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.

PÉNAL (DROIT): La fouille de la valise du requérant avant qu’il ne passe les arches de sécurité du palais de justice était conforme à l’article 282.0.6 de la Loi sur les tribunaux judiciaires; par conséquent, la découverte dans sa poche d’un comprimé de méthamphétamine est recevable en preuve.

Intitulé . . . [more]

Summaries of selected recent cases are provided each week to Slaw by Maritime Law Book. Every Sunday we present a precis of the latest summaries, a fuller version of which can be found on MLB-Slaw Selected Case Summaries at cases.slaw.ca.

This week’s summaries concern: Criminal Law – Aliens – Civil Rights – Habeas Corpus – Statutes – Insurance

R. v. Canto (N.) 2015 ABCA 306
Criminal Law
Summary: In 2009, s. 719(3) of the Criminal Code was amended to cap pretrial credit at a presumptive maximum of 1 day for each day in pretrial custody. However, under s. . . . [more]

I’m lucky enough to have experienced what might have been the sweet spot of airline travel. I started flying — well, being flown — back when DC-3s were semi-pressurized and loud as all hell, and though I was young enough to be captured by the excitement of it all, I wouldn’t have hung in there if things hadn’t improved. And boy did they improve: Good cabin pressure, longer hauls, lots of attentive service, and casual trips up to the flight deck for a chat with the crew. The thrill was still there and to it was added the luxury of . . . [more]

Do you celebrate your successes? (Or are you too busy?)

Celebrating success – and doing simple things such as saying “thank you” to the team – is one of the best ways to strengthen teamwork, and to build your reputation as someone good to work with.

Okay. What about failures? Do you celebrate them as well?

You should – albeit not in quite the same way.

The thank-you/end-of-project party remains worthwhile, maybe even more important than after a successful project. The people on a project with a less-than-desirable outcome – e.g., a lost case, or a judgment against your client . . . [more]

Earlier this year, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) released its findings after its years-long investigation into the many abuses against Aboriginal children at Church-run Indian Residential Schools in the 19th and 20th centuries.

This week, a grand opening was held for the new National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation located on the grounds of the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg. The Centre is the permanent home for all statements, documents, and other materials gathered by the TRC.

As the Centre’s director Ry Moran explains:

On this site and at our centre, you will find a vast collection of documents,

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