Earlier today I stumbled across an excellent, free Investment Treaty Arbitration website at UVic Law that has so far appears to have gone unnoticed by SLAW.ca commentators.

According to the site, it provides access to all publicly available investment treaty awards along with information and resources relating to investment treaties and investment treaty arbitration and links to further resources.

Readers of the site are encouraged to send investment treaty materials and awards to Professor Andrew Newcombe for posting.

You can access awards chronologically or alphabetically by claimaint or by respondent state. Information is also provided for expert opinions and ICSID . . . [more]

When it all happens online, how can parties' ages be proved?

Susan Clairmont reports in today’s Hamilton Spectator that Mark Conacher, a Toronto JP holding G20 bail hearings, banned note-taking in his court “the other day”. Clairmont reports that, when challenged, Conacher qualified the ruling, saying “The ban doesn’t apply to the media.” According to Clairmont, Conacher offered no explanation and cited no law.

I haven’t been able to find Clairmont’s column on a free web-site, but it’s available on a suitable PressDisplay, LexisNexis or Factiva subscription. . . . [more]

The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) in the United States filed a petition against the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in federal court for an independent review of the airport body scanner program, and a motion for an emergency stay of said program.

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]

In a prosecution that has garnered steadily growing criticism since it’s inception in 2008, two Russian art exhibit organizers were convicted today under the Russian Criminal Code section that sanctions “incitement of national, racial, or religious enmity.” See the Associated Press story. A 2008 post on GiF.ru – Art of Russia sets out a careful translation into English of the (long) Russian indictment. The text of Article 282 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation reads as follows in English:

Article 282. Incitement of National, Racial, or Religious Enmity

1. Actions aimed at the incitement of national, racial,

. . . [more]

This is an internal Heenan Blaikie piece which my colleagues Michel Gamache and Chantal Belanger (Technicienne en documentation) wrote to help those of us who have problems finding Québec official proclamations and the like. I think the tips are well worth noting for all Canadian legal researchers.

Some history

The Gazette officielle du Québec is the means by which the Quebec Government makes its decisions official. Published continuously since 1869, it makes public, on a weekly basis, all texts whose publication is required: statutes, regulations and other statutory instruments. . . . [more]

The Torontoist has an excellent run-down today on the various security, civil liberty and Charter issues that have arisen from the recent G20 meeting in Toronto–see Did police break the law during the G20?.

Ontario Ombudsman André Marin has announced he is launching an investigation into the controversial Ontario regulation made under the Public Works Protection Act prior to the G20. From the Ombudsman’s press release posted this morning:

The investigation, to be conducted by the Special Ombudsman Response Team (SORT), will examine the involvement of the Ministry of Community Safety and Correctional Services in the origin of Regulation

. . . [more]

I have in the past hoped for good (or better) interfaces to the massive amounts of older Canadian legal materials being digitized on the Internet Archive.

While that hope still remains (since I think there is a need for it), I was pleasantly surprised this morning that by simply searching the words “ontario AND regulations AND 1979” in the “Canadian Libraries” database, the result came first and it was relatively easy to get to the particular regulation I was looking for by choosing the PDF format of the document (although the PDF file was a bit large at over . . . [more]

A lawsuit launched to enjoin foreign law firms from practising law in India is lurching ahead in Chennai. Originally begun in March, the suit names 30 international law firms and one LPO as respondents. According to Legally India, the court has just ruled that the respondents will now be served and must defend against the suit.

The individual plaintiff, a lawyer, rests his case on the Advocates Act, 1961, which governs who may practice law. According to his petition (available here in PDF via Legally India), only Indian citizens may practice law in India, though foreigners may be admitted . . . [more]

The Supreme Court of Canada today granted leave to hear the appeal of Van Breda v. Village Resorts Limited, 2010 ONCA 84, a decision I blogged on earlier here.

One hopes the Court will take the opportunity to clarify when a court should take personal jurisdiction over out-of-province defendants since, despite a clear intention to clarify or update the law by the Ontario Court of Appeal, I am not convinced they did as much.

A search here on my custom Google search of Canadian law firms, blogs and journal sites shows a fair bit of chatter over this . . . [more]

On Tuesday July 6, I heard that the United States government filed a lawsuit against the State of Arizona over the immigration law, arguing that it is meant to supersede the federal government's authority under the US Constitution to regulate immigration.