Canada’s online legal magazine.

Archive for ‘Substantive Law’

Live Search Books and Canadian Legal Materials

Microsoft’s Live Search has a “Books” section that lets you search for and within the books that Microsoft is scanning for those libraries with which it is partnering. Material in the public domain is 100% searchable, readable on line and, typically, capable of being downloaded in PDF.

I did a very crude search (Canada and Canada AND law) — there doesn’t seem to be an advanced search feature in Live Search Books — and came up with hundreds and hundreds of hits. There is truly a treasure trove here for legal historians and historians of law. . . . [more]

Posted in: Legal Information, Legal Information: Libraries & Research, Legal Information: Publishing, Substantive Law

Supreme Court of Canada Courtroom Modernization Project Moves Ahead

The Supreme Court of Canada has just added a section to its website about its Courtroom Modernization Project.

Over the summer, Court staff installed new audio-visual equipment and wireless connections as well as imbedded laptops in the judges’ benches. Judges started using the new equipment last week to call up cases and other appeal documents directly on-screen during hearings.

Display screens for counsel and media will be added in the Spring of 2008.

Future modernization initiatives include a web-based portal for electronic filing of appeal documents and webcasting of hearings.

Cross-posted to Library Boy. . . . [more]

Posted in: Practice of Law, Substantive Law

More on Plain Language

Thanks to my recent post on Mellinkoff and his book “The Language of the Law,” I’ve had a delighful exchange of emails with Mark Adler, a retired English solicitor and plain-legal-language consultant. He tells me that Mellinkoff’s book was the first law book he read from beginning to end and the first he ever enjoyed. The excerpt from it on “manifest” that was quoted in the Language Log entry reminded him of an incident when he was in practice:

Acting for the proposed tenant of a shop, I received a draft lease from the landlord’s solicitor. It provided (as

. . . [more]
Posted in: Practice of Law, Substantive Law

Nasty Nosh Niche

Odd where hyperlinks will take you. Thanks to a piece in Slate on what to do about e-coli in the food supply, I wound up finding the Seattle law firm of Marler Clark LLP, which specializes in food poisoning cases — indeed the title on their home page declares it and the first paragraph of text claims that

Marler Clark is the nation’s foremost law firm with a practice dedicated to representing victims of food poisoning.

If you’d asked me this morning, I’d have said that the idea was a bit far-fetched, but there is indeed a niche for . . . [more]

Posted in: Practice of Law, Substantive Law

Spires, Antennae and the Court of Arches

There’s an interesting report in the Times Online of a judgment by the Court of Arches. Presided over by the Right Honourable and Right Worshipful the Official Principal and Dean of the Arches, it is the ecclesiastical court for the Province of Canterbury (i.e. the south half of England). Seems that a church and a local telephone company wanted to install a base station and antennae for mobile phones in the church spire. At the trial level, the Court of Arches refused permission on the ground that

some of the material to be transmitted through the antennae was not

. . . [more]
Posted in: Substantive Law

Hunting and Pecking; Music Dying; Measuring War

A few quick hits today as I’ve ushered 174 law students, mostly first years, through database training this week, and I’m nearing the end of my brain being productive.

I always find it interesting to observe the students during these training sessions to see how they relate to the technology. This year I noticed two interesting things. Firstly, in our training area the students can open either Firefox or Explorer and for the last few years when asked to open a browser Firefox has more often than not been their browser of choice. Not so this year, this year I . . . [more]

Posted in: Education & Training, Legal Information, Legal Information: Publishing, Substantive Law

Seeking Judgment

A clear candidate for today’s doc du jour would be the decision of Justice Benotto in the Red Cross tainted blood criminal trial, released yesterday afternoon. The only trouble is I can’t find it in an online form I can link to. For most lawyers this is no biggie: the commercial databases will have all the hot (and luke) decisions up within hours, if not minutes. CanLII, of course, will have the decision online in a few days’ time. But that’s not soon enough in a case like this, a case that excited considerable public attention, a lot of it . . . [more]

Posted in: Legal Information, Substantive Law: Judicial Decisions

Banned Books Week

The ALA’s Banned Books Week runs Sept. 29-Oct. 6. They have a first amendment resource page, which includes links to notable cases. In Canada, the CLA supports the Freedom to Read Week, coming up Feb 24-March 1. The Week is the collaborative work of several organizations, with the Book and Periodical Council in the lead role. Their website is worth a browse, as it has quite a bit of interesting content, including a list of Canadian articles and books on freedom of expression issues. . . . [more]

Posted in: Legal Information, Substantive Law

Georgia, Georgia, No Peace I Find

Language Log, the multiple author blog on — what else? — language, continues to surprise, this time with an entry on a treason trial in Georgia (the country, not the U.S. state). Roger Shuy, a retired but very active linguistics professor, discusses his role in the trial of Maia Topuria, a leader of an opposition party in Georgia who was accused of plotting to overthrow the government. ((His article points to these sources of information on the trial: Christian Science Monitor, Russia Today, and two pieces in Harper’s: . ))

His specialty is forensic linguistics, and . . . [more]

Posted in: Practice of Law, Substantive Law: Foreign Law

Judges Behaving Badly

Two cases that show that one can’t necessarily rely on judges for judgement.

The first is the wonderful tale of how a judge who was spurned for a post-retirement judge took it out on the firm he had hoped to join. Sir Peter Smith will now be remembered as much for this case ((Howell & Ors v Lees Millais & Ors [2007] EWCA Civ 720 (04 July 2007) )) in which he is censured in the strongest terms by the Court of Appeal as for his Da Vinci Code judgment ((Baigent & Anor v The Random House Group Ltd . . . [more]

Posted in: Practice of Law, Substantive Law: Judicial Decisions

Let’s Buy the Magna Carta

Ross Perot is putting his copy of the Magna Carta up for sale. Although it’s not one of the originals from 1215, this 1297 copy is still expected to bring $30 million when auctioned off in December.

Only two of the 17 copies are held outside England — one by Perot and the other, also a 1297 copy, by the people of Australia. This is a great opportunity for Canada to acknowledge this seminal event in its legal heritage by buying the Perot copy. It would take flair and a decent slice of some otherwise grey budget: is the government . . . [more]

Posted in: Legal Information, Legal Information: Information Management, Substantive Law