Case citations exist primarily for the purpose of enabling a researcher to locate the full text of a judgment or the decision of an administrative tribunal. The primary purpose of a style guide for legal citation is to ensure that everyone can understand how various combinations of numbers, letters, brackets and punctuation make it possible for the reader to find the full text of a case referred to in a book, article or another case. There are other uses, such as case citators, but the main purpose of a case citation is to provide the means to easily locate a . . . [more]

My apologies for starting this post with a pic, but

A woman in a hotel room in Uganda is making judgments ready for the scanner.

It demonstrates graphically the challenges faced in making legal information publicly accessible through a Legal Information Institute. That’s the topic of an excellent blog posting by Kelly Anderson of Southern African Legal Information Institute – SAFLII – over at VoxPopuLII, which is a guest-blogging project sponsored by Tom Bruce and our friends across the lake at the Legal Information Institute at the Cornell Law School.

We may be complacent in North America about our . . . [more]

The Podcasting Legal Guide for Canada by Kathleen Simmons and Andy Kaplan-Myrth was first officially released back in June 2007 by Creative Commons Canada (see my Slaw post from June 29, 2007). Now they have put out a call to translate the Guide in an open source style, via Traduwiki. Their goal is to have it translated into French, although Traduwiki has the infrastructure to allow for translation into a number of different languages.

If you can help in the translation, please make your contribution via the wiki.

Photo: by Connie Crosby, also available under Creative . . . [more]

On Friday the U.N. Human Rights Council adopted a non-binding motion put forward by Pakistan aimed at “combating the defamation of religions.” (The Globe and Mail lead editorial today inveighed against the resolution.) Canada, along with nine other nations, voted against the resolution, pointing out that, among other things, rights properly belong to individuals and not entities such as religions. Twenty-one nations voted for the resolution and 14 abstained.

The text of the resolution is available online in PDF. (A nice challenge, by the way, is to see how you can get to the resolution from the front page . . . [more]

As readers of beSpacific will know, the International Herald Tribune’s online presence has been merged with that of the New York Times. The result offers readers a choice between the NYT “Global Edition” and the NTY “US Edition.” I subscribe to the IHT on Twitter, and although that’s not mentioned in the announcement, it would seem that this source has been quietly terminated, because there hasn’t been a tweet in over 15 hours.

For me, this is a sad consequence of the ongoing collapse of the traditional newspaper business. I think the IHT is . . . [more]

A week full of money: the Ontario Budget was announced Thursday, and it contained about $700 million of spending on innovation, including $300 million for research infrastructure and $250 million for the previously-announced Emerging Technologies Fund. Reactions were pretty positive, but badly in need of a thesaurus. The proof of the pudding is in the allocation though — in terms of benefits for biotech — the first commitment from the $205 million Ontario Venture Capital Fund turns out to be to a new VC that is more interested in software than soft tissue.

Here’s $100 . . . [more]

George Galloway, the controversial British MP scheduled to speak in Canada this week, and parties supporting him, sought an injunction at the Federal Court today.

Although I don’t agree with everything Mr. Galloway says, his views as it relates to non-military solutions to problems largely grounded in social and economic conditions, are ones that in my opinion should be heard.

I attended the hearing at the Federal Court today, where a session was conducted via videoconference to Ottawa.

Barbara Jackman, counsel for the Applicant, noted that in her 30 years of immigration practice she had never seen a case . . . [more]

The news is full of the revelation from the universities of Toronto and Ottawa that a significant internet spy network has infiltrated more than 1,200 computers in over 100 countries, an operation seemingly run from China. (See the New York Times story and the BBC story.) The report, “Tracking GhostNet: Investigating a Cyber Espionage Network,” a product of cooperation between the SecDev Group at Ottawa and the Munk Centre for International Studies at Toronto, is available online via Scribd. . . . [more]

I’ll be at Computers in Libraries all next week, the premier technology conference for libraries. Since some libraries are pretty leading edge in using technology to reach their clients, and generally to support their missions, it may be interesting for Slawyers to have some updates, which I’ll try to supply.

This year Web 2.0 is still a pervasive topic, but since libraries have been using social software for a few years now, the content seems pretty down to earth. Presenters are looking at how to marry library strengths, such as in-depth personal reference interviews with mobile and other technologies that . . . [more]

… is practically a one-liner today. And a line (or two, or three…) that you yourself can draw, at that.

It goes by the inelegant name of BallDroppings. And it’s a game in which you draw lines in order to catch and deflect the balls that, well, drop from the sky. These make “pings” and “pongs” as they carom to your bidding, just the sort of tiny universe one wants on a Friday afternoon, one that is wholly within one’s control. Even “gravity” is subject to your whim. So satisfying. . . . [more]

I posted on SLAW over one year ago on the issue of Copies of cases for court – official print reporters versus online versions.

I continue to hear of a “preference” for copies of cases photocopied from print case law reporters, often in terms of “the judge prefers print copies.”

Although Simon Fodden correctly pointed out in a comment to that post that the Ontario Court of Appeal formally allows electronic versions of cases, as per s. 10.5 of their Practice Direction Concerning Civil Appeals in the Court of Appeal, is there a need for the Ontario legal . . . [more]

The Toronto Association of Law Libraries (TALL) held an event on Thursday evening at the University of Toronto Law School called Charting Our Course: The TALL Publishers’ Forum.

The publishers panel was comprised of representatives from CCH, Irwin Law, Canada Law Book, Carswell, LexisNexis and SOQUIJ. TALL had provided them a series of questions in advance and those questions were posited at the session, covering such issues as open access, pricing, licensing, digital rights management, and customer support. To their credit, the publishers participated despite being potentially exposed to a crowd of law librarians who have been concerned over . . . [more]