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) : Le juge de première instance s’est inspiré à bon droit de l’arrêt R. c. Ferguson (C.S. Can., 2008-02-29), 2008 CSC 6, SOQUIJ AZ-50475579, J.E. 2008-514, [2008] 1 R.C.S. 96, pour conclure que le meurtre avait été commis de manière préméditée et de propos délibéré, même si, par . . . [more]

Imagine suing the federal government without a lawyer, making your case before a neutral adjudicator, and then getting an enforceable decision, on the merits, less than four months later. This may sound like a far-fetched fantasy if you’re familiar with civil litigation in Canada. In our courts, civil lawsuits routinely take 4-5 years to get to adjudication. Legal fees average about $40k per party to get through a 5-day trial. Self-representation is a frustrating and overwhelming ordeal for most people who try it.

And yet the four month path to adjudication is not just an idle fantasy to ponder while . . . [more]

Over a decade ago I first pitched this, and after years of off-again on-again discussions, Courthouse Libraries BC has reached a notable milestone in legal research and public access to justice in British Columbia. We’ve secured special access to BC’s Court Services Online’s (CSO) E-search for all visitors to our library branches. This access is not just a new service—it’s a bridge to understanding the intricacies of legal proceedings, offering unparalleled insight into court cases within the limits of court records access policies.

What is CSO E-search and Why Does It Matter?

CSO E-search is an online portal that allows . . . [more]

2024 has been called one of the busiest and record-setting election years ever. This year alone, over 2 billion people in more than 50 countries from all regions of the world will participate in presidential, legislative, regional and/or local elections. As I sit to write this post, during this month of January, Bangladesh, Taiwan and the Comoros Islands have already conducted presidential elections. Finland and Tuvalu are coming up next. If you want to get to know any country in the world, elections can be a great window into what are the major international and domestic trends affecting the jurisdiction. . . . [more]

It’s been fun pulling together regulations and standards for Artificial Intelligence (AI) in legal applications over the past few months!

CALL/ACBD AI Working Group

Last fall, I proposed a working group (WG) through the Canadian Association of Law Libraries (CALL/ACBD). Ultimately, the CALL/ACBD Executive did approved an Artificial Intelligence WG, whose terms of reference are on the CALL website. We are a group of 13 law librarians from across the country, representing a variety of interested parties, from firms, to academia to courthouse and legislative libraries. Our focus is primarily on AI in legal research and writing applications. Our . . . [more]

The Mobile Rural Law Van and Indoor Winter Venues

This brief article is another report on the mobile rural law van and the fixed-location winter locations, referred to together as the “law van’, as the project goes through the process from pilot project to implementation as an on-going part of the delivery model. The story of the law van is one of effective innovation. It illustrates how, at its best, innovation is an on-going process. The successes and challenges, the lessons learned of an innovation are building blocks in an on-going process of helping people bring troubling problems closer to . . . [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 January 1 – February 8, 2024 inclusive.

Appeals

Criminal Law: Stays; ss.10(b) & 7; s. 24(1) Standing R. v. Brunelle, 2021 QCCA 1317; 2024 SCC 3 (39917) All of the appellants have standing to apply for a remedy under s. 24(1) of the Charter even . . . [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) : Le refus sommaire du juge de première instance de tenir un voir-dire a privé l’accusé de la possibilité d’invoquer et d’établir la non-conformité de son arrestation, ce que lui garantissaient pourtant les termes clairs de l’article 495 (3) C.Cr. selon une interprétation viable des limites imposées au . . . [more]

In December, three intelligent, accomplished, and articulate University leaders embarrassed themselves and their institutions in their testimony before Congress. Each of them stumbled in responding to questions whether calls for genocide against Jewish persons would violate their school’s policies. The questions weren’t unexpected or one-offs. Yet, every time each of these Presidents was asked, they stumbled in their responses. Within a few weeks, the Presidents of mighty Penn and Harvard had publicly acknowledged their failures and resigned in the wake of the scandal. Only the President of MIT remains in the top job. How could this happen? It certainly wasn’t . . . [more]

At the beginning of 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. Zacharias, 2023 SCC 30

[55] The impact on the Charter-protected interests of the accused is distinct from the seriousness of the Charter-infringing conduct. As this Court stated in Grant 2009, in order to assess this factor, the court must “look to the interests engaged by the infringed . . . [more]