Each Thursday 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.

The Chronic Failure to Control Prisoner Isolation in US and Canadian Law

Lisa Kerr, Assistant Professor, Queen’s University Faculty of Law
(2015) Queen’s Law Journal, Vol. 40, No. 2, 482-530

Excerpt: Introduction, Sections II & V
[Footnotes omitted. They can be found in the original via the link above]

Introduction

There are . . . [more]

This article is by Cristina Lavecchia, Editor, HRinfodesk, published by First Reference Inc.

Sexual harassment in the workplace can be toxic, and it is an issue that can have a profound effect on both an employer and their employees.

In response to this issue, on October 27, 2015, the Ontario government introduced Bill 132, Sexual Violence and Harassment Action Plan Act (Supporting Survivors and Challenging Sexual Violence and Harassment), 2015 (“Bill 132”).

If Bill 132 is passed, it would amend various statutes with respect to sexual violence, sexual harassment, domestic violence and other forms of abuse. . . . [more]

Recently I was invited to make a written contribution to mark the 100th anniversary, in 2016, of the establishment of Tolley, now part of Lexis Nexis, where I was divisional chief executive until shortly after its acquisition in 1996. I was honoured to be approached and it set me searching through various documents and previously written materials from the seven-year period that I spent with the business. One such item was an article entitled Publish and be Famed (Gazette 93/24, 26 June 1996, p.20) that I wrote for The Gazette, the magazine of the Law Society of England and . . . [more]

A fantastic development out of the United States last week – Harvard Law School and Ravel Law plan to make access to the school’s entire library of reported U.S. case law available for free on Ravel’s website. In a multi-year effort and at a cost said to be in the millions (exact details not known), some “40,000 books containing approximately forty million pages of court decisions” are being digitized and uploaded to Ravel’s platform, where anybody will be able to search, read and use the material at no cost. This is an incredible advance in open access to law and . . . [more]

I got a Microsoft Surface Pro 4 last week – the plan being to replace my main computer and my tablet. It’s a great machine – essentially a tablet that works like a laptop. Its noticeably faster than the desktop it replaces. Using it as a tablet takes some getting used to – because it seems weird to have a tablet that is a full featured computer. For example, I have apps on my Android tablet that my first inclination is to get for the Surface – but then I realize that the app isn’t needed when you are using . . . [more]

When speaking or writing about diversity in the legal profession, the conversation usually focuses on gender, sexual orientation or race and ethnicity. We know that the legal profession does not visibly reflect the makeup of Canada’s general population. This was in fact a conclusion of the Canadian Bar Association’s 2013 Demographic Trends report:

According to the localized statistics available, progress on increasing diversity in the legal profession is not consistent with the make-up of the general population.

We also know that multiple barriers remain for racialized members of the legal profession. The 2014 LSUC report, Challenges Facing Racialized Licensees . . . [more]

With the rise of the “vanishing” trial, lawyers must master the art of written advocacy. Part of mastering anything requires consistent feedback. Yet, lawyers operate with little to no commentary from judges on the quality of their written submissions.

In Thinking Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman states that we acquire expertise when:

(1) There is an environment that is sufficiently regular to be predictable, and

(2) There is an opportunity to learn these regularities through prolonged practice. An opportunity to learn entails quick and clear feedback. For example:

Among medical specialties, anesthesiologists benefit from good feedback, because the effects of

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

For this last week:

1. Irving Paper Ltd. v Atofina Chemicals, 2015 ONSC 6662

[1] This is an alleged price fixing case that was certified five years ago. The plaintiffs move for an order amending the class definition to shorten the class period to between November 1, 1998 to December 31, 2003 and to exclude persons who purchased products containing hydrogen peroxide or products using hydrogen . . . [more]

When “dear” is an opinion on pricing held by the 80% of society who do not use a lawyer to solve a legal problem, then we have a challenge and an opportunity. Both are big, as is the gap between what clients think they can afford to pay, and what lawyers think they need to charge to be profitable.

Around 25 years ago, Apple was advised that Librarians, Journalists and Lawyers would be the biggest users of IT. Because their raw materials were digitised, and their output could be delivered in electronic form, it was thought that Librarians, Journalists and . . . [more]

The Supreme Court of New Zealand has held that digital files in a CCTV system are property and could be stolen. Thus someone who accessed the system and uploaded the files to YouTube was convicted under the NZ criminal code for accessing a computer system without colour of right to obtain property.

The Court of Appeal had held that the digital files were not property, but the accused could be convicted of accessing the system to obtain a benefit, since he tried to sell the files before uploading them (not having found a buyer).

This seems like quite a change . . . [more]

Poo-pooing Wikipedia’s citeworthiness has a rich and honoured tradition, and not just among academics. The authoritative quality of crowd-sourced wisdom is a well-flogged heel for those in legal circles too, often trotted out in judgments like some Karl Von Hess to be beaten up by proper prudent legal authority. Wikipedia was first knocked about in Canadian jurisprudence in Bajraktaraj v. Canada (Minister of Citizenship and Immigration), 2005 FC 261, a decision of the Federal Court which set the tone for dealing with the pariah:

… the quality of the sources relied upon by the applicant, including an article

A few years ago I decided to test drive a question when I found myself in a social situation with people I didn’t know. Instead of asking “what do you do?” I asked “what do you do for fun?” And I did this for a time at cocktail parties, meetings, wedding showers – wherever there were new faces and friends to meet.

Some people were startled, and had to really think before they could answer. Fun? Do I actually have any fun in my life after I get through working, looking after the kids, getting in . . . [more]