Last week, as I was preparing for our joint Windsor Law and EPICentre conference “Disruptive Technology: AI and Its Impact on the Legal Profession and the Automotive Industry – What Path(s) for Regulation“, this article flew by:

Jackie Davalos, Dina Bass, and Bloomberg, “Chatbots Keep Going Rogue as Microsoft Probes AI – powered Copilot that’s giving users bizarre, disturbing, even harmful messages” (Fortune, February 28, 2024). The original Reddit post shows a variety of outputs that interested users received.

First of all, some of them did acknowledge that the whole thing could be a hoax. However, Microsoft’s response, . . . [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]

Dear Tri-Agency,

I was delighted to see your announcement last summer that the Tri-Agency, representing Canada’s major research funders (CHIR, NSERC, SSHRC), have decided to review your Open Access Policy on Publications. Your continuing efforts to increase the public’s ability to consult research and scholarship through this policy are admirable. Having seen your invitation for public input on the review process, I wanted to make a small contribution, as a professor of education who started a Public Knowledge Project 25 years ago to support public access to research, and as a school teacher before that . . . [more]

The buried children have been haunting me. It’s difficult to celebrate the turning of the year while thousands of children remain lost in the rubble of humanitarian catastrophes caused by disasters, political turmoil, and armed conflicts around the world.

In 2023, apocalyptic stories of children and families lost through earthquakes, landslides, wildfires, atrocities, and war crimes filled the news. The Middle East and Ukraine dominated headlines while Afghanistan, Myanmar, and other places were pushed from attention.

An insistent question began to intrude. “What if it was your kids under the rubble?” In late November 2023 this . . . [more]

Businesses are deeply implicated in abuses of human rights defenders worldwide. In 2021 more than “a quarter of lethal attacks were linked to resource exploitation,” according to Global Witness. Indigenous Peoples are disproportionately attacked. Over 40 percent of fatal attacks targeted Indigenous people who make up only 5 percent of the world’s population. One in ten defenders killed were women, two-thirds of whom were Indigenous.

Canada’s record of business abuses of human rights increasingly attracts international criticism. Canada is home to about half the world’s extractive companies operating in nearly 100 countries. When Indigenous land rights defenders protest business . . . [more]

Canada has announced its candidacy for a seat on the United Nations Human Rights Council to begin in 2028. According to Canadian Minister of Foreign Affairs Mélanie Joly, Canada wants to reaffirm its “leadership in championing human rights around the world” given that human rights are under attack globally.

When setting up the UN Human Rights Council in 2006, the UN General Assembly decided that all Council members would be required to live up to “the highest standards in the promotion and protection of human rights.” Canada has a vaunted international reputation for human rights, but closer examination reveals . . . [more]

From across the border, Canadians have been watching the fallout from recent decisions from the United States Supreme Court. In its 6-3 decision in West Virginia v. EPA (West Virginia), released this past summer, the U.S. Supreme Court significantly limited the Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to regulate greenhouse gas emissions.

In this post, we examine the implications of the West Virginia decision: What are the effects of this decision during a global climate crisis? How does the U.S. Supreme Court decision compare to Canadian courts’ treatment of regulatory authority? And more importantly, how do we respond when a . . . [more]

The role of the United Nations (UN) human rights chief is under intense international scrutiny after the long-awaited release of a strong report on grave human rights violations in China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. On 8 September, a new UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (UNHCHR), Volker Türk, was appointed to assume the role after Ms. Bachelet’s four-year term ended at midnight on 31 August 2022.

The transition to the new High Commissioner offers an opportunity to reflect on what has been described as the UN’s toughest job, some even wondering if it is impossible. The High Commissioner is . . . [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 practice, research, writing and technology.

Research & Writing

Law Prof Fail
Neil Guthrie

A law professor and political candidate tweeted this: Last night we gathered with a group of Liberal supporters who, like I, care about combatting climate change … . . . [more]

Bad news and tragedy surround us. The challenges appear to be enormous. Daunting. How do we hold ourselves up and make a difference in these times?

I believe that hope, grounded hope, is a necessary starting point.

Grounded hope emerges when we look at reality straight on, stand firm, and determine to believe that a better future is a possibility worth striving for.

This form of hope is an expression of “liberatory consciousness,” the framework developed by Barbara Love:

“Liberatory consciousness is a framework used to maintain an awareness of the dynamics of oppression characterizing society without giving

Samuel Beswick is an assistant professor at the University of British Columbia Peter A. Allard School of Law. His primary scholarly interests are in the areas of torts, unjust enrichment, limitations, and remedies. Last year, Professor Beswick reached out to CanLII to discuss a new casebook and syllabus he was designing for his 1L Torts class. He wanted to create a teaching resource that would utilize CanLII’s online functionality and be freely accessible to students and professors. Last August, CanLII published the First Edition of his casebook. Now, we are thrilled to be able to share the Second Edition of . . . [more]