That’s the implication of a piece in today’s NYT as part of its American exceptionalism series, entitled Supreme Court’s Global Influence Is Waning .

It has been surprising (in the twenty-five plus years) since the Charter was introduced, how little our courts regard the details of the US jurisprudence in their decisions.

I’m currently reading Toobin’s The Nine – and it also looks as if the US court is so ideologically riven that no court would look there for coherent principle.

The NYT piece doesn’t cite much research, though the following references are of interest:

From 1990 through 2002,

An article in today’s Globe and Mail, “Wine drinkers are voters too,” by Beppi Crosariol, talked about a crackdown by the Liquor Control Board of Ontario and Manitoba Liquor Control Commission on the practice of direct importation of wine from British Columbia. The infraction, it seems, is of a 1928 statute, the Importation of Intoxicating Liquors Act, R.S.C. 1985, c. I-3 (considerably updated over the years). The kick in this act is in section 3 (1):

Notwithstanding any other Act or law, no person shall import, send, take or transport, or cause to be imported, sent, taken

There have been a few articles recently talking about a new proposed method of digital rights management called Digital Entertainment Content Ecosystem. The idea is to control what we do with video purchased online, and allow us to use it on multiple devices. See this LATimes article, and this TechCrunch article.

One problem with DRM is that it never really works. Someone always finds a way around it, so it does nothing to stop pirating on a commercial scale. And it usually causes problems for the average consumer, and puts undue limitations on what we can do with . . . [more]

The CMAJ continued its final piece on fault/no fault medical insurance this past week.

They cite a number of reports by the Canadian Medical Protective Association (CMPA), the body responsible for defending nearly all physicians in Canada:

• Towards the right balance
• Alternative Patient Compensation Models in Canada
• International medical liability systems — A comparative view

People dispute why there is so little change in our health care tort system.

Some say that it’s because it works so well. Others cite special interests from legal and insurance industries, poor public awareness, and disempowerment of injured parties.

Because the provinces already provide . . . [more]

Alan M. Dershowitz, that prolific (some would say prolix) law prof, publicity hound and sometime proponent of torture, has published his third book this year: Is There A Right To Remain Silent? Coercive Interrogation and the Fifth Amendment After 9/11. It gets a good review in the New York Times from Johnathon Mahler, who finds the book for the mostpart accessible by lay readers and, where it becomes dense with constitutional law, worth pushing ahead even so.

The description on the Oxford University Press page says this of the book:

…Dershowitz puts forward a bold reinterpretation of the

The development of technology and its extensive use in the legal field now requires technical competency for ethical practice.

The Ethics and Professional Issues Committee of the Canadian Bar Assocation (CBA) has developed a new Guidelines for Practicing Ethically with New Information Technologies.

These guidelines are intended to help lawyers take full advantage of technology while remaining in complaince with the CBA’s Code of Professional Conduct.

The marketing section mentions blogs starting on page 13, saying that marketing principles and advertising rules must also be abided by. I never thought until today that broken links could be unethical. . . . [more]

The Register directs our attention to a recent case from England, Oxonica Energy Limited v. Neuftec Limited [2008] EWHC 2127 (Pat), in which a talented but testy Deputy Judge slowly removes strips of the skin of a person who drafted the contract under review. Peter Prescott, a highly respected litigator and someone with a masters degree in physics, opens his judgment with:

How do we interpret a formal commercial agreement if it is ambiguous and we have reason to believe that its draftsman did not have a deep understanding of the relevant law? I think that is what this case

Former Senator Gérald Beaudoin, one of the giants of Canadian constitutional scholarship, passed away yesterday.

He was 79.

He was named to the Upper Chamber in 1988 by Prime Minister Brian Mulroney and retired in 2004 at the mandatory age of 75.

Beaudoin taught law at the University of Ottawa where he served as dean of civil law 1969 to 1979.

He was a member of the Pépin-Robarts Commission, 1977-79, co-chairman of the Beaudoin-Edwards and of the Beaudoin-Dobbie committees on constitutional renewal.

He also presided over the Senate committee on legal and constitutional affairs and was a member of . . . [more]

Badasa v. U.S.: Here’s a US immigration case in which the US government offered information from Wikipedia to support its argument about the status of Ethiopian travel documents. The appeals court eventually found that this was not a good source of evidence, and sent the matter back for reconsideration.

ArsTechnica has the story.

Does this sound right to you? Would a print encyclopedia be any better?

I don’t see in this story any concern about the hearsay nature of the evidence — like that of any website, pretty well, surely — though that might depend on the use being . . . [more]

Slaw is proud to announce The Thomas Cromwell Pages.

The selection of a new judge for the Supreme Court is an important event and now one that involves a protracted and intriguing process. Slaw believes it is important to make available widely as much relevant information as possible about the current nominee, Mr. Justice Cromwell. Accordingly we have created The Thomas Cromwell Pages, a collection of pages highlighting various aspects of Mr. Justice Cromwell’s work and the views that others hold of his suitability and judicial character.

In these pages you will find a selection of his judgments, 10 . . . [more]

An ad hoc group called the International Expert Group on Biotechnology, Innovation and Intellectual Property has released a report, “Toward a New Era of Intellectual Property: from Confrontation to Negotiation,” that is available at the website of The Innovation Partnership. It seems that the core movers behind the report come from McGill University’s Centre for Intellectual Property.

Unsurprisingly perhaps, the 40-page report, seven years in the making, calls for a reform of the IP system to return it to its root purpose of supporting innovation. An Executive Summary is available in PDF.

What strikes me is . . . [more]

Boing Boing has a recent post that refers to a day of protest being organized in the EU. Some excerpts:

An international protest against undue surveillance is being held next month on the 11th of October. It is ‘a broad movement of campaigners and organizations is calling on everybody to join action against excessive surveillance by governments and businesses’. We need to get this on the radar for the elections in the USA this year, the EU parliamentary elections next year and many more.

People who constantly feel watched and under surveillance cannot freely and courageously stand up for their . . . [more]