In a response to GitHub: Where Law Meets Technology? (The Sequel …) Ben let me know about a project developed in France that visualizes legislation called La Fabrique de la Loi. This is is a collaborative project launched in 2011 involving Regards Citizens, an association that promotes the liberation and reuse of parliamentary data for democratic purposes, and two research teams at Sciences Po Paris, the Centre for European Studies and médialab.

La Fabrique de la Loi provides visualizations that reveal the evolution of the law as it passes through the various stages of parliament. Here for . . . [more]

I’m excited to be hosting a Twitter Chat next Tuesday with the CBA, chatting about Law & Design.

This month I’m finishing up my year-long fellowship at Stanford d.school, where I’ve gotten the chance to experiment in what it means to take a user-centered, design-driven approach to how legal services are delivered. In the Twitter Chat, I’ll be talking about some of the experiments we ran & the projects I’m launching out of them.

I’m particularly interested in how we can use Design Methodologies — which put an emphasis on quick prototyping, frequent testing, and (above all) a focus on . . . [more]

Once upon a time there were two law firms, both founded in the same year. As they struggled to build their clientele, they both realized that they needed to build an image as well. At a partners’ meeting, Law Firm A debated the image issue at great length, accompanied by rhetoric that would make a seasoned juror weep. Eventually one-third of the partners decided they didn’t want any part of the discussion, another third was vehemently opposed to anything but the most conservative image, and that left a few mavericks bound and determined to “take this firm into the 21 . . . [more]

As a result of the provincial election this past week, the majority Ontario Liberal Party government will reintroduce the budget they had proposed which had triggered the election. There are a number of features in this budget which focus on the legal system.

The first is increases to legal aid, by increasing the threshold for income eligibility, an increase that has not occurred since the 1990s. This initiative has been commended by the Criminal Lawyers Association,

“We applaud the government’s recognition of the importance of Ontario’s legal aid system,” said Anthony Moustacalis, President of the Criminal Lawyers’ Association.

On 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, SupremeAdvocacyLett@r, to which you may subscribe.

Summary of all appeals and leaves to appeal granted (so you know what the S.C.C. will soon be dealing with). For leaves, both the date the S.C.C. granted leave and the date of the C.A. judgment below are added in, in case you want to track and check out the C.A. judgment. (May 9 – June 11, 2014 inclusive).

APPEALS

Access to . . . [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:
Civil Rights/ Damages / Torts / Partnership / Practice

R. v. Appulonappa (F.A.) et al. 2014 BCCA 163
Aliens – Civil Rights – Criminal Law – Statutes 
In October 2009, Canadian authorities intercepted the MV Ocean Lady off the west coast of Vancouver Island. On board were 76 Sri Lankan Tamil asylum-seekers, none of . . . [more]

Chaque semaine, nous vous présentons un résumé d’une décision d’un tribunal québécois qui nous est fourni par la Société québécoise d’information juridique (SOQUIJ) et ayant un intérêt pancanadien. SOQUIJ relève du ministre de la Justice du Québec, et elle analyse, organise, enrichit et diffuse le droit au Québec.

Every week we present a summary of a decision by a Québec court provided to us by SOQUIJ and selected 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 : . . . [more]

The Supreme Court of Canada has released its judgment in the Spencer case. It held that the police had no legal right to ask an ISP for subscriber information, as that would violate the subscriber’s reasonable expectation of privacy. The type of information that could be gleaned from the information went beyond the mere name and address into browsing practices, i.e. sensitive information in which the subscriber might reasonably expect anonymity.

The section of PIPEDA that allows custodians of data to disclose the data to law enforcement officials without telling the data subject, did not apply where the search . . . [more]

The most recent legal aid data are now available in tabular form on Cansim rather than in the familiar publication , Legal Aid in Canada: Resource and Caseload Statistics, which has been discontinued. Keeping track of trend and change in legal aid has never been more important. Legal aid is by far the largest part of the access to justice landscape in Canada. Even with constraints of the current fiscal realities, or perhaps because of them, legal aid systems have the infrastructure, the expertise and the resources to contribute significantly to expanding access to justice in Canada.

The good news . . . [more]

When I was younger I had a fondness for big ideas — or, a few of them, at least. Only natural in a tyro trying to learn how to dance to the ineffable ruck and roil of life itself and looking for some Arthur Murray guidance.

Now, Big Ideas are potentially dangerous, as that originating interesting concept expands to a full-blown idea, idea inflates to Big Idea, which in turn can bloat to ideology, gripping the mind and wresting all awareness away from the pragmatic to the programmatic. Perhaps I’m too intellectually lazy ever to have worked my way up . . . [more]

In the last couple of weeks, two laws with contentious moral underpinnings have made headlines. The first is Ottawa’s proposed prostitution laws that criminalize the purchase of sexual services and much of the communication, including advertising, which surrounds it. The other is Quebec’s law legalizing physician-assisted dying, adopted following a free vote with support from all parties in the National Assembly. Both laws raise serious concerns as to their constitutionality and raise an important point about law-making in Canada today: Are our elected lawmakers doing their constitutional due diligence?

Bill-36 was the federal government’s response to last year’s Bedford decision, . . . [more]

The Law Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. has published a new comparative law report on Restrictions on Genetically Modified Organisms.

The report analyzes legislation on genetically modified organisms (GMOs) and genetically modified (GM) plants and foods in Argentina, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, China, Egypt, England and Wales, France, Germany, Israel, Italy, Japan, Lebanon, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, the Russian Federation, South Africa, South Korea, Sweden, and the United States.

There is also a bibliography.

Earlier comparative law reports from the Law Library of Congress have covered topics such as:

• Adjudication of Sexual Offenses in Military Justice