I learned recently that the University of Alberta has been digitizing microfilm or microfiche from the collection of Canadiana.org and placing the scans on the Internet Archive. (There’s a PowerPoint presentation online that will give you some sense of U of A’s digitization projects.) At present a search for [contributor:(canadiana.org)] turns up over 22,000 items. Of these, just under 800 are tagged “law” in some respect.

There is no attempt to catalog these items in any useful way, which means a researcher must rely on searching — not the easiest thing on the Internet Archive. (For example, . . . [more]

While doing my monthly domain name shopping, I stumbled upon what might be an interesting blog: http://www.ontariorulesofcivilprocedure.com/ It was created only 3 days ago and has no content, except the logo of the law firm behind it: Fraser Milsner Casgrain. Can someone tell me what is the big red square on top of their logo?

The Hollywood Reporter writes: Facebook is back in the Canadian Privacy Commissioner’s doghouse. According to the Privacy Commissioner’s news release of January 27, 2010, another investigation of Facebook has been launched in response to a new complaint – filed over changes made by Facebook in mid-December 2009, which required users to review their privacy settings. (See my previous posts part I, II and III looking at these changes.)

The complainant alleges that the new default settings would have made his information more readily available than the settings he had previously put in place. . . . [more]

The most recent issue of The Lawyers Weekly provides a snapshot of the quantative output of the justices of the Supreme Court of Canada in 2009:

“Looking at the opinions the individual judges wrote last year (as distinct from judgments they simply signed on to without comment) Chief Justice McLachlin and Justice Charron were the most solid majoritarians in the sense that they did the least concurring and dissenting, both wrote a total of nine majority or unanimous opinions, and Justice Charron wrote more unanimous judgments than anyone else — five.”

“Justice Charron and Justice Morris Fish spoke most

. . . [more]

John Morden and I have been discussing the extent to which Canadian courts look at cases from other courts, and I referred him to the excellent work of Professor Peter McCormick on the Supreme Court of Canada in a series of articles and a book Supreme at Last. . . . [more]

There has been much discussion on SLAW on the state of print case law reporters in the age of online judgments (click here for some of these posts).

For other research I am conducting, I obtained a photocopy of an article by Paul Perell (now a judge) from 1991 in the Legal Research Update quarterly newsletter (circa 1986 to 1996, RIP) called “Selecting Cases for the Ontario Reports.” In that article, (the now Mr. Justice) Perell lists out the six criteria for case selection as suggested by a Butterworths editor in England:

A case will be reported if:

–

. . . [more]

Late last year the Royal Canadian Mounted Police issued a directive to the agencies that facilitate national criminal background checks that has caused significant concern to employers. This lengthy post describes this important development.

Background on CPIC and background checks

The Canadian Police Information Centre or “CPIC” is a national database administered by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. It contains a range of information useful to law enforcement, including records about hybrid and indictable offences. CPIC is maintained primarily for law enforcement purposes, and is both populated and queried by “CPIC agencies” (local police forces and other government agencies) who . . . [more]

The Supreme Court announced this morning that it would release Prime Minister of Canada et al. v. Omar Ahmed Khadr on Friday morning. . . . [more]

According to a piece on Out-Law.Com, Nominet, the UK domain administrator, is allowing domain registrars for dot.uk domains to shut down web sites if there are credible allegations of criminal activity on those sites.

This is not supposed to happen with allegations of civil wrongs, such as copyright infringement (though if infringement is an offence under the Copyright Act, does that count as criminal?).

Registrars are cautioned not to lock someone out of their domain on the allegation of a commercial or personal rival . . .

Apparently this policy has been developed in association with the police. . . . [more]

Omar Ha-Redeye’s post about e-learning earlier this week prompts me to disclose a possible Law Commission of Ontario e-learning course, in conjunction with Ontario law schools. The LCO is in the process of renewal and one on-going issue is the relationship with the Ontario law schools, especially those schools other than Osgoode (which provides funding – including funding from York University – and inkind contributions to the LCO). Obviously, one manifestation of the relationship is in contracting researchers from the law faculties, in the appropriate case, (improvements in which are also under consideration), but another suggestion, from Western Law’s Dean, . . . [more]

This week in biotech focused on cost effectiveness, as everyone from Ontario to Florida and from VCs to pharma companies continue to look for ways to squeeze the most out of every dollar.

In Florida, a report assessing the state’s progress in attracting high value life science jobs showed that in the first six years of its efforts, legislators have spent about $1.4 million for each of the 1,100 jobs created. In the year we’ve been tracking similar data, this is the highest per-job spending we’ve seen.

The Florida report recommended more spending to assist with early-stage capital, . . . [more]

From Volume III, Issue II of Amicus Curiae, Western Law’s Student Paper

Canada was a different place before Trudeaumania swept the nation, and the man we know as Ivan Rand, founding Dean of this law school and former Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada, was a product of his times. It would be easy to dismiss Dean Rand as an intolerant bigot, but as William Kaplan explained to an audience at Western Law on Nov. 11, [2009,] Rand was complicated character.

“Canadian judicial biography has been, with a few exceptions, mostly uncritical and largely celebratory, written by . . . [more]