In a blow to the Bush Administration, the United States Supreme Court just handed down its decision in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld. By a 5-3 majority, the court struck down the military tribunals system, holding the tribunals inconsistent with military law and the Geneva Conventions.

The majority decision was written by Justice Stevens, with strong dissents from Justice Thomas, Justice Scalia and Justice Alito. Since the Chief Justice had been involved in the Hamdan case lower down, he did not sit.

The case raised core constitutional principles involving the separation of powers as well as the applicability of fundamental constitutional . . . [more]

Students Lack Legal Research and Information Literacy

That’s the headline on a piece in today’s Law.com. It pushes the value of Information Literacy as a key skill for all students and particularly law students.

They quote from the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education

“Information technology skills enable an individual to use computers, software applications, databases, and other technologies to achieve a wide variety of academic, work-related, and personal goals. Information literate individuals necessarily develop some technology skills”.

“Information literacy, … is an intellectual framework for understanding, finding, evaluating, and using information

. . . [more]

Or, almost not.

A new study from Statistics Canada’s Social Trends, Till death do us part? The risk of first and second marriage dissolution (by Warren Clark and Susan Crompton) [also available as a pdf file] finds that most people who marry do not divorce; that 46% of those whose first marriage ends will remarry; but that fewer than 1% of the “ever married population” indulge in a third marriage. There’s much more in the report to interest family lawyers. And spouses. . . . [more]

I've been reading the comments on Slaw about the distractions we all face at work from the intrusions from the internet, and thinking about a conversation we had on Slaw some time back about information overload.

To see how the Internet can work to increase transparency in government and political awareness in the (interested) population, take a look at four British websites that take public involvement well ahead of what’s being done in this country:

• The Government Says
• Downing Street Says
• mySociety.org
• TheyWorkForYou

The Government Says describes itself this way:

The Government Says” make news releases from Government departments easy to find and easy to scan through quickly. It does this in order to help you, a British citizen, keep your finger on the pulse of what the government’s up to. Without having to try to

. . . [more]

I have just read a recent article in Canadian Law Library Review by Annette Demers, of the law library at Windsor (“Current Awareness: the Next Generation” 2006 Canadian Law Library Review 31:2 67-70) which I reccomend to SLAW readers. Annette has done a very thorough and concise job of summing up how RSS works, with particular emphasis on Newsgator.. She also refers to the excellent journal table of contents service at Washington & Lee Law Library which has RSS feeds from over 2200 journals, including many Canadian publications. . . . [more]

Do Slawers have a view on the continuing value of foreign digests in this electronic age? I mean in particular the West Digests and The Digest (formerly the English and Empire Digest) which are likely to be held by most Canadian academic law libraries. We still subscribe to The Digest, although at several hundred dollars a volume I have grave doubts as to its worth these days. Myself, I have only ever used it for alternative citations to old, mostly UK law reports and I am not proposing to discard the set should we cancel it so that purpose would . . . [more]

Dr. Nora Ganim Barnes, Ph.D., Chancellor Professor of Marketing and Director of the Center for Market Research at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, has published a very detailed study of business blogging entitled, Behind the Scenes in the Blogosphere.

Dr. Barnes details what was learned from extensive research into blogging for business, including surveys, email conversations and interviews with hundreds of bloggers. Very interesting reading.

Reference found to this study at Blawg Review.

And while we’re on the topic of blogging, take a look at this A to Z of Professional Blogging by Darren Rouse. What . . . [more]

When it comes to managing one’s online profile, the first word out of many of our mouths these days is blogging. No surprise here, especially to Slaw readers. Connie’s most recent addition at LLRX is just further evidence of the long-term value created by adding your voice to the conversational web. Whether you’re contributing to a community of fellow professionals, or trying to demonstrate your experience and expertise for business development purposes, blogging really should be the ‘first step’ most people take to establishing themselves online.

And now that I’ve sung the requisite virtues of blogging, it’s important to . . . [more]

A Press Release from Lexis just over the wires:

JUNE 27, 2006 – 10:27 ET

LexisNexis Canada Announces Applied Discovery

Applied Discovery Gives Legal Professionals Control of Electronic Discovery with Trusted and Uniquely Customizable Solutions

TORONTO, ONTARIO–(CCNMatthews – June 27, 2006) – LexisNexis Canada today announced the Canadian launch of LexisNexis® Applied Discovery®, a comprehensive electronic discovery solution. Since 1999, electronic discovery experts at LexisNexis Applied Discovery have been providing end-to-end services and tools to help leading U.S. law firms and their clients understand and manage the entire electronic discovery processA good explanation of what this means is given . . . [more]

This is a story about the olden days, when paper was scarce and lawyers were lazy, and when we relied on editors to tell us what the law was. Back then each week or two, the postman would deliver a parcel from the publisher. We would eagerly open it, for it told us what the law was. Cases then had authority. People like Caesar Wright and Bora Laskin applied a scholarly and critical eye to whatever judgments the courts handed down.

And even young lawyers, wise to the ways of the web, might profitably think about why we have law . . . [more]

I’ve long recognized that the continous web access and the couple of hundred e-mails each day come at a certain cost. We face so much stimulation from communications that require an instant response that regular work gets constantly interrupted.

Interesting stories prompted by Tim Dowling’s account of the distractions in today’s Guardian – Leave me alone . . .

The Information Age was supposed to provide humanity with access to endless streams of information, carefully organized and readily available to anyone with a computer and a bit of know-how. But how are you supposed to take advantage of such bountiful

. . . [more]