just released Vancouver (City) v Ward 2010 SCC 27 is perhaps a collection manual for those who were improperly arrested at the G20.

The facts of Ward. I’m quoting the headnote:

During a ceremony in Vancouver, the city police department received information that an unknown individual intended to throw a pie at the Prime Minister who was in attendance. Based on his appearance, police officers mistakenly identified W as the would‑be pie‑thrower, chased him down and handcuffed him. W, who loudly protested his detention

. . . [more]

The US Senate has passed a bill against ‘libel tourism’, essentially barring the enforcement of defamation judgments from places that the US deems to protect free speech insufficiently. In what has become a widespread but still unfortunate practice, the bill’s name is an acronym: the Securing the Protection of our Enduring and Established Constitutional Heritage Act (viz the SPEECH Act).*

Out-law.com has this story and more official information is available on the Govtrack.us site. (It does not show the bill as passed as of July 14.)

Is such a bill necessary? Would not a rule like the Canadian . . . [more]

I was browsing Alberta case law posted to CanLII today using their funky RSS feeds and an interesting tidbit caught my eye. In Alberta (Justice and Attorney General) v. Yousif, 2010 ABQB 478, solicitor and client costs were awarded against the Minister.

[8] This matter was instigated by the Minister who was the principal architect of the legislation under which the action was taken. As I indicated in the last judgment, the objective of the legislation is that proceeds and instruments of crime may be used for the benefit of victims of crime. It gives the Minister broad

. . . [more]

I recently read a biometrics-related article on CNET News (I am obsessed with the subject) indicating that a group of Japanese railway companies has installed 27 facial recognition-enabled billboards in subway stations around Tokyo as a one-year pilot project that will collect data on passersby in order to tailor advertisements to them in real time.

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]

At a session at the Fourth International Legal Ethics Conference at Stanford Law School this morning Laurel Terry pointed us to a very elegant model for organizing legal information. It was developed a decade ago by the Project on International Courts and Tribunals. Simon noticed the link in the post here, but didn’t drill down.

The PICT Research Matrix is the first comprehensive, systematic and holistic mapping of the international judicial system. It encompasses 18 international judicial bodies, grouped in six clusters according to their geographical scope and/or subject-matter jurisdiction. For each institution, 29 issues, grouped in five . . . [more]

The European Community has placed a new online front end on its law-related offerings, aiming to make it easier to find what you want amid the welter of languages, systems, and regulations. The recently launched European e-Justice Portal contains sections directed at the public, businesses, the legal profession, and the judiciary. Within the Legal Profession section are the following resources:

• Law – providing general information and links with respect to the laws of the union, member states, and international treaties
• Case law – offering links to databases containing judgments for these various jurisdictions (and notably lacking any references to WorldLII

. . . [more]

A member of the Uniform Law Conference – Electronic Commerce (ULC-ECOMM) email list points out that the electronic version of the Ontario Reports is announced by an email to members with a link to the latest edition and that states:

This communication is intended for use by the individual(s) to whom it is specifically addressed and should not be read by, or delivered to, any other person. Such communication may contain privileged or confidential information.

He asks, given that the material in the ORs is all likely available on library shelves or elsewhere: “Does this make any sense?”

Presumably the . . . [more]

Happy Friday! The long awaited, new Alberta Rules of Court regulation is available.
Order in Council 256/2010 alerts us that the Rules of Court is regulation made under the authority of section 28.1 of the Judicature Act. The O.C. contains the appendix that is the Rules regulation.

As previously mentioned this document is a culmination of hard work by many in the legal community. Congratulations to all who contributed to the rules revision. . . . [more]