Every week we present the summary of a decision handed down by a Québec court provided to us by SOQUIJ and considered to be of interest to our readers throughout Canada. SOQUIJ is attached to the Québec Department of Justice and collects, analyzes, enriches, and disseminates legal information in Québec.

CONSTITUTIONNEL (DROIT) : La demande en sursis d’application de la Loi instaurant le Tribunal unifié de la famille au sein de la Cour du Québec pendant l’instance visant à faire déclarer cette loi invalide et inopérante est rejetée.

Intitulé : Goldwater c. Procureur général du Québec, 2025 QCCS 2057
Juridiction . . . [more]

I’ve always prided myself on being a good writer. I spent years honing my grammar skills and natural instinct for sentence flow and ‘what just sounds right’. However, it has also become second nature to rely on some writing tools in my day-to-day work. Like most, I utilize spell check. I also rely upon tools like Hemingway App to ensure my plain-language projects are at the appropriate grade level for the intended audience. Yet I haven’t incorporated Generative AI into my writing toolkit.

What is holding me back from potentially a more efficient writing process? Even if I believe my . . . [more]

Periodically on Thursdays, we present a significant excerpt, usually from a recently published book or journal article. In every case the proper permissions have been obtained. If you are a publisher who would like to participate in this feature, please let us know via the site’s contact form.

Acts of Darkness: Notorious Criminals, Their Defenders, Their Prosecutors, and Their Jailers

Author: John L. Hill
Foreword by: Salvatore Caramanna
Publisher: Durvile
Publication Date: July 1, 2025
True Cases Series, Book 13
ISBN: 978-1-990735-75-2 (pbk)
E-book and audiobook also available
6” x 9” | 288 Pages | B/W Photographs
$35 in Canada, . . . [more]

Each month, we tell you which three English-language cases and French-language cases have been the most viewed* on CanLII in the previous month and we give you a small sense of what the cases are about.

For this past month, the three most-consulted English-language decisions were:

1. R. v. Kinamore, 2025 SCC 19

Succession is a critical yet often ignored component of business strategy that left undone can lead to unfortunate outcomes from client and legal talent departures to law firm failure. Best to act now because it’s not how you start; it’s how you finish.

Do you plan to work forever? Or live forever? For your sake, I hope not. After all, as Bugs Bunny—probably the world’s most famous cartoon rabbit—says: “Don’t take life too seriously. You’ll never get out of it alive.”

Because change happens throughout our lives is exactly why succession and the planning of it is a critical business . . . [more]

Sometimes it’s nice to know you are not alone. A recent survey of international arbitration practitioners shows that Canadian administrative justice practitioners are not the only ones with frustrations about slow and inefficient processes. The survey results are also a strong indicator of the universality of process challenges – these challenges exist in both public and private sector dispute resolution fora and across many (all?) countries.

Every year, White and Case – an international arbitration firm – conducts surveys of international arbitration participants, including in-house counsel of public and private sectors, arbitrators, private practitioners, representatives of arbitral institutions and interest . . . [more]

One Sunday each month we bring you a summary from Supreme Advocacy LLP of recent decisions at the Supreme Court of Canada. Supreme Advocacy LLP offers a weekly electronic newsletter, Supreme Advocacy Letter, to which you may subscribe. It’s a summary of all Appeals, Oral Judgments and Leaves to Appeal granted from May 23 – June 26, 2025 inclusive.

Appeals

CRIMINAL LAW: COURT OF APPEAL POWERS
R. v. Bouvette, 2023 BCCA 152; 2025 SCC 18 (40780)

An acquittal was entered herein pursuant to s. 686(2). Quoting Crown counsel at the hearing, “an acquittal is an acquittal is an . . . [more]

Every week we present the summary of a decision handed down by a Québec court provided to us by SOQUIJ and considered to be of interest to our readers throughout Canada. SOQUIJ is attached to the Québec Department of Justice and collects, analyzes, enriches, and disseminates legal information in Québec.

FISCALITÉ : Le jugement de la Cour supérieure ayant rejeté l’appel à l’encontre des décisions de la Cour du Québec qui avaient déclaré les appelants coupables d’avoir contrevenu à la Loi sur l’administration fiscale et à la Loi sur la taxe d’accise est maintenu; c’est aussi à bon droit que . . . [more]

To understand the benefits of competency-based learning, we must first understand what it is. Competency-based learning is like learning to ride a bike. The journey starts with a tricycle, where the rider first learns to pedal. Eventually, they graduate to a bicycle with training wheels. As confidence builds, the training wheels are raised and eventually removed. The novice rider wobbles and falls, scraping a knee. But they learn from each fall, getting back on the bike with increasing confidence and steadiness. Eventually, they can ride smoothly and consistently. Later, the rider may decide to try mountain biking, applying their prior . . . [more]

The number one issue facing scholarly publishing today is research integrity. The crisis is associated with paper mills selling authorships to fabricated papers; reviewer cabals colluding with special issue guest editors; predatory journals, sans reviewers and editors, acting as auto-publish clubs; and papers rife with image and data manipulation. In response, publishers and editors are scrambling to retract thousands of corrupted papers, close complicit journals, and cease special issues. The publish-or-perish culture, often backed by cash incentives (now banned in China), can be blamed, as can publishers pushing papers through to capture open access fees. It all reflects how, in . . . [more]