Of all the world’s familiar objects few are as recognizable as the red, London double-decker bus. And the prince of these — for there have been variations on a theme here — is the Routemaster pictured below.

Recognizable by its distinctive half cab and by the hop-on-hop-off back door, the Routemaster served London from the mid fifties until December 9, 2005, when the very last of the scarlet behemoths was taken out of service.

London Mayor “Red” Ken Livingstone presided over the demise, but five years later Tory blue Mayor Boris Johnson decided that they were wanted again and so . . . [more]

The title of this posting is the title of an article that just appeared on the Chronicle Review website of the The Chronicle of Higher Education.

Call it a more temperate look (more temperate than that of a now retired Canadian law professor – already noted on this forum) at law school education, albeit in the United States rather than Canada.

The focus of the article is the education of the graduates from “elite” law schools in the U.S. “at a time when most of the more-radical members of the faculty had either already disappeared or were losing their . . . [more]

defamation - no more symbolic damages in the era of proportionality?

We often bemoan that lawyers don’t take seriously their duty to understand e-discovery. Today we tackle another subject that attorneys seem to avoid, often to their peril as they step on virtual cow pies. Social media is so pervasive that ignoring its legal implications is (we think) simple incompetence. Now that the active Facebook user population is more than 400 million globally (more than the U.S. population), it is clear that the social media phenomenon is here to stay.

Not only do lawyers need to understand the upsides and downsides of social media for their clients – they need to . . . [more]

The U.S. Federal Judiciary launched a radical redesign of its website recently.

As part of the redesign, it even created its own YouTube channel.

Other law-themed YouTube channels I have come across include:

• euTube (European Union)
• ICLR Channel (Incorporated Council of Law Reporting – publisher of the Law Reports in the UK)
• Law Library of Congress
• Courthouse Libraries BC
• HeinOnline

Those are just a few examples of what is out there. . . . [more]

I learned a lot at the recent CALL/ACBD/MichALL Conference. I am very happy to report (just in case my management team wonders why they send me to these things) that I am putting one of the things I learned into immediate practice.

Susan Gibbons, Vice Provost and Andrew H. & Janet Dayton Neilly Dean at River Campus Libraries at the University of Rochester, gave a plenary presentation on May 11 titled “Avoiding Obsolescence: Understanding and Engaging the Net Generation”. Susan’s talk had several objectives including understanding what the new generation of library users expect from libraries. She discussed . . . [more]

SCC upholds Alberta courts in limitation periods in international arbitrations.

An event perhaps long overdue, today May 20, 2010 is the day Duke University will shut down the Internet’s first discussion forum. The “Users Network” or its more recognizable name ‘Usenet’ was started in 1979, and evolved to more than 120,000 newsgroups on almost every subject imaginable.

We could call Usenet the Twitter of yesteryear, and that wouldn’t be too far off. But even as we say good-bye, I see attributes in Usenet that are still somewhat unique. Will we ever see the Internet offer a single source and location of global discussion? It’s not likely.

I also find . . . [more]

LEAF lobbies to defeat or amend Bill-C3 on discrimination in the Indian Act

General consultations on Quebec’s Bill 94, An Act to establish guidelines governing accommodation requests within the Administration and certain institutions started on May 18, 2010. Much to my annoyance, many journalists and media outlets are referring to the bill as “the facial covering bill” or “the niqab bill”. To summarize, the bill says...

“Psychotic kindergartens.” According to this piece from guardian.co.uk, Robert Martin, professor of law, emeritus, at the University of Western Ontario used this term and the term “feminist seminary” to describe Canadian law faculties. Martin’s article, in the October 2009 edition of the scholarly journal Interchange, is behind a paywall. I have not read it, but thought it worth pointing to nonetheless. . . . [more]

The government of Quebec recently proposed regulations (February 2010) to better control who may provide provincial immigration services to immigrants. Specifically, under the proposed regulations, only Quebec-licensed lawyers, notaries and immigration consultants will be entitled to represent clients in Quebec immigration matters.