There weren’t exactly an Ark’s worth of devleopments this week, but what did develop came two-by-two.

This week saw two very public regulatory developments in the U.S.:

• The FDA took two heavy steps against highly visible advertising: they said that General Mills’ claims on Cheerios boxes that the cereal can help lower cholesterol means that Cheerios are a drug and should be tested and regulated accordingly; and they chastised a number of pharma companies for ads placed with Google because the ads (limited to 95 characters) do not contain the required risk information. 
• Also in the U.S., Rep. Pallone

I’ve mentioned the controversy surrounding the safe injection sites before. But I went in for a closer look recently in Vancouver, when I attended the appeal by the Crown of the decision of Pitfield J. last year in PHS Community Services Society v. Canada, [2008] B.C.J. No. 951; 293 D.L.R. (4th) 392 (B.C. S.C.) that allowed the facility to stay open.

The Respondents in this case were seeking the extension of an exemption for the Insite facility under the Controlled Drugs and Substance Act (CDSA).

The opposition to the exception by the Federal Crown, appealing the decision made by . . . [more]

After a week, we seem to have stumped the research skills of Slaw’s readers – or at least the time and patience of our competitors to date – in the global Scavenger Hunt, the contributions just keep on coming.

In terms of the contest list of 50 dates, set by the two Simons, the table below lists the dates remaining to be identified. The lead is still with our reader (a pioneer blogger) in Oxford, who is well familiar with the Bodleian Law Library. He has 148 points. Close behind is a prominent lawyer from Toronto is close behind . . . [more]

Patricia told us this morning about the LCO’s dialogue about law reform, through Wednesday’s symposium.

This is a live post on Michael Tilbury’s Public Lecture entitled “Win-Win” or “Who Will Rid Me of this Turbulent Priest?” The Relationship between Law Reform Commissions and Governments . . . [more]

Science writer Simon Singh included this passage in piece he wrote for the Guardian:

The British Chiropractic Association claims that their members can help treat children with colic, sleeping and feeding problems, frequent ear infections, asthma and prolonged crying, even though there is not a jot of evidence. This organisation is the respectable face of the chiropractic profession and yet it happily promotes bogus treatments.

The Association sued Singh for libel. Evidently in British libel law, a judge must rule as to whether the statement in question was a “comment” or a “statement of fact.” If it is ruled the . . . [more]

The International Criminal Court (ICC) has published on the web a set of “Legal Tools” for use by members of the public:

They equip users with legal information, commentaries and an application to work more effectively with core international crimes cases (involving war crimes, crimes against humanity or genocide). The Tools serve as an electronic library on international criminal law and justice. They comprise at present over 40,000 documents in several databases (the “Legal Tools Database”), together with four legal research and reference tools developed by lawyers with expertise in international criminal law and justice: the Case Matrix,

The media are slowly picking up on the number of court cases that are requiring disclosure of Facebook and other social network pages in litigation. SunMedia has a story today — see, e.g. “Social networking plays out in court” in the North Bay Nugget, and yesterday there was a story on Canoe Technology, “Facebook content showing up in lawsuits.” [See also “An Obligation to Discuss Facebook During Discovery,” from a couple of months ago on Slaw.]

Ian Kerr of U of Ottawa is quoted in the Sun Media story as saying this:

“The courts

First, a quick plug for the LCO’s Public Lecture this evening at 5:30 in Convocation Hall at Osgoode Hall, 130 Queen Street West. It’s all about the complex relationship between law reform commissions and governments and delivered by a man who has been close to the action as a commissioner with the New South Wales Law Reform Commission for many years, Michael Tilbury.

And tomorrow is the Symposium: registration at 8:15 am, starting at 8:45 am, going until 4:30 pm. Lunch included. This is a chance to engage with people who have written about, influenced and engaged in law reform . . . [more]

As we said in launching the Slaw Scavenger Hunt contest, we always knew that the List that the two Simons had assembled was going to be partial, and we’ve been gob-struck at how we could have put a list together and missed dates as significant as the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen from 1789, which led to so many other developments. Duh!

But we’ve been overwhelmed by the variety and the erudition of what our readers have suggested should go on the list. So here is the list that our reader contestants have put together: . . . [more]

Okay – here are all of the dates that have been successfully identified by the contestants in the Slaw Scavenger Hunt, designed to see if we could supplement the entries in the World Digital Library. We listed fifty dates, and in two days our readers have spotted over half. . . . [more]

The Philadelphia Bar Association has issued an advisory opinion (PDF) concluding that it is unethical for a lawyer to have a third party “friend” somoene on Facebook for the purposes of getting information about that Facebook user.

Facebook lets users fine tune their privacy settings, allowing a user to lock down all their info so it is only visible by friends or subsets of friends. I’m personally of the view that if a user has locked down their privacy settings, they are explicitly expressing an expectation of privacy in the material that is posted. But if someone voluntarily friends someone . . . [more]

There is an article available through SSRN that discusses link rot in court decisions by Tina Ching (Reference Librarian, Seattle Univ. Law Library) in The Next Generation of Legal Citations: A Survey of Internet Citations in the Opinions of the Washington Supreme Court and Washington Appellate Courts, 1999-2005 [SSRN], 9 J. App. Prac. & Process 387 (2007).

As more legal research is conducted online, it is reasonable to conclude that there will be a corresponding increase in citations to the Internet by judges in their opinions. With the widespread public use of the Internet to access information along with the