Last week the Canadian Bar Association held a summit on access to justice in Vancouver. I spoke on active adjudication as a tool to enhance access to justice. My co-presenter, Darin Thompson, spoke about online dispute resolution. In preparing for my presentation, I was reflecting on the skills or aptitudes that disputants bring to the justice process. It is nearly impossible to provide individualized responses to all of the parties that appear before tribunals, however, it is crucial that tribunals have at least a sense of the needs of the community that it serves. In this column, I will focus . . . [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. SOQUIJ | Le Blogue   2. University of Alberta Faculty of Law Blog   3. Library Technician Dialog   4. Off the Shelf    5. BC Injury Law And ICBC Claims Blog

The legal team for Omar Khadr announced yesterday that they intend to appeal his plea bargain before the military commission at Guantanamo Bay. Khadr is currently serving out his eight-year sentence at Millhaven Institution near Kingston, Ontario. Khadr is eligible for parole this summer.

The appeal would be to an American domestic court, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, and if successful would result in Khadr being released immediately. The international transfer agreement under which Khadr was moved to Canada would no longer require his detention.

Khadr’s guilty plea on October 25, 2010 included a . . . [more]

In light of what’s been happening to Canada’s correctional system, it’s disconcerting to listen to today’s CBC Sunday Edition interview by Michael Enright of Marianne Vollan, who is the Director General of Correctional Services of Norway. Disconcerting because she lays out a theory of sentencing and imprisonment that is radically at odds with the one implemented here under the present federal government — and, to make it even more vexing for me, a theory that she says Norway borrowed from us back in the days when we were interested in evidence-based policies.

Here’s that interview and a link to an . . . [more]

One Sunday each month OnPoint Legal Research provides Slaw with an extended summary of, and counsel’s commentary on, an important case from the British Columbia, Alberta, or Ontario court of appeal.

KEEWATIN v. ONTARIO (NATURAL RESOURCES), 2013 ONCA 158

1. CASE SUMMARY

Areas of Law: Aboriginal and Treaty Law; Constitutional Law; Natural Resource Law

~ Ontario has the right to take up lands in the Keewatin Treaty 3 area. The treaty was made between the Crown and the First Nations and Ontario became the pertinent representative of the Crown under the treaty once the lands were added to the province. . . . [more]

The office of the Chief Justice of Canada issued the following press release April 26, 2013:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

The Supreme Court of Canada conducted a thorough review of its records and it does not have any documents relevant to the alleged communications by former Chief Justice Bora Laskin and former Mr. Justice Willard Estey in relation to the patriation of the Constitution of Canada. This concludes the Court’s review.

===============================

POUR DIFFUSION IMMÉDIATE

La Cour suprême du Canada a complété un examen exhaustif de ses dossiers. Ceux-ci ne contiennent aucun document au sujet de communications que l’ancien juge en . . . [more]

Another year of classes and exams has come to an end, which puts me in a reflective frame of mind; recently a topic that has been turning over in my mind is curriculum reform, which is a hot button topic on this Blog and at many law schools across this country and North America in general. As I survey the conjecture on the topic there is one thing that I do not see addressed that bothers me and that is the topic of preparatory reading or rather the lack thereof.

As anyone who has a law degree, or is pursuing . . . [more]

Slaw is proud indeed to report that Nathalie Des Rosiers and Sarah Sutherland have joined Slaw as columnists.

Nathalie Des Rosiers has been General Counsel of Canadian Civil Liberties Association since July 1, 2009. She was previously Interim Vice-President (Governance), University of Ottawa (2008-2009), Dean of the Faculty of Law – Civil Law Section of the University of Ottawa from 2004 to 2008 and President of the Law Commission of Canada from 2000 to 2004.

She obtained an LL.B. from Université de Montréal and an LL.M. from Harvard University, and received an honourary doctorates from the Law Society of Upper . . . [more]

One hoary definition of a gentleman is: a man who can play the accordion — but doesn’t.

Now, thanks to the magic of a Friday fillip, here’s your chance to lose that straitening status of gentlewoman or gentleman. What’s that you say? You can’t play the accordion? But you can, I assure you. A charming (looking) young Russian, Artem Polikarpov has created a website, Garmoshka, that is an accordion. Sort of. (“‘Garmoshka’, by the way, is a diminutive of гармон (‘garmon’) / гармоника (‘garmonika’); as with the Finnish ‘harmonikka’, the Russian ‘garmonika’ means accordion, not harmonica (an example . . . [more]

A computer trainer I know well tells me that there was much discussion in his company as to whether they should charge for searches that returned no results. After great debate it was concluded that zero hits was a legitimate search result, and, as such, the company should charge for it. I think anyone who carries out research would agree with this: knowing that something has not been considered or talked about is important. The difficulty with this is knowing if zero genuinely is the answer, rather than the result of not using a relevant resource or search term. It’s . . . [more]

The Pew Internet homepage is noting a new section addition (or rather, subdomain) that aggregates Pew publishing on digital libraries. See: libraries.pewinternet.org

Pew Internet has maintained a category dedicated to digital library trends for a few years now, so the site hosts a reasonable volume of material. It also includes a blog. The new site’s About page is unfortunately a copy-over from the main website; but with any luck, someone will add that background context soon.

If you don’t regularly visit Pew’s work on Internet trends, I highly recommend it. And for the law library crew here at Slaw, . . . [more]

The May 2013 issue of the AALL Spectrum, the monthly publication of the Association of American Law Libraries, is devoted to law library architecture south of the border. Nice pix.

From the presentation:

The 13th annual architecture series features two new buildings and four remodels/renovations from two public law libraries, one law firm, and three academic libraries. Both new buildings aim to achieve Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design certifications. In Baltimore, the library transitioned from occupying two floors to being spread over six, and in Denver, the new library bridges print and electronic.

In Seattle, the law firm

. . . [more]