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.

Rights-Based Strategies to Address Homelessness and Poverty in Canada: the Constitutional Framework
Martha Jackman and Bruce Porter
Social Rights Advocacy Centre Working Paper, November 2012

Excerpt: pp.67-72

G. Positive and Negative Rights

The obligation to implement effective poverty or homelessness strategies has not yet been directly addressed by the Canadian courts. However, as . . . [more]

Google’s Android operating system is open source. The rest of the software on your Android tablet or smart phone may be a mixture of commercial, freemium, and other business models, including free, ad-driven apps. Lawyers and other legal professionals will find high quality open source apps in the Google Play store but you can get to them more cleanly by using the F-Droid package manager.

Alternate Android app stores abound: Amazon has one, as do Opera and many of the phone makers. Amazon’s store is an app on your device, and offers a free app each day. Opera . . . [more]

Nearly missed in the relative quietude of late December was opening of the next chapter in the ongoing Google Books litigation. As it promised it would, The Authors Guild Appeal initiated an appeal of Justice Denny Chin’s judgment (which substantially dismissed The Authors Guild’s summary judgment motion and granted Google’s motion). Michel-Adrien Sheppard wrote about that ruling back when it was released back in November.

On December 23, The Authors Guild filed its bare-bones Notice of Appeal (uploaded to Scribd by infoDOCKET) of Justice Chin’s judgment.

Publishers Weekly wrote (Dec 30) a nice summary of the litigation thus far, tying . . . [more]

David Canton’s post this morning talks about technology and some things that might be coming our way in the near future, so I thought it might be interesting to pull back a bit further and take a look at some global data on the digital world as gathered by GlobalWebIndex and presented by the big marketing agency, We Are Social. Here’s that data in the form of 183 slides (but the highlights are available here):

[slideshare id=29791716&doc=wearesocialsguidetosocialdigitalandmobileworldwidejan2014v01-140107235800-phpapp01]

Many, perhaps most, lawyers are “local,” because that’s the way jurisdiction works, and for them these global stats may be of . . . [more]

Deloitte publishes TMT (Technology, Media and Telecommunication) trend predictions each year. Deloitte’s Duncan Stewart does a series of public presentations on the predictions, which is worth seeing if you have the opportunity. The entire list is interesting, but here are some that might be relevant to lawyers.

Consumers will spend more than $3 billion on wearable computing, including smart glasses, watches, wristbands, and clothing. Wearables will become more popular as the tech improves, designs improve, and prices come down.

MOOCS (Massive Open Online Courses) will be up 100% over 2012. The growth may not be as big as some media . . . [more]

Access to justice should not stop at the hearing room door. Much of the current discussion of access to justice has focused on getting people into the justice system, with little discussion of how to make justice accessible once they get there. In a justice system that increasingly has self-represented parties as well as unequal representation, fairness and efficiency require that adjudicators take a more hands-on role in the hearing process. This hands-on approach has been termed “active adjudication” by commentators and adjudicators.

There are a great variety of adjudicative tribunals in Canada, all with different rules and approaches to . . . [more]

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. Meads v. Meads 2012 ABQB 571
   

   [1] This Court has developed a new awareness and understanding of a category of vexatious litigant. As we shall see, while there is often a lack of homogeneity, and some individuals or groups have no name or special identity, they (by their own admission or by descriptions given by others) often fall into the following descriptions: Detaxers;

There are some recent decisions of the Federal Court that acknowledge the necessity of using online legal research sources and seem positioned to allow law firms to charge reasonable disbursements for them. The basis for having computer research costs allowed appears to be the ability to justify both the amount claimed, how it is calculated and the relevance and necessity of the research performed.

The key to costs happiness will lie in how legal researchers keep track of their work. A researcher in a costs argument will have to explain that the disbursements for billed research on Westlaw or Quicklaw . . . [more]

A friend of mine is concerned about the existence today of income inequality that is leading to the accumulation of disproportionate wealth and economic and political power into the hands of a few.

No one doubts that individuals try to better their condition. Adam Smith in the Wealth of Nations at page 237 said “But the principle which prompts to save, is the desire of bettering our condition, a desire which, though generally calm and dispassionate, comes with us from the womb, and never leaves us till we go to the grave”. President Abraham Lincoln said “I hold that while . . . [more]

Yesterday, Simon prepared a kind post to introduce me (again) to Slaw.ca.

I plan to post about civil litigation issues, class actions, and advocacy.

My first contribution is about Ontario’s Class Proceedings Act, 1992.

Last week, the Law Commission of Ontario released a list of issues it will consider to reform class action law in Ontario. The scope of its review will be broad, ranging from improving “take-up rates” by class members, canvassing different funding options for class actions, and providing guidance for when national class actions are appropriate.

For me, the topic that is most interesting about . . . [more]

We sometimes hear of bizarre laws still on the books. I had always assumed these were tucked away in obscure legislation and never applied. Not so, as many very surprising laws are contained in documents such as the Canadian Criminal Code. Here are some of the most surprising ones.

Those of us who have studied the Criminal Code know how complex it can be. What we may not have noticed is that it contains sections which appear to date from another time and place. This cannot be a product of the Code not having been amended in a while, . . . [more]

Here are excerpts from the most recent tips on SlawTips, the site that each week offers up useful advice, short and to the point, on technology, research and practice.

Technology

Speech Recognition – It Really, Really Works
Dan Pinnington

Yes, I acknowledge that as the Tuesday Technology Tip, this is supposed to be a general bite-sized tip that is practical and easy to implement. However, when I came across this post from my good friend Jim Calloway today, I felt obligated to share it on SLAW Tips. . . .

Research

Policies
Shaunna Mireau

It is pretty easy to . . . [more]