On the second Sunday in 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. (August 9 – September 13, 2013 inclusive). 

LEAVES . . . [more]

Pénal : L'expression «si les circonstances le justifient» permet à un juge, dans l'exercice de son pouvoir discrétionnaire prévu à l'article 719 (3.1) C.Cr., de tenir compte de conditions propres au détenu qui subit la période de détention préalable au prononcé de la peine.

This week's summaries concern: Charges to criminal jury / Collective agreement & drug testing / Hearsay rule of evidence / Immigration & grounds for exclusion:

As a result of international treaties, English is the official language for aeronautical and maritime communications. English is one of six official languages of the United Nations. It is the official language of many international organizations.

English is an official language or the language of government in 60 sovereign states. English does not have official status in both the United Kingdom and the USA.

English is taught in schools in India, Japan, China and others such as Singapore.

Approximately 375 million people speak English as their first language. Mandarin Chinese is spoken by over 800 million. And there are over . . . [more]

To carry on my Vroom Vroom theme from a few months ago, I suggest that there are some more potential similarities between the legal and automotive industries. Talk of the “Law Factory” from thought leaders such as Ron Friedmann, has encouraged further consideration. At a high level, both industries have “benefitted” from protectionism, though it did neither industry a favour, long term.

The Australian Federation of Automotive Products Manufacturers (FAPM) website says:

There are about 200 Australian firms supplying components to the automotive industry. The vehicle assemblers have also undergone massive rationalisation and increasing global integration. Globalisation provides both threats

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To acknowledge the fact that it’s Toronto International Film Festival time in Toronto, I thought we’d have a look at some of the weird and wonderful film work from a NY auteur, Casey Neistat. What got my attention was his offbeat commercial for Mercedes Benz:

The catchy tune is “It’s You” by Duck Sauce. (This is now in my Road Trip playlist.)

And like the canny self-promoter that he is, Neistat has released videos on YouTube about the making of the commercial: 1, 2, 3.

To get a sense of his full range, go to . . . [more]

As he does each year at about this time, Rich McCue tipped us to the fact that the results of his survey of incoming law students are now online. The University of Victoria Law Student Technology Survey has run for ten years now, providing a nifty picture of how things are changing for law students — so far as technology is concerned. The executive summary of this year’s survey, which had a whopping 90% response rate, is as follows:

• 96% of incoming law students own “Smart Phones” that can browse the internet (up from 89% last year and 50% three

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As I’m sure many Slaw readers comb through the Terms of Service for the websites they use, I’d like to highlight a new consideration. Surf on over to the WordPress.com TOS, and check out paragraph 16, Disclaimer of Warranties:

Disclaimer of Warranties. The Website is provided “as is”. Automattic and its suppliers and licensors hereby disclaim all warranties of any kind, express or implied, including, without limitation, the warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose and non-infringement. Neither Automattic nor its suppliers and licensors, makes any warranty that the Website will be error free or that access thereto

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Law reform bodies can be a great source for legal research. They often conduct widespread consultation with stakeholders, may compare how other jurisdictions deal with the same problem and they frequently dig into the history of an issue.

Here are a few examples from the past few weeks:

• Law Reform Commission of Ireland Issues Paper on Consolidation of evidence legislation: “As part of its forthcoming Report on Evidence (the ‘Report’) the Commission is considering recommending the consolidation of existing legislation concerning the law of evidence , together with reform of three areas of the law of evidence : hearsay,

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The Canadian Association of Law Libraries is accepting submissions for the May 25-28, 2014 Conference that will be held at the Hotel Fory Garry in Winnipeg. Do you have something to share?

The conference is an exciting opportunity to explore and learn about emerging issues in law librarianship, to acquire the tools for building both hard and soft skills, and to meet with vendors about their new products and the improvements of existing ones.

The theme of the 2014 conference refers to the coming together of our professional knowledge and inspiration. Inspired to seek creative responses to existing or anticipated

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Lately CanLII has been shaking things up. The new search interface, in beta for four more days, is due to replace the current one on September 17. Then there’s the hackathon coming up this weekend in Ottawa, where you’re invited to learn how to become developers of apps that make use of CanLII’s API. And we learn from the recent blog post on CanLII that there’s a new forum for CanLII users, where they can share tips and give CanLII feedback. (At the moment it’s gathering spam, so that has to be cleaned out and blocked, if it’s . . . [more]

On Tuesday, September 10, 2013, Quebec’s Parti Quebecois government led by Pauline Marois released its proposal for a Charter of Quebec Values, which would decree the religious neutrality of the state and its employees and management of religious accommodation. This is not the province’s first attempt. In 2009 and 2011, Marois presented bills “to assert the fundamental values of the Québec Nation,” which we wrote about previously on Slaw. Going further back, the Quebec government says these measures sprouted naturally from the seed planted over 50 years ago in the Quiet Revolution (Révolution tranquille).