The Canadian Law Library Review/Revue Canadienne des bibliothèques de droit (CLLR) is currently welcoming article submissions from members of the legal community.

The CLLR is the official publication of the Canadian Association of Law Libraries. It is an open access, online journal published three times per year. Articles typically range from 2,000-4,000 words.

Prior to publication, all submissions are subject to review and editing by members of the Editorial Board or independent subject specialists; the final decision to publish rests with the Editorial Board. Independent peer review is possible if requested by the author. Please view the CLLR style . . . [more]

From across the border, Canadians have been watching the fallout from recent decisions from the United States Supreme Court. In its 6-3 decision in West Virginia v. EPA (West Virginia), released this past summer, the U.S. Supreme Court significantly limited the Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to regulate greenhouse gas emissions.

In this post, we examine the implications of the West Virginia decision: What are the effects of this decision during a global climate crisis? How does the U.S. Supreme Court decision compare to Canadian courts’ treatment of regulatory authority? And more importantly, how do we respond when a . . . [more]

We live in an information age, and the practice of law is built on the ability to access that information efficiently and accurately. Rapid advances in technology mean that the volume of data being generated is immense, and the task of staying on top of it is increasingly more difficult.

If your work involves electronic discovery, legal data and information management, records governance and privacy law, the Osgoode Certificate in E-Discovery, Information Governance and Privacy will provide you with the necessary skills and knowledge to remain at the top of your game. Navigating large amounts of information in the course . . . [more]

Every week we present the summary of a decision handed down by a Québec court provided to us by SOQUIJ and considered to be of interest to our readers throughout Canada. SOQUIJ is attached to the Québec Department of Justice and collects, analyzes, enriches, and disseminates legal information in Québec.

ADMINISTRATIF (DROIT) : Un service de police a procédé à une vérification à l’égard de l’appelante relativement à un empêchement ayant un lien avec les aptitudes requises et la conduite nécessaire pour occuper un emploi dans un service de garde et a divulgué 2 incidents, soit une tentative de suicide . . . [more]

Should judges make pop culture references in judicial decisions?

This column argues that they should not. As elaborated below, pop culture references risk being more obscuring than elucidating, more alienating than welcoming, and possibly soon out of date. While judges and lawyers may find pop culture references “fun”, the public isn’t well served by this practice.

For readers seeking a thorough overview of this topic, I recommend Michael Conklin’s recent article arguing that American judges should refrain from making pop culture references in their decisions. Many of the points I make here are shared by Conklin, and his article was . . . [more]

Each Friday, we share the latest job listings from Slaw Jobs, which features employment opportunities from across the country. Find out more about these positions by following the links below, or learn how you can use Slaw Jobs to gain valuable exposure for your job ads, while supporting the great Canadian legal commentary at Slaw.ca.

Current postings on Slaw Jobs:a

• Family Lawyer (Full-time) | Langley, BC
  (Waterstone Law Group LLP)
• Senior Conveyancer (Full-time) | Langley, BC
  (Waterstone Law Group LLP)
• Litigation Lawyer (Full-time) | Chilliwack, BC
  (Waterstone Law Group LLP)
• Litigation Associate (Full-time) | Vancouver, BC
  (Bernard LLP)

There is a small army of immigration lawyers who battle in the Federal Court of Canada. Most practitioners have the sense to dedicate themselves to the solicitor side of this practice. In Part 1, I will focus on issues with the current system based on my experiences with the Court over the past 10+ years. I will be posting subsequent parts based on recent (creative) approaches that address, or get around, some of the issues below. This is not a review of substantive law or decisions from the Court. This critique is focused on the system as a whole. . . . [more]

Written by Lewis Waring, Paralegal, LL.B., Articled Clerk, Editor, First Reference Inc.

In a recent Ontario Superior Court ruling, an employer was ordered to pay a wrongfully dismissed employee $10,000 in punitive damages and $45,000 in aggravated damages on top of 24 months of pay in lieu of notice. In total, the employee was awarded approximately $150,000 in damages. The additional damages that were awarded made up one-third of the total amount and were awarded due to the employer’s conduct that it displayed when dismissing the employee. While its wrongful dismissal of a loyal long-term employee was egregious, the . . . [more]

I wrote about the Supreme Court of Canada’s recent restatement of the open court principle in a column last year. In that column I suggested that the court had opened the door for more requests for closed hearings in its decision of Sherman Estate v. Donovan, 2021 SCC 25. Some courts have disagreed with this assessment and at least one court has agreed with it. What is clear from the recent caselaw is that courts are more focused on the evidence necessary to support confidentiality in what would otherwise be open proceedings. Speculation of harm to an important public . . . [more]

INTRODUCTION

The Ford Government’s invocation of section 33 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms in Bill 28 prohibiting education workers from striking and imposing a contract on them has once again raised cries of “this isn’t what the notwithstanding clause is for”. Really? What exactly did everyone expect to happen? Here I explain why I think section.33 has always been a ticking time bomb — and that there’s nothing that can be done about it except through strength of public opinion. . . . [more]

I have championed ways of increasing the public availability of research and scholarship in these Slaw columns for well over a decade under a variety of names, from open access to the catchy right to research (R2R). I picked up R2R, as I’ve noted, from the inspiring Program on Information Justice and Intellectual Property at the American University Washington College of Law in an initiative led by Sean Flynn. What I’ve now realized about R2R is that it can be read in two historically significant ways, with the difference between them neatly capturing what sets Prof Flynn’s and my current . . . [more]

Each Wednesday we tell you which three English-language cases and French-language cases have been the most viewed* on CanLII and we give you a small sense of what the cases are about. La version française suit.

For this last week, the three most-consulted English-language decisions were:

1. R. v. Ndhlovu, 2022 SCC 38 (CanLII)

[1] Parliament and courts have increasingly recognized the grave harms which flow from the wide variety of sexual offences prohibited in the Criminal Code, R.S.C. 1985, c. C-46. Over the years, the substantive elements of some sexual offences have been modified: consent is now . . . [more]