The BBC is currently offering its program, “The Draftsman’s Contract,” online. It’s an examination in two parts of “the people who actually write our country’s legislation…” The first part, 15 minutes in length, is available now and for the next 6 days — after which it disappears, I suppose. The second part will be broadcast on December 17 at 20:45, and will presumably be similarly available for a number of days afterwards as streaming audio.

The BBC uses its own iPlayer format, which contains DRM restrictions, and has been the object of much criticism. . . . [more]

Today marks the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Amnesty International Canada is inviting people to get involved by participating in Write-A-Thon events taking across in hundreds of locations across the country.

More background:

• The 60th Anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: Worth Celebrating! (Canadian Human Rights Commission)
• Amnesty International Celebrates 60 years of Universal Human Rights Protection

Technology has become an essential part of practising law and working in a law office (or any office for that matter). My TechTips column from the Summer 2008 issue of LAWPRO Magazine summarizes what I think are the 10 essential technology skills and practices that every lawyer and law office staff person should be familiar with.

Do you know what Alt+Tab does? How about a right-click on your mouse? Do you know how to use Cut, Copy and Paste? How about Paste Special. The text format shortcuts will save you tons of time next time you have to type up . . . [more]

Chilling reading about the threats to the integrity of global communications that President Elect Obama will shortly face.

It comes from the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) Commission on Cybersecurity for the 44th Presidency. Its mandate was to develop recommendations for a comprehensive strategy to improve cybersecurity in federal systems and in critical infrastructure.

The report was released on December 8, 2008 on Capitol Hill. . . . [more]

Before curtailing her recent trip to Europe to deal with the political situation at home, Governor General of Canada, Her Excellency Michaëlle Jean was participating in a discussion about Canadian culture diversity at Masaryk University in Brno, Czech on November 29, 2008.

Her blog CitizenVoices.gg.ca reprints notes from two related talks: . . . [more]

The Peterson Institute for International Economics, a research institute located in Washington, D.C., has a summary and a table of US and Canadian Climate Legislation by State and Province. The table, which glosses legislation in 8 provinces and 22 states, can be downloaded in PDF.

[via Bill Dimitroff] . . . [more]

A sad but significant report from the U.S. Department of Justice Bureau of Justice Statistics publishes the data concerning capital punishment in 2007 in that country. Some 17 tables of statistics explore such matters as the demographics of persons under sentence of death, the number of persons executed in the last decade, method of execution by state, and so forth.

As of the end of December 2007, the median elapsed time since sentencing for inmates under sentence of death is 133 months. That is a month longer than 11 years.

[via beSpacific] . . . [more]

The Ontario Legislature yesterday passed Bill 37, the Child Pornography Reporting Act, 2008.

The bill was somewhat amended in Committee, notably to tie the definition of child pornography more closely to the Criminal Code definition (though it’s still not identical). You can see the amendments here and the bill as amended in Committee here.

People who commented on the bill on the ULC-ECOMM list in the spring were sceptical of its benefits and of its practicality. No member of the Legislature shared any such doubts, apparently. All three parties supported the bill.

The penalty for not reporting child . . . [more]

The United Nations Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights created a mechanism in 2006 to review the state of human rights in member countries. Canada’s turn comes up in 2009. The first step in the process is a self-evaluation by the target country. Canada submitted its report in September, and has made the submission publicly available here.

I’ve had only a brief look so far, but the report looks very interesting. The first bit provides insight into what programs/legislation/processes are in place to create a society which meets the goals of the UN. The second part provides a . . . [more]

Prof. Errol Mendes of UofO has stated that PM Harper’s recent decision to prorogue government is not just a bad idea, but “very dangerous.”

Any time that the prime minister wants to evade the confidence of the House now he can use this precedent to do so…

This is certainly an unprecedented situation that we saw unfold. I hope that we won’t come to the brink of this type of effort to unseat a sitting government going against the democratic wishes of the people of Canada.

Mendes is the same person who contemplated seeking an injunction when the election was . . . [more]

Yesterday, the Privacy Commissioner of Canada tabled her annual report on the Privacy Act. While she came down hard on a number of federal bodies such as the passport office, one aspect of the report should be of interest to lawyers generally.

The Commissioner reports on a whole range of complaints against tribunals and quasi-judicial bodies for publishing sensitive personal information about parties and non-parties. Decisions and tribunal records have always contained such information, but now that more of these decisions are readily available online, complainants are not happy that searching for their names online will bring up . . . [more]

CanLII announced this evening that, together with LexUM, it has released Reflex, “a tool allowing you to hyperlink your documentation with CanLII’s material.”

The simple notion is that, on the Reflex page, you upload a document (or a case name or single citation) from your machine and Reflex, recognizing case names, citations and legislation data, will edit that document by supplying citations (where necessary) and hyperlinks to the appropriate text. You can save the final result as an HTML document (which, of course, you can then convert to other formats as needed). Reflex accepts material in the following formats: . . . [more]