The Geographies of Legal Education: Policy, Practice and Theory
May 25-27, 2009 Carleton University Ottawa
The 2009 annual meeting of the Canadian Association of Law Teachers (CALT) will be held May 25-27, 2009 at Carleton University, Ottawa, Ontario. The annual meeting will be held in conjunction with Congress 2009 of the Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences (CFHSS), and will follow the Canadian Law and Society Association’s meeting of May 23-25. This year’s CFHSS Congress theme is “Capital Connections: Nation, Terroir, Territoire.”
Building on Congress’s aim to consider the ways in which globalization has impacted the relationship between . . . [more]

We haven’t mentioned the Symposium (from the Greek – a Drinking Party) at Ryerson University. Billed as The Ryerson Symposium – Innovation in Legal Education: Ideas for the 21st Century, it was held on Tuesday, November 25th.

On the heels of reports published by two separate task forces examining aspects of legal education in Canada, expert panels examined key issues:

How will Canadian law schools shape society in the next century?

What are the latest developments in the licensing and accreditation of law schools and will it impact legal education?

Can new legal education models unleash innovation and increase accessibility?

Considering that it has the potential to profoundly reshape the nature of American legal education, I’m a little surprised that the Interim Report of the Outcome Measures Committee of the ABA’s Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar hasn’t received more attention since its release in June. Aside from brief mentions at the places you’d expect — Best Practices for Legal Education and the Law Professors Blog Network — I haven’t seen the report and its implications discussed in much detail. So I thought I might take a crack at it.

What follows isn’t really a summary of . . . [more]

Before curtailing her recent trip to Europe to deal with the political situation at home, Governor General of Canada, Her Excellency Michaëlle Jean was participating in a discussion about Canadian culture diversity at Masaryk University in Brno, Czech on November 29, 2008.

Her blog CitizenVoices.gg.ca reprints notes from two related talks: . . . [more]

The Peterson Institute for International Economics, a research institute located in Washington, D.C., has a summary and a table of US and Canadian Climate Legislation by State and Province. The table, which glosses legislation in 8 provinces and 22 states, can be downloaded in PDF.

[via Bill Dimitroff] . . . [more]

The current newsletter from my office:

Vol. 12, No. 7, December 5, 2008
ISSN 1489-954X

contents:

1.Studies, Legislation and Conventions:

Canadian Government Commitment to Copyright Reform
World Blind Union Proposes WIPO Treaty
WIPO Deadlocked on Traditional Knowledge Treaty

 2.Legal Cases:

Harvard Professor Challenges Copyright Law
Judge Approves Google Book Agreement

3.Of Interest:

MySpace Allows Copyright-Protected Videos, With Advertisements

4.Seminars and Publications:

E-Tutorial Copyright Courses
Certificate in Copyright Management
The Copyright & New Media Law Newsletter . . . [more]

Here are the slides from a talk I gave on Dec. 1 at the Schulich School of Business in a session held for practicing marketers.

What I found most interesting from the discussion that ensued afterward was the suggestion that vote monitoring tactics observed during the U.S. Presidential election could be duplicated here, specifically for the proposed vote-swap.

The concept behind it was that all of the other parties would work together to ensure they all got as many seats as possible. Ridings where the race was close were identified, and participants were matched with a person in a . . . [more]

A sad but significant report from the U.S. Department of Justice Bureau of Justice Statistics publishes the data concerning capital punishment in 2007 in that country. Some 17 tables of statistics explore such matters as the demographics of persons under sentence of death, the number of persons executed in the last decade, method of execution by state, and so forth.

As of the end of December 2007, the median elapsed time since sentencing for inmates under sentence of death is 133 months. That is a month longer than 11 years.

[via beSpacific] . . . [more]

The Canadian Bar Association recently published Guidelines for Practicing Ethically with New Information Technologies (the “Guidelines”) as a supplement to its Code of Professional Conduct.

While the Guidelines provide a considerable amount of information concerning the use of technology in a legal practice (even referring to certain software in its annexes), some lawyers may find themselves at a loss as to how to actually implement the guidelines in their practice. This essay identifies certain aspects of the Guidelines that are worthy of additional commentary and refers readers to (mostly free) tools which will prove useful in following the Guidelines. . . . [more]

The Ontario Legislature yesterday passed Bill 37, the Child Pornography Reporting Act, 2008.

The bill was somewhat amended in Committee, notably to tie the definition of child pornography more closely to the Criminal Code definition (though it’s still not identical). You can see the amendments here and the bill as amended in Committee here.

People who commented on the bill on the ULC-ECOMM list in the spring were sceptical of its benefits and of its practicality. No member of the Legislature shared any such doubts, apparently. All three parties supported the bill.

The penalty for not reporting child . . . [more]

Just released over on the Clawbies website, I’ve posted about the 2008 Canadian Law Blog Awards which are once again set to be announced on New Year’s Eve. But more important, I’d like to highlight something about this year’s edition… our two new methods for blog nomination!

Rather than voting like the ABA, I wanted Canadian legal bloggers & blog readers to have a hand in the process. So we’ve added both a nomination by email process, and much more interesting, added a nomination by blog post option… with a twist! Please, go check out nomination method #2 . . . [more]

Great news from BC, one of the last Canadian bastions of pay-per-view access to current legislation. The lobbying efforts of the Law Foundation and many other parties has paid off, and as of Jan. 1 2009 access will be available at www.bclaws.ca.

From the announcement, here are the features that will be offered:

bclaw-features (its a 2-page excerpt – scroll down to see more).

UPDATE:

An email to me kindly points out that I mis-read the document… we will get current BC laws, but all the features listed are those of QPLegaleze, NOT the new service. . . . [more]