The Osgoode Society for Canadian Legal History has announced its 2010 Publishing Programme. According to an announcement published in the 2009 Annual Reports and available on their website at osgoodesociety.ca, this year the Society will publish four new works:

1. Work on Trial: Canadian Labour Law Struggles
edited by Judy Fudge and Eric Tucker and published for the Osgoode Society by Irwin Law. $45 incl GST.

2. A History of the British Columbia Court of Appeal
by Christopher Moore and published for the Osgoode Society by the University of British Columbia Press. $45 incl GST.

3. Viscount Haldane: Wicked . . . [more]

The Supreme Court of Washington issued a decision on May 6th supporting a public library’s decision to fully filter Internet content, stating that such filtering could be viewed as “collection development”. The case is known as Bradburn vs. North Central Regional Library District.

Library Journal has an article that summarizes the decision and provides reactions and predictions from various experts. . . . [more]

I am currently attending the 2010 World Summit & Symposium on Elder Mediation and am presenting on ethics on May 11th and advance directives on May 12th. I enclose my presentation slides as follows:

It is estimated that there are currently 3.7 million Canadians over the age of 65. With the leading edge of the “baby boomers” poised to hit retirement in 2011, seniors will soon make up close to a quarter . . . [more]

Hello from Windsor. Like many of my Slaw colleagues, I am lucky to be attending the Canadian Association of Law Libraries Annual Conference this week. The conference has been interesting, invigorating, and energizing so far. 

This evening, an event was held at the University of Windsor Law School, sponsored by Canada Law Book. The event was titled “Innovation gallery”, but really, it was a speed dating event with presentations by a number of very talented people.

Conference attendees had an opportunity to attend five 10 minute presentations highlighting a variety of interesting projects, including:

• “Developing an On-Line Search Thesaurus

This week was the BIO international convention. 15,000 screaming fans biotech nerds converged on Chicago for a week of … well… I wrote a song about it.

Highlights were:

• Consulting company Battelle collaborated with BIO to release a report on biotech employment and government initiativeson a state-by-state level across the U.S. The data covers an interesting time period (2001-2008) and showed flat job numbers in pharma even before the 2008 recession and industry consolidation;
• A session on partnering with nonprofits was full of insight on why these collaborations are good for companies, nonprofits and patients; and
• A session

It might be time to visit once again the substance and situation of Bill C-232, which received 3rd Reading on March 31 and awaits Royal Assent to become law. The text the legislation is as follows:

1. Section 5 of the Supreme Court Act is renumbered as subsection 5(1) and is amended by adding the following:

(2) In addition, any person referred to in subsection (1) may be appointed a judge who understands French and English without the assistance of an interpreter.

1. L’article 5 de la Loi sur la Cour suprême devient le paragraphe 5(1) et est modifié par

We are waiting for a 10 am press conference by U.S. President Obama to announce his Supreme Court judge selection. Elena Kagan, former dean of Harvard Law School and the current U.S. Solicitor General appointed by Obama, is being reported as his top pick according to Business Week and a number of other sources. The Washington Post has a nice timeline of Kagan’s career to date. . . . [more]

♬ Zoom! Zoom! Zoom! Capoeira mata um!
Zoom! Zoom! Zoom! Capoeira mata um!♬

Music by: Serapis Bey, in the 1993 film Only the Strong
(Sorry David)

This past Friday the Supreme Court of British Columbia released the May 6 decision in Koubi v. Mazda Canada Inc. [Mazda], certifying a class-action under the Class Proceeding Act (CPA) on behalf of representative who purchased 17,909 Mazda3 vehicles between 2004 and 2007 over an alleged door lock defect.

The 20 authorized dealers in B.C. are defendants in the action. Similar actions have been filed in Ontario and . . . [more]

May 4, 2010, marked the 100th Anniversary of the Canadian Navy, a significant milestone all the more so in this part of the country. Tracing the legal roots, the Canadian Navy was created by the The Naval Service Act, S.C. 1910, c.43. (There are issues with the scan that I’ll fix at a later point), which came into force May 4th, 1910. The Nova Scotia Provincial Archives have posted an interesting gallery on the Canadian Navy posted to accompany the anniversary.

The reason I don’t have the necessary time to fix the scan is that I’m trying to . . . [more]

Some links on the result: CBC, BBC, ITN (in the news, a summary service), and The Times.

Here’s a good post from the Law Library of Congress on the fundamentals of the British general elections process, and a wikipedia page.

For news and interesting pre- and post-result commentary, see Vanity Fair Nate Silver, and Foreign Affairs.

And as a bonus, the BBC’s description of its projection of the results onto the side of Big Ben as they came in. . . . [more]

Today’s decision in R. v. National Post, 2010 SCC 16 (CanLII) contains the following line from Binnie J for the majority (McLachlin C.J. and Binnie, Deschamps, Fish, Charron, Rothstein and Cromwell JJ.:

As recently pointed out in Grant v. Torstar Corp., 2009 SCC 61, [2009] 3 S.C.R. 640, the protection attaching to freedom of expression is not limited to the “traditional media”, but is enjoyed by “everyone” (in the words of s. 2(b) of the Charter) who chooses to exercise his or her freedom of expression on matters of public interest whether by blogging, tweeting, standing on a street corner

It’s no secret that Canada’s mailboxes are disappearing. You often have to walk a mile or more for one of these ‘old skool’ objects. What you may not know, though, is that our scarce mailboxes are disappearing behind a kind of camouflage. Canada Post is going with a teflon sheet coating for the boxes that sports a crazy pattern of our postal codes, hoping to clad all of them by the end of the year, according to a story in the Toronto Star.

The point of this covering is not to make the boxes disappear from view, as would . . . [more]