Fascinating developments in the USSC on the extent to which foreign law is relevant and welcome.

This week’s New Yorker has a feature on Justice Kennedy: see “How Anthony Kennedy’s passion for foreign law could change the Supreme Court”

http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/articles/050912fa_fact

The basic debate between the isolationist wing of the court (Nino Scalia) and Kennedy, Breyer and Ginsburg is sketched out well in

http://writ.news.findlaw.com/dorf/20050119.html

A good scholarly analysis is found in Professor Anderson’s paper at

http://www.policyreview.org/jun05/anderson.html

and the fuller analysis from SSRN at

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=771124#PaperDownload

.

Given that section 1 of the Canadian Charter compels the examination of foreign law, and that . . . [more]

[Cross posted @ CS-SIS Blawgs]

For those interested, both Connie Crosby and myself have created Linkblogs to exchange our ‘online reading lists’ via the RSS Feeds:

• Connie’s linkblog (feed)
• Steve’s linkblog (feed)

The concept of linkblogs, briefly, is to post timely articles or links regularly without any commentary (read: little effort). By banding together, we can cast a wider net, and share our common surfing interests. And hopefully spend less time finding, and more time reading.

If you’re interested in taking part, it’s also a quick & easy way to get started in personal blogging. . . . [more]

You go to law school, you teach for a whole bunch of years, you read a bit of this and that in law and still you’d no idea that:

163. (1) Every one commits an offence who
….
(b) makes, prints, publishes, distributes, sells or has in his possession for the purpose of publication, distribution or circulation a crime comic.

So says part of the Corrupting Morals section of the Criminal Code. And goodness me, it’s right up there with “obscene phonograph recordings,” “indecent shows” and advertising “instructions…for restoring sexual virility.”

It’s peculiar that though I’ve read half the crime . . . [more]

Articling students arrived en masse today in Toronto Bay Street firms. Upon arrival, they were immediately sequestered into training and orientation sessions to bring them up to speed with technology, practices and procedures in the firms. Every firm library staff have their own methods and madness for easing students into their new research roles.

Probably for the first time ever we are seeing an extremely tech-savvy group of students. They blog, they use chat rooms, and they don’t really need to be shown how to use e-mail (but it will be shown to them anyway, no doubt!). It will be . . . [more]

I see that the Australian court has ruled that Kazaa file-sharing is a violation of Australian copyright law. See the New York Times story on the ruling.

The decision appears to be available on AustLII – see:

Universal Music Australia Pty Ltd v Sharman License Holdings Ltd, [2005] FCA 1242 (5 September 2005). . . . [more]

WSJ.com - Blogger Faces Lawsuit Over Comments Posted by Readers:Blogger Faces Lawsuit Over Comments Posted by ReadersBY DAVID KESMODEL, THE WALL STREET JOURNAL ONLINEAugust 31, 2005In a legal case being watched closely by bloggers, an Internet company has sued the owner of a Web log for comments posted to his site by readers.Traffic-Power.com sued Aaron Wall, who maintains a blog on search engine optimization – tactics companies use to get themselves to appear higher in searches at Google, Yahoo and elsewhere – alleging defamation and publication of trade secrets. The suit, filed in a Nevada state court earlier this month, also listed as defendants several unnamed users of the blog.At issue are statements posted in the comments section of Mr. Wall's blog, SEOBook.com.

Something Connie Crosby said in a comment today made me think that it might be interesting to see all of the week’s references to other websites, whether in posts or comments. I’ve simply set them up as links with suggestive titles, where the original link text didn’t make sense out of context.

I may find a better way to house them and let us look back whenever we want to the range of references over time. For the nonce:

1. AALL Law Lib Assist
2. ABA hurricane press release
3. Out of the Jungle: finding homes for displaced law students
4. Supreme Court of

. . . [more]

Organization is now starting from various groups to help in the clean-up of Louisiana after Hurricane Katrina.

The American Association of Law Libraries (AALL) has put together a blog in which members and friends can seek and provide assistance. See: AALL Law Lib Assist.

Earlier today AALL President Claire Germain sent a message to members, including this statement:

We need everyone’s help in brainstorming on how best we as an association can help and partner with others. We are waiting to let our colleagues tell us what they need most once they are able to return to their institutions

. . . [more]

The search is on for a new judicial appointment to the Supreme Court of Canada. For the first time ever, suggestions are being taken from the public.

See Supreme Court of Canada August 30, 2005 press release . Notices are being run in this week’s national and regional newspapers. Suggestions from the public are due September 20, 2005 and will be combined with names that arise from more traditional selection methods.

Reforms to the Supreme Court judicial selection process were announced this past spring – see April 7, 2005 press release and Proposal to Reform the Supreme Court of . . . [more]

Yikes, outed by Connie as a guest blogger!

Now that my cover’s blown, I’m going to cross-post something that I’ve just put on Out Of The Jungle, because it relates to Slaw and, unsurprisingly, to the kind of things we talk about here.

Situational Tags

I was going to post only once a day, but I’m afraid I had an idea. Sorry about that. It likely won’t happen again.

I’m putting together a bunch of digital documents, a dossier, if you like, on the Charkaoui case. (Charkaoui is one of five people, all citzens of Arab countries, who have

. . . [more]

Our very own Slaw founder Simon Fodden is waxing philosophic as this week’s special guest blogger at Out of the Jungle. His first post went up today–do take a look! . . . [more]

Thanks to Bill Pierce’s blog for pointing out that the motherlode of Cyberlaw research has now been opened up to the great unwashed (like you and I).

The Franklin Pierce Law Center IP Mall now offers the full text of intellectual property, cyberlaw, and electronic commerce publications of the Congressional Research Service (CRS), the 741-person, $68 million-per-year “think tank” that works exclusively for Members and committees of the United States Congress. CRS is a department of the Library of Congress works exclusively as a nonpartisan analytical, research, and reference arm for Congress. Its reports have previously been unobtainable.

The reports . . . [more]