Back in June this year, people perked up to the news that Google was developing an email encryption extension to Google Chrome. The alpha version of the “End-To-End” extension was posted publicly for the coding community to test and kick around, and David Whelan dropped the news here on Slaw in the course of a more general post about the importance of encryption and the risks lawyers take when they don’t properly safeguard client data.

Unlike data on your hard disk, data sent by email has always been prohibitively complicated to encrypt. The tools necessary to encrypt email from . . . [more]

I saw a very interesting TEDx chat by Jeremy Howard where he talked about the current state of machine learning and what computers are capable of today. Howard is the founder and CEO of Enlitic a medical company that “uses recent advances in machine learning to make medical diagnostics faster, more accurate, and more accessible.” His talk was called “The wonderful and terrifying implications of computers that can learn” and was delivered last month at TEDx Brussels. . . . [more]

Is there too much choice out there? Do we need 35 varieties of coffee? 46 cereal options? 17 brands of garbage bags? Over half a dozen sites to find US caselaw? At least the same number for cases from England and Wales? Did we ask for all this choice? And do we need it?

The longer I teach legal research, the more complex it becomes. Not the content, that’s pretty much as it always was. But getting to the right answer in a timely fashion depends on so many variables that it is no wonder eyes roll and heads shake . . . [more]

Each Monday we present brief excerpts of recent posts from five of Canada’s award­-winning legal blogs chosen at random* from sixty recent Clawbie winners. In this way we hope to promote their work, with their permission, to as wide an audience as possible.

This week the randomly selected blogs are 1. ABlawg.ca  2. AvoidAClaim Blog 3. Entertainment & Media Law Signal  4. À bon droit  5. Legal Post

ABlawg.ca
The Supreme Court’s Other Opportunity to Revisit Adverse Effects Discrimination under the Charter: Taypotat v Taypotat

A few weeks ago we wrote a post on Carter v Canada (Attorney General), 2012 . . . [more]

Car insurance premiums are an important public policy consideration, even in light of the compensatory rationale underlined in tort law. In Ontario, the legislature has created a balance through s. 267.5 of the Insurance Act and its Regulations, which creates a “threshold” before which an injured person can receive damages after a motor vehicle collision.

Although brought into statute through Bill 198 in 2002, the test used on this threshold precedes the amendments and can be found in Meyer v. Bright, as follows:

(i) Has the plaintiff sustained a permanent impairment of a physical, mental or psychological function? . . . [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.

PÉNAL (DROIT) : En concluant que le public raisonnablement informé ne perdrait pas confiance dans l’administration de la justice si l’intimé, inculpé du meurtre au premier degré de ses deux enfants, était remis en liberté en attendant la tenue de son nouveau procès, le juge de première instance n’a commis . . . [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:
Administrative Law – Aliens – Civil Rights – Crown – Government Programs

Canadian Doctors for Refugee Care et al. v. Canada (Attorney General) et al. 2014 FC 651
Administrative Law – Aliens – Civil Rights – Crown – Government Programs – Practice – Statutes
Summary: The Government of Canada funded comprehensive health insurance coverage . . . [more]

According to a news report, “Earlier this week 28 technology and media companies, 23 trade associations and advocacy groups and 35 professors of computer science filed legal papers in support of Microsoft’s opposition to US court rulings earlier this year which said that US authorities’ search warrant powers apply to customer information held outside of the US.”

I have had difficulty understanding the legal basis for Microsoft’s objection. Is it not clear that either law enforcement authorities or civil courts can require the production of documents in the custody or control of an enterprise that is located in their . . . [more]

Pantone. Pan – tone. All the colours. This is quite a boast and it puts me in mind of the claim by a friend a long, long time ago that his collection of the then new tape cassettes formed, in his words, “the total library of recorded sound.”

How many colours are there?

This is one of those questions that have no answers and far too many answers. On one of its web pages, Pantone, a commercial system for matching colours in printing ink and in paint, claims a measly 2096. “Measly” because logic suggests that there is . . . [more]

‘…now is not a good time for control freaks” – Eric Young

In my last post for Slaw I wrote about the importance of creating the conditions for justice innovation by building the skills needed to work in multidisciplinary teams and collaborate rather than “consult” with justice system users. In this post I want to focus on another important part of creating the conditions for justice innovation, in particular how we might support innovators by rethinking our problem solving approaches and the methods we use to evaluate justice innovation initiatives.

How we evaluate the success (or failure) of a project . . . [more]

On November 20, 2014, the Stronger Workplaces for a Stronger Economy Act, 2014 (formerly Bill 18), became law (received royal assent) in Ontario. The Act makes a number of significant changes to employment law that will come into force over the following months.

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 Lawyer’s Guide to Um

Barbara Gotthelf
Legal Communication &Rhetoric: JALWD Fall 2014/Volume 11

Excerpt: Introduction and Parts I through III

In 2006, my son came home from his first day of eighth grade and reported that his Language Arts teacher, whom I will call Mr. Sweeney, had made a dire announcement: He . . . [more]