Periodically on Thursdays, 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.

Policy, Practice and Privatized Prison Telephones in Saskatchewan
(2019) 8:1 Can J Hum Rts 1

Sarah Buhler is an Associate Professor at the University of Saskatchewan College of Law. Amanda Dodge did legal and systemic advocacy at the Community Legal Assistance Services for Saskatoon Inner City (CLASSIC) for 8 years. She is . . . [more]

Several times each month, we are pleased to republish a recent book review from the Canadian Law Library Review (CLLR). CLLR is the official journal of the Canadian Association of Law Libraries (CALL/ACBD), and its reviews cover both practice-oriented and academic publications related to the law.

Social Media and Morality: Losing Our Self Control. By Lisa S. Nelson. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018. 225 p. Includes bibliographic references and index. ISBN 9781107164932 (hardcover) $114.95. ISBN 9781316616574 (softcover) $39.95.

Reviewed by Sally Sax
Collections Librarian (Business, Public Affairs, Legal Studies)
Carleton University
In CLLR 44:2

Social Media . . . [more]

The Law Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. has released a report on the Regulation of Artificial Intelligence that looks at AI regulation and policy in jurisdictions around the world.

It was written in January and published on the Library’s website recently:

“This report examines the emerging regulatory and policy landscape surrounding artificial intelligence (AI) in jurisdictions around the world and in the European Union (EU). In addition, a survey of international organizations describes the approach that United Nations (UN) agencies and regional organizations have taken towards AI. As the regulation of AI is still in its infancy, guidelines, ethics

In an article titled “Soon, satellites will be able to watch you everywhere all the time – Can privacy survive?” MIT Technology Review questions how we deal with privacy and satellite surveillance. Satellites are becoming more pervasive, and have higher resolutions – capable of identifying people. Compounding the issue is that countries and entities outside of our borders are not subject to whatever standards our country might adopt.

Privacy as we know it focusses on consent. For things privacy laws deem personal, others can’t collect, use, or disclose it without our consent. That works fine for things we . . . [more]

Every week we present the summary of a decision handed down by a Québec court provided to us by SOQUIJ and considered to be of interest to our readers throughout Canada. SOQUIJ is attached to the Québec Department of Justice and collects, analyzes, enriches, and disseminates legal information in Québec.

PÉNAL (DROIT) : La période pendant laquelle un adolescent est confié aux soins d’une personne à la suite d’une ordonnance, conformément à l’article 31 (1) de la Loi sur le système de justice pénale pour les adolescents, et les conditions d’un tel placement sont des circonstances qui doivent être . . . [more]

Periodically on Thursdays, 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.

Mini-Law School: Civic Education Making a Difference in the Community

Seattle Journal for Social Justice, Vol. 16, p. 381, 2018

Beth D. Cohen, Associate Dean of Academic Affairs| Director, Legal Research and Writing Program | Professor of Law at Western New England University School of Law
Pat Newcombe, Associate . . . [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

Miscellaneous Misuses
Neil Guthrie

Shut down, shutdown: Don’t confuse these. You shut down your computer in anticipation of the firmwide shutdown by the IT department. On a similar footing, log in and login. Surveil: This is like the awful liaise. Surveil is a misguided back-formation from surveillance, but an ugly and unnecessary one; just say watch or follow. …

Technology

Finding RSS Feeds for Podcasts and . . . [more]

How hard can it be to find that someone who takes surreptitious videos of the breasts of young women who have not given consent is guilty of voyeurism? As it turns out, more complex than one might think.

In R. v. Jarvis, the Supreme Court of Canada took a strong stand against “voyeurism”, particularly in the context of that case. It took what seems to be an inordinate effort of analysis to get there, though. . . . [more]

This post summarizes a full-text article with the same title on the SSRN, and refers to Fasken InHouse.

The Law Society of Ontario (LSO) is to have a bencher[1] election on April 30, 2019. We should vote only for those candidates that present solutions to the access to justice-unaffordable legal services problem (the “A2J problem”). Governments are now reacting without law societies.

Benchers have to be something more than the present part-time amateurs who bring to the job only the expertise of a lawyer to deal with major problems that are not legal problems, e.g., the . . . [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. Vernon Professional Firefighters’ Association I.A.F.F. LOCAL 1517 v Corporation of the City of Vernon, 2018 CanLII 111669 (BC LA)

[266] On balance, our assessment of each factor and the interaction among them in this matrix of factors persuades us that this surreptitious surveillance as conducted by the employer was both a necessary collection of employee personal information for an investigation of . . . [more]