After the excitement of the American primaries and election, we political addicts thought we were going to have to go through withdrawal (or enjoy a respite – a “reassurance” that we really weren’t addicted). But just as we needed a fix, our own constitutional “crisis” comes along. How I wish I were still teaching constitutional law (or Canadian politics, but that was long, long ago in another galaxy). I would tell my students that I put “crisis” in quotation marks for a reason and then I would seize the opportunity to tell them that, recent developments notwithstanding, we still operate . . . [more]

CommonLII has just announced that, thanks to Australian High Court Justice Michael Kirby, it is now making the English Reports from 1220-1873 available online. (Well, from 1457, really; the 1220 cases, of which there are a great many, are nonetheless outliers: the dates leap from 1220 straight to 1457. The data were provided by Justis.

The cases are in PDF and not searchable, so far as I can tell. OCR of that old type would be a nightmare anyway.

I have to say it is an impressive sight to look at the four centuries of links to this great . . . [more]

We edge close to a political crisis and constitutional history. Today the Opposition Parties agreed on an Accord on a Cooperative Government to Address the Present Economic Crisis, which should be read together with the Policy Accord to Address the Present Economic Crisis.

Mr. Dion’s letter to Her Excellency is an essential component since together with Mr. Layton’s parallel letter it makes clear that the Prime Minister may have difficulty maintaining the confidence of the House. I liked La Presse’s line: Les partis de l’opposition ont signé la mort imminente du gouvernement Harper.

And while there isn’t . . . [more]

Those who read us by RSS and don’t get the RSS comments feed might not know that an important aspect of the ABA Blawg100 feature is the chance to vote for your favourite blog in each category. Naturally, we’d be overjoyed if you’d vote for Slaw in the Technology category. It’s easy to do: either go to http://www.abajournal.com/blawgs/blawg100_2008/technology/ and scroll down to Slaw, or go to Slaw’s home page and click on the ruddy great VOTE FOR SLAW button at the top right. . . . [more]

Tip of the hat to Ian Kerr, who points us to Michael Giest’s latest project:

Why Copyright? Canadian Voices on Copyright Law

It’s a film on the significance of copyright as an issue in Canada. It features a wide range of Canadian voices – artists like Gordon Duggan of Appropriation Art; writers like award winning science fiction author Karl Schroeder; musicians like Wide Mouth Mason’s Safwan Javed; business people like Nettwerk Record’s Terry McBride, Lulu.com’s Bob Young, and Skylink Technologies’ Philip Tsui; government appointees like Privacy Commissioner of Canada Jennifer Stoddart and Ian . . . [more]

At this moment in time I’m delighted to report an honour that’s fairly unique: Slaw made the ABA’s list. With all due respect to Simon and my other friends,
at the end of the day, it’s absolutely not rocket science what Slaw does.
It’s a 24/7 nightmare but we shouldn’t of underestimated the readership.

Slaw

Moderated by Simon Fodden, professor emeritus at Osgoode Hall Law School in Toronto, Slaw was start­ed largely for the legal research and IT community in Canada, but it may soon transcend its tech designa­tion. The name Slaw was chosen in deference to Salon

While on Twitter I recently came across Mari Moreshead who does “client services and community management” for CourtCanada.com. I had never heard of CourtCanada and so checked their website and asked if I might interview her for the purpose of reporting back to Slaw readers.

CourtCanada was started in 2006 by former bankruptcy lawyer Gregory Azeff who is the company’s President and Chairman of the Board of Directors. CourtCanada is currently comprised of two services:

InSolve – a bankruptcy case management system, first beta tested in February 2007 and released in final version January 2008. For cases in the . . . [more]

Every year a ‘Vendors Forum’ is held as part of the annual meeting of the Canadian Law Libraries Association (CALL). In recent years the forum has evolved into a series of simple product presentations by the legal publishers. The most recent meeting held in the spring in Saskatoon was no exception.

In earlier years, the forum was a bit more exciting with panels of representatives of legal publishers frequently under the gun as they were asked pointed questions on the legal information issues of the day. Some thought that the questions were too tough and that the forums themselves lacked . . . [more]

There’s an interesting, long article in the New York Times Magazine, “Google’s Gatekeepers,” in which the author, Jeffrey Rosen, takes a look at how Google copes with the various demands of governments and citizens to remove or block material thought to be offensive in one way or another. Rosen, a law prof at George Washingto, concludes with a swipe at lawyers (and, presumably, their bosses):

Given their clashing and sometimes self-contradictory missions — to obey local laws, repressive or not, and to ensure that information knows no bounds; to do no evil and to be everywhere in a

On Nov. 27, 2008, I attended a session hosted by the Toronto chapter of the Legal Marketers Association (LMA) on Social Media Success.

The event was moderated by Max Valiquette of Youthography, and featured a panel with Parker Mason of CNW Group, Michael Rabinovici of AR Communications Inc., and Stuart Wood of Torys LLP.

Wood claimed his firm didn’t know he was there. But the event was promoted on the LMA website, and as he soon found out, he was part of an impromptu podcast when Mason revealed he was recording the session.

Full audio . . . [more]

I am very busy this week with additional, ongoing preparations and adjustments, as are all my colleagues and co-workers, as we move into the thick of renovations at the Priestly Law Library. If you’re interested, we have a renovations website up and running. It contains some architectural renderings of what the finished product will look like, as well as some background on the principles governing the design, as well as updates on progress, photos, etc. Have a look. We expect to be finished by next Sept! . . . [more]

Thanks to Random Musings from the Desert, I discovered the Typealyzer. It tells you what Myers-Briggs type you are, based upon analysis of your blog content. Needless to say, I pointed it immediately at SLAW. I figured that it would have some trouble coming up with a typology, given the number of personalities that contribute to the blog. Disappointingly, it came up with a fairly valid identification in a short while. SLAW is:

ISTJ – The Duty Fulfillers