Although tweeting from a courtroom remains controversial, tweeting the content of a live webcast should be rather conventional, but is still a useful enterprise.

I was in the middle of a take-home midterm when I realized that the Omar Khadr hearing at the Supreme Court of Canada was on CPAC. After a few searches on Twitter, I realized that although people had posted that it was occurring, nobody in the legal community was covering the contents live (or almost live – a Senate broadcast delayed it).

I gave it a go, although the proceedings were well under . . . [more]

Omar Khadr’s lawyer is currently arguing before the Supreme Court of Canada (you can watch/listen to it live). He just now (10.10 a.m.) announce to the Court that he learned an hour ago that the U.S. Military Commission prosecution of Khadr, which had been stalled, is to continue. . . . [more]

A couple of new features are now available at Quickscribe’s BC Legislation Portal:

1. BC Bills Tracker – As BC Bills recieve their 1st or 3rd Reading and added into the Quickscribe databases, the new bill tracker page will automatically publish those alerts.
2. BC Consequential Amendments – When proposed legislation, if passed, will amend another Act, this page category will aggregate those related alerts.

Both tools may be personalized further – limiting by area of law, for example – using Quickscribe’s (free) RSS alert service for Bill Tracking. But if users are simply after a roundup of new BC . . . [more]

In C.H. Giles & Co. Ltd. v. Morris, [1972] 1 W.L.R. 307, [1972] 1 All E.R. 960 at 971 (Ch.D., Megarry J.) said:

… In this judgment I have referred to a number of authorities not cited in argument. On the procedural point I have reached no final conclusion, and so the citation of additional authorities in that respect does not raise any particular difficulty. But it is otherwise in relation to the question of specific enforceability. On this, the only authority cited to me by either side was Fry, cited by counsel for the defendants. Wilson v West

The Supreme Court of Canada is hearing Prime Minister of Canada, et al. v. Omar Ahmed Khadr tomorrow, November 13 — a Friday the 13th, as it happens. There is a webcast of the hearing scheduled to begin at 9 a.m. EDT.

You can read the SCC Case Information Summary to get a quick overview of the matter. The appellant’s (i.e. government’s) factum is online [PDF], as is that for Khadr [PDF].

The appeal is from a judgment of the Federal Court of Appeal: Canada (Prime Minister) v. Khadr, 2009 FCA 246 (CanLII), which in turn was an . . . [more]

The Times Online has a curious nostalgia piece entitled, “Whatever happened to the radical lawyers,” that keys off Michael Mansfield’s autobiography, Memoirs of a Radical Lawyer (co-written with Yvette Vanson). Mansfield, president of the Haldane Society of Socialist Lawyers, has been practising in Britain since 1967, and has a string of unpopular causes as his clients over the years. The article examines his, and others’, views on what happened to the radicalism of the sixties that seemed to motivate so many young law graduates.

I say the piece is curious because it supplies something of an answer . . . [more]

A U.S. federal court in the state of Georgia has ruled that Rule 53 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure prohibits “tweeting” from the courtroom:

“The immediate result of the court’s decision is to reject a request from a reporter for the Columbus Ledger-Enquirer that he be allowed to use his BlackBerry during the Shellnutt criminal case in order to send updates to his newspaper’s Twitter feed.”

This is exactly what Ottawa Citizen reporter Glen McGregor did during this year’s bribery trial of Ottawa mayor Larry O’Brien.

This whole area of discussion (the impact of social networking media . . . [more]

Chatting with Angela this morning about judgments, and then the Ontario Reports undermines my certainty about my prior views.

One expects that such issues as what is a judgment, and what is an endorsement, would have been determined years ago, when the basic rules of precedent were laid down by common law courts.

However, this morning’s copy of the Ontario Reports has me wondering. There are 80 pages of reported judicial decisions in part 10 of volume 96 of the Ontario Reports, Third Edition.

However, four of those decisions from the Superior Court totalling 61 pages are nominally endorsements. I . . . [more]

I’ve never pre-ordered a textbook until Melanie Bueckert’s “The Law of Employee Monitoring in Canada.”

This is no slight to Melanie’s fantastic background, but I didn’t expect much. Though there are exceptions, many privacy texts tend to be thin on substance, perhaps because the domain is evolving so quickly.

Given I had set my expectations low, I was delighted when I received Melanie’s text last month and discovered it included a thorough and deep discussion of the law of employee monitoring in Canada. This led me to introduce myself to Melanie, who is Legal Research Counsel at the Manitoba Court . . . [more]

A heads up for those interested in the Law Commission of Ontario’s Modernization of the Provincial Offences Act project. The Consultation Paper is scheduled for release early next week. It lists about 20 issues on which we want people’s views: should we address this issue? And if so, what should we recommend? We also want to know if there are issues we missed.

We were aware of the Streamlining Paper emanating from the MAG Working Group and tried to avoid duplication of issues. We’ll do the same with Bill 212 which recently received second reading, although it addresses only a . . . [more]

Cross posted at AvoidaClaim.com

There is a fantastic article by John Harvey at page 12 in the October 26 issue of Law Times. (Sorry I can’t give you a public link – unfortunately it is locked up for Law Times subscribers – they can access it in the Law Times Digital Edition here.

While written for Ontario lawyers as it references the Ontario Family Law Act (FLA), the risk issues the article highlights are equally applicable to lawyers in other provinces and territories.

The article has some great comments and quotes from Lorne Wolfson of Torkin Manes . . . [more]

Bill S-4: An Act to amend the Criminal Code (identity theft and related misconduct) came into force on October 22, creating a number of new offences in relation to identity theft and impersonation. As ever, the best way to acquaint yourself with the new provisions is by reading the excellent legislative summary provided by the Library of Parliament.

New offences include the following:

• identity theft (new Code section 402.2(1)) -:- knowingly obtaining or possessing “another person’s identity information in circumstances giving rise to a reasonable inference that the information is intended to be used to commit an indictable offence .