If you’ve flown to Europe or Asia, you know that the flight path, viewed on a “normal” map, looks far longer than it should. The plane flies what appears to be thousands unnecessary kilometers on a route that curves up near the North Pole, rather than flying in a straight line.

Appearances are deceiving, as you probably have realized. The earth is not flat, and that so-called normal map, usually a Mercator projection, greatly distorts distances at higher latitudes. Trace a route from Toronto to Tokyo on such a map, and it appears to pass about 700 km south of . . . [more]

. . . is a game. You’re an alien who has crashed on Earth and must collect bits of things from a farm to repair your spaceship. It’s fairly sophisticated for the sort of animation you get on a Goodle. Try waking up the kid. I gave up too soon.

. . . [more]

The Ontario Bar Association’s Working Group on Lawyers and Real Estate has established a sub-committee to consider the work undertaken in the purchase of a condominium.

The Subcommittee is working on various documents to assist real estate lawyers and their purchasers in a resale condominium transaction and intend to consult with and obtain a broad range of comments and suggestions from Ontario lawyers.

They have released for review the first document, a Master Chart of items to be addressed. The Master Chart is meant to bring to purchasers’ mind the items of concern and whether or not their lawyer will . . . [more]

Are there rules in Canada about, or practical examples of, judges or tribunal adjudicators being ‘friends’ on Facebook or otherwise connected by social media with counsel or parties to a dispute before them? What should be done?

The American Bar Association has an ethics opinion that is summed up in this high-level principle:

A judge may participate in electronic social networking, but as with all social relationships and contacts, a judge must comply with relevant provisions of the Code of Judicial Conduct and avoid any conduct that would undermine the judge’s independence, integrity, or impartiality, or create an appearance of

. . . [more]

In employment law circles, there is an ongoing debate about how far an employer must go in accommodating a disabled employee to reach the point of “undue hardship”. The Supreme Court has held that an employer is not created to create a position or hire an additional employee to cover for the duties of an employee – the employee must still be able to carry out the essential functions of their job. The debate has since moved to determining what exactly makes an “essential function”.

In a recent decision rendered by James McNamee, Hamilton Health Sciences v Ontario Nurses’ Association, . . . [more]

The Supreme Court of Canada launched a new design for its website a couple of weeks ago. According to Michel-Adrien Sheppard, this was in order to come into compliance with the Treasury Board Secretariat Web Standard on Usability. The content appears to have remained unchanged.

The new design for the home page is set out below, followed by an image of its previous design:

The new design is generally cleaner and more readable than the former, which, by contrast, was a bit cramped. But to my eye there’s not a lot of improvement when it comes to aesthetics. . . . [more]

April 24, 2013, marked the 150^th anniversary of the publication of the Instructions for the Government of Armies of the United States in the Field, a U.S. government document also known as the “Lieber Code”. Francis Lieber of the War Department, Adjutant General’s Office, prepared the Code at the request of President Abraham Lincoln. The President issued the Code on April 24, 1863, as General Orders, No. 100. Even after a century and a half, this document continues to be relevant today. Justice O’Connor cited it in the plurality opinion in Hamdi et al. v. Rumsfeld, 542 . . . [more]

Each Monday we present brief excerpts of recent posts from five of Canada's award-winning legal blogs chosen at random* from forty-one 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. Official Clio Blog   2. Social Media for Law Firms   3. Library Technician Dialog   4. Rule of Law    5. Canadian Legal History Blog

Recently my friend and colleague (and fellow Slaw-yer) Joan Rataic-Lang and I spent five six weeks walking the historic pilgrimage route, the Camino Frances, which for us started in St. Jean Pied-de-Port, France, and carried us through the Pyrenees and across northern Spain–a total of 780 km. We learned many personal lessons along the way, but surprisingly we also learned many things that apply to work. I thought it time to start sharing some of what I learned.

Most days we got up at 6 am and started our walk at 7 am. Ideally we would have some yoghurt . . . [more]

Though many of us lament the problem of incivility in the legal profession, there are some who easily concede it is a natural part of the adversarial nature of law. They may go even further, citing the competitive exclusion principle in evolutionary biology as an explanation for why such behaviour is actually a norm for society, generally.

Newer research by Martin A. Nowak of Harvard University may put those assumptions into question, and may even suggest that treating each other with civility and cooperating with one another is actually our “natural” instinct. For decades some theorists have explained this as . . . [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: Resulting trusts / Costs where self-represented litigant / Property of bankrupt / Relevance of alcohol on sentencing:

At the end of my previous post on the application of the E-Commerce Act to land transactions, I mentioned ‘measures that might be useful to ensure that the change does not increase the risk of real estate fraud’. (None of this affects the *registration* of land transfers by electronic means.)

I have recently had drawn to my attention a set of technical specification for electronic signatures in land transactions adopted by OACIQ, the Quebec governing body for real estate brokers (the equivalent of the Real Estate Council in Ontario and some other jurisdictions). These are very detailed, though in principle . . . [more]