When CanLII changed the way it offers you search choices, it also changed the messages your query sends to its search engine, with the result that it broke the CanLII search bookmarklets that I’d constructed some time ago. (Thanks to Alisa Posesorski, VP at Irwin Law, for bringing this to my attention.) Well, as someone famous once wrote in rather differenct circumstances,Too lovely to pass up the full quote, which is from Molière’s Médecin Malgré Lui, act ii. sc. vi. (1666.)

Géronte. Il n’y a qu’ seule chose qui m’a choqué; c’est l’endroit du foie et du cœur.

Slaw readers may not have caught up yet to an interesting piece by a young Ottawa lawyer, Soulette Gray, reprinted in the Jamaica Gleaner.

Her final recommendation is for a Jamaican Legal Information Institute: . . . [more]

Our Slaw colleague Ruth Bird has recently published a stimulating paper entitled A Moveable Feast – Law Librarianship in the Noughties as part of the Oxford Legal Studies Research Paper No. 52/2006. Ruth’s deck from her moveable speech is also available.
Ruth’s introduction reads:

The purpose of this paper is to review where law librarianship finds itself six years into the new millennium, and what common challenges the profession faces in this new century.

Initially I would like to take a backward glance. When I was undertaking postgraduate studies in librarianship in 1978, lecturers Doug Down and Wes Young said

Short note from the American Lawyer drawing Slaw readers’ attention to a nice piece on finding substantive legal content in the Blogosphere. . . . [more]

Il m’est agréable de faire connaître au plus grand nombre qu’il y a 10 jours, j’ai eu le plaisir d’organiser une conférence sur certains aspects du «droit 2.0: droit et web 2.0». Une question fascinante s’il en est, qui personnellement me fait penser à certains débats, quasi-virginaux, dont on évoquait au début d’Internet, dans les années 90. Un autre siècle. Millénaire même.

– le droit d’Internet est-il différent?

– le droit d’auteur existe-t-il?

– est-il possible d’appliquer le droit «dur» dans un environnement «mou»?

– Internet est-il plus ou moins sûr que le monde réel?

– et d’autres . . . [more]

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) has approved the .asia top-level domain. (CNET’s News.com has the story.) It will be managed by DotAsia Organization, located in Hong Kong.

Last month the Board of ICANN voted to reject the .xxx domain application. A transcript of that meeting is available. It actually makes interesting reading.

On a different note, when researching this I wound up on the ICANN site at the page you see in thumbnail to your left. (Click on it to see it full size.) What’s notable is that there was no way . . . [more]

Sad news from the SCC today:the death of the Honourable Bertha Wilson, the first woman justice of Canada’s highest court. For legal researchers, she will always be remembered as the founder of the specialty of legal resaerch within major law firms, when she founded Oslers’ research department in the Sixties.

Pioneering lawyer, jurist, gardener – with a wry sense of humour. A great loss.

News.Release.@Supreme.Court
Sent: Mon 4/30/2007 2:50 PM
Subject: Supreme Court of Canada – News Release / Cour suprême du Canada – Communiqué de presse

OTTAWA, April 30, 2007 – The Supreme Court of Canada issued the following . . . [more]

The U.S. Supreme Court today denied certiorari in the case of Khadr v. Bush. Omar Khadr is the 20-year-old Canadian who, at the age of 15, was taken prisoner by the Americans in Afghanistan and accused of murder, attempted murder, spying and other charges. He now faces a hearing by a military commission after spending five years in the Guantanamo detention centre.

Three justices voted to hear the appeal, but it takes four to succeed. The three were Justices Bryer, Ginsberg and Souter. No reasons were given and the matter was disposed of in one line, according to SCOTUSblog . . . [more]

According to a Government of Saskatchewan press release from a couple of months ago (which I’ve only now found out about, thanks to Michael Geist):

Residents and visitors to the downtown business districts and post-secondary institutions of Saskatchewan’s four largest centres will soon be able to access the country’s largest wireless Internet network, free-of-charge. Premier Lorne Calvert and Minister responsible for Information Technology Andrew Thomson made the announcement today in Saskatoon.

The Saskatchewan! Connected initiative will offer users basic Internet service in Saskatoon, Prince Albert, Regina, and Moose Jaw via a wireless Wi-Fi network to be operated by the

for our Canadian friends, here is one of those delightfully quirky English odes, penned as a covering letter to a Tax Return.

Frames of Mind, by G.K. Menzies . . . [more]

Never far removed from anything, and one of the big events in law, death can be interesting, even to Slawyers. StatsCan has released a country-wide analysis of “Mortality, Summary List of Causes,” with breakdowns for sex and geography. The most compendious view is in the Main Table: html, pdf. Here you’ll find all manner of medical and other causes of death, with the associated numbers and rates per 100,000. Accidents, suicide, assault, “legal intervention,” “operations of war and their sequelae”… all of the horsemen of the appocalypse are here and their outriders too. . . . [more]

I’m starting to feel like a producer on Rocky VI with this post, but I also feel that I should follow this through to the end. Earlier this week, it was announced that the Beaverbrook foundation is indeed filing an appeal of Justice Peter Cory’s decision in the Beaverbrook Art Arbitration. The appeal is being launched under the New Brunswick Arbitration Act and will be heard by a panel of three retired judges.

Story from CBC.ca.

Story from Saint John Telegraph-Journal.

I do not have much commentary other that to point you to Simon F’s comment from the last . . . [more]