Two Supreme Court stories from me this week:

1) The Supreme Court of Canada has released a special edition of its Bulletin of Proceedings that provides a statistical overview of its activities for the period 1999-2009.

It provides information on leave applications submitted, appeals heard, judgments, and time lapses (time between the filing of a complete application for leave to appeal and the Court’s decision on whether leave should be granted; time between decision to grant leave and the hearing; time between the hearing of an appeal and the judgment).

2)The Court, the Osgoode Hall Law School . . . [more]

A few weeks back I noted a yet-to-be-published case by Ontario Master Donald Short on proportionality called Moosa v. Hill Property Management. It’s now been published here, along with this bit of visual advocacy:

I’ve heard Eugene Meehan talk about charts in his written advocacy presentation, but haven’t been exposed to much else on visual advocacy. I like this example because it communicates so much meaning so quickly and, moreover, because it’s accessible to those who are not artistically inclined. Does this offend your typesetter’s eye Simon? Other examples anyone? Links? . . . [more]

Remember Steve Matthews‘ Web Law Predictions for 2010?

Mobile Web Becomes Important: The mobile web made some major inroads in 2009, but I expect it to become a priority in 2010. By year’s end, expect to be sick of iPhone application launches from the legal industry – both from vendors and law firms. Also expect an increase in law firms launching mobile versions of their website, mobile friendly extranets, and hopefully in all this – something innovative and useful!

Earlier today Torys LLP launched a free app for iPhones and iPads:

• get our latest news
• read our

Internet Law News today reports on the arrest of four people in the US for fraud and unauthorized access to computers — at least I think that’s what’s going on. Here’s the story:

Four Men Charged In Computerized Online Ticket Scam
Four men accused of using a network of computers and automated software to buy up online tickets to concerts and sporting events and selling them at a profit were indicted on fraud, conspiracy, and computer hacking charges, federal prosecutors said on Monday. They allegedly made more than $25 million by re-selling more than 1.5 million of the “most coveted

The latest Radio Berkman podcast has Dave Weinberger interviewing Carl Malamud about his efforts to make US law more accessible and copyright free. . . . [more]

According to a report by Richard Liebrecht of the QMI Agency:

Alberta Musing Online Election Voting
New election rules have cleared the way for Internet and electronic voting, which could come to Alberta as early as 2013. “Obviously that online voting is something that’s on the forefront of people’s minds … people say, ‘I can do my banking online, but I can’t do my voting online’,” said Brian Fjeldheim, Alberta’s Chief Electoral Officer.

The Chief Electoral Officer went on to say “Once it has been proven to be effective, that the votes can be certified, all that security stuff can . . . [more]

Collaboration is a constant theme for biotech companies, from inception to exit: researchers work together to generate novel ideas, young companies work with development and formulation partners, and collaborations between pharmaceutical companies and biotechs are the classic final phase of drug development. 

That’s just the tip of the iceberg:

Foundations work together: foundations formed by the families of patients can be the most ardent advocates for getting drugs to market, but that is an expensive process. One solution is for multiple foundations to pitch in to fund the same project. That was the story with CureDuchenne and the Foundation . . . [more]

Mark Liberman raised an interesting question on the Language Log yesterday: Why is it, he wonders, that “the laws and practices dealing with the recording of human interactions seem to be so different for video compared to audio?” We penalize recordings of conversations without proper consent but think nothing of videoing millions of interactions daily.

Here in Canada, too, Criminal Code provisions concerning privacy seem directed at speech. Section 184. (1) provides that:

Every one who, by means of any electro-magnetic, acoustic, mechanical or other device, wilfully intercepts a private communication is guilty of an indictable offence and liable

London may still be for the moment the “libel tourism” capital of the world for affronted folk, but Paris has its strong points, too, if the case of Professor Joseph H. H. Weiler is anything to go by. A professor of law at NYU and the editor-in-chief of the European Journal of International Law, Professor Weiler was summoned to appear in French criminal court to defend himself against a complaint of criminal libel lodged by Dr. Karin N. Calvo-Goller, a senior lecturer at the Academic Center of Law & Business in Israel. The basis for her complaint? Professor Weiler . . . [more]

The Official Google Blog is reporting a conviction yesterday of three Google employees by a court in Italy of failing to abide by the Italian privacy code. According to Google, the gist of the matter is this: about three years ago some Italian students in Turin uploaded a video to YouTube that showed them bullying an autistic classmate. Google took the video down “within hours of being notified” of its existence and helped the police identify the uploader and those in the video. Subsequently, a prosecutor in Milan indicted the Google employees for criminal defamation and the privacy offence mentioned. . . . [more]

The annoyingly named Truth in Sentencing Act (S.C. 2009, c.29) came into force on Monday, February 22.

Given third reading in October of last year, the statute amends Criminal Code provisions concerning judicial freedom to take into consideration, when sentencing, time already spent in custody. (As always, the Library of Parliament summary and backgrounder is thorough.) The “common but not automatic” practice of the courts was to count pre-sentencing incarceration as double time. Now, the new rules require that courts may only count on a one-for-one basis, unless “the circumstances justify” granting the prisoner 1 1/2 days for . . . [more]

The annual Ted conference always has thought provoking presentations. One of the presentations this year was entitled “Four ways to fix a broken legal system“. Its worth taking the 19 minutes to watch.

The basic proposition of the presenter, Philip K. Howard, is that the legal system has become so complex that it instills fear to act. People become so self-conscious of their judgments that it skews behaviour towards failure. 

We should not just dismiss this as being unique to the American legal system. The Canadian system may not be as extreme in this regard – but . . . [more]