June Callwood was a prominent journalist, author and social activist. The 2nd annual June Callwood Lecture in her memory is coming up in Toronto as follows:

Friday, April 25, 2008
7 p.m.
Toronto Reference Library
789 Yonge Street

Justice Denied: the Wrongfully Convicted in Canada
Guest Speaker: James Lockyer,lawyer and social justice advocate

James Lockyer is a founding director of the Association in Defense of the Wrongly Convicted (AIDWYC), a Canada wide organization which advocates for the wrongly convicted. Called “a tireless defender of the underdog,” Lockyer has been involved in exposing many wrongful convictions in Canada, including the

What appears to be a personal effort by Robert Burnham, the Napoleon Series website offers some legal material from around the turn of the 18th century that will be of interest to historians and and others perhaps. On the Government and Politics page, for instance, there are links to essays on diplomatic missions and treaties, plus translations of select treaties, declarations and conventions written between 1799 and 1815, essays on some laws passed by the British Parliament during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Eras, and the whole Napoleonic (i.e. Civil) Code in a 1805 translation. . . . [more]

I just noticed while browsing CTV news on a wireless connection in my hotel room in Boston that their lead story is that Mr. Justice Bastarche is retiring from the Supreme Court of Canada . . . [more]

Queen’s University of Belfast has an International Law Video Library that offers “video holdings of interviews with leading commentators and practitioners in the field of international human rights.”

There are interviews on:

• Regional Human Rights Systems
• International Criminal Law
• National Human Rights Institutions
• Women’s Rights
• Genocide
• The Slavery Project

According to the BBC News online:

Search engines should delete personal data held about their users within six months, a European Commission advisory body on data protection has said.

The recommendation is likely to be accepted by the European Commission and could lead to a clash with search giants like Google, Yahoo and MSN.

Google and Yahoo anonymise user data after 18 months, while MSN does the same after 13 months.

The report from the Article 29 Data Protection Working Party doesn’t seem to be available online yet. As usual, however, the BBC story will give you a good . . . [more]

The Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School is celebrating its 10th year. Wow! They have been holding a series of events including distinguished speakers, book releases and the like, including the talk by Clay Shirky we previously noted. The whole thing culminates with “The Future of the Internet” conference on May 15 & 16, 2008. There will also be a gala the evening of May 16th. The Agenda looks stellar. . . . [more]

The Ontario Court of Appeal has gone off the air. Video coverage of certain appeals, which started last September (see Ontario Court of Appeal is Webcasting on Slaw) has apparently stopped and, more’s the pity, the archive of past hearings has gone. There’s nothing on the webcasting page now except the promises you have to make to get admitted to the screening room.

Watching a court of appeal in action is hardly up there with a viewing of the Sopranos or Six Feet Under, but it has its own attractions, and it would be a shame if the project was . . . [more]

The first video gaming research symposium at the University of Toronto will be taking place as follows:

Tuesday May 13th 2008
8 am – 4 pm

40 St. George Street
Bahen Centre for Information and Technology
University of Toronto
Room 1190

Video gaming incorporates and impacts cutting edge research in the fields of computer science, engineering, sociology, management and law. We are delighted to present a broad array of research projects that are representative of the breadth of work underway at the University of Toronto.

The presentations will focus on the technical aspects of video game design and then consider

Earlier this week, the President of the Treasury Board tabled the 2008-09 Reports on Plans and Priorities in the House of Commons on behalf of 93 federal departments and agencies.

The 2008-09 Reports on Plans and Priorities (RPPs) are departmental expenditure plans that elaborate on the information contained in the 2008-09 Main Estimates tabled on February 28, 2008.

These RPPs set out departmental priorities, provide performance measurement indicators, and explain a department’s expected results.

The 2008-2009 RPP for the Supreme Court of Canada is included in the list.

One of the big priorities is “court modernization” which includes:

• modernization of

That’s the question raised in a webcast from Outlaw, consisting of an interview with BAILII executive director Joe Ury.

The article based on the Interview, announces that Bailii will shortly publish the 3000 most important decisions in the English common law:

Bailii approached academics at universities all over the UK and asked them to list the most important rulings in their area of expertise. It then sought permission to publish those rulings one by one.

“It’s been a long slog,” said Ury. He said that the project was returned a list of 2,600 judgments, and that it has . . . [more]

We’ve discussed the transition of the Canada Law Book Company caselaw materials from Lexis-Nexis to a new BestCase product providing electronic access to almost all the caselaw that CLB has ever produced ((Due to licensing restrictions in the arrangements that CLB has with Thomson-West, the Canadian Patent Reporter is excluded)).

Today it launched. Tomorrow Lexis-Nexis’ Canadian materials will have an entirely new set of source materials.

Along with the other Toronto research lawyers, I had an advance look at the interface last week.

The good news is that in an amazingly short period of time, CLB has managed to develop . . . [more]

An article in today’s London Free Press by David Canton of eLegal talks about the concern the European Commission for Justice, Freedom and Security has about tracking dots that some colour laser printers leave on printed material. From David’s article:

Printer makers are able to encode the serial number, manufacturing code and the date of printing through a series of small yellow dots interspersed on the printed paper. These dots are invisible to the naked eye…

Xerox has admitted it provided tracking dots to [the U.S.] government. At present, only select enforcement agencies have the capacity to read the codes.