Members of Parliament are expected to advocate for their constituents. However, when that MP is a Minister of the Crown (or a Parliamentary Secretary) there are limits on how far that advocacy can go. Interference by a Minister in a particular case before a tribunal has long been considered as an inappropriate interference with tribunal...Read More

Ever had a moment where you as soon as you hit send on that e-mail, you realized: That you’d forgotten to attach your attachment; You’d attached the wrong attachment; You didn’t want to say what you’d said in that e-mail or wanted to revise it; You were working in off-hours and actually wanted to send...Read More

While British legislation is now cited in the format Northern Ireland Act 1998 (UK), s 5, pre-1963 legislation (which is more likely to be referred to in Canadian courts than the newer legislation) is slightly more complicated. 1 Older British legislation is cited using a regnal year, e.g. Statute of Frauds, 1677, 29 Cha II,...Read More

At the beginning of each month, we tell you which three English-language cases and French-language cases have been the most viewed* on CanLII in the previous month and we give you a small sense of what the cases are about. La version française suit. For this past month, the three most-consulted English-language decisions were: Pivnick...Read More

In 2011, the TALL Quarterly published a brief article authored by John Bolan, Public Services Librarian at the Bora Laskin Law Library (University of Toronto). The article addressed the burgeoning open access movement for scholarly literature generally, with a focus on the lack and lag of open access literature within the discipline of law and...Read More

A very short tip today! You can limit your search results on Google to PDFs by adding filetype:pdf to your Google search. PDF isn’t the only file type that Google will recognize; you can also limit your search to file types such as .ps, .dwf, .kml, .kmz, .xls, .ppt, .doc, .rtf, or .swf. — Susannah...Read More

Prof Sean Rehaag recently published, “Luck of the Draw III: Using AI to Examine Decision-Making in Federal Court Stays of Removal”. This research entered my feed as it pertains to immigration and refugee law. Indeed, the research demonstrates interesting trends related to Federal Court decisions and Stay Motions. For example, Winnipeg has the lowest grant...Read More

Tab Session Manager Plug-In for Firefox / Session Buddy for Chrome When I’m doing research, there’s nothing worse than leaving a bunch of tabs open and having your browser crash or alternatively, you want to pivot from what you’re doing or shut your computer down without losing all of your tabs. I have been using Tab Session...Read More

As the fall law school term wound down, I found myself thinking about Peter Hogg. With the Alberta Sovereignty Act, the notwithstanding clause and Quebec and Saskatchewan unilaterally amending the Constitution, I’m sure I was not alone. When you teach Constitutional Law in this country, it is hard not to think about Peter Hogg. Like...Read More

The U.S. mid-term elections are almost over except for the litigation from sore losers. The new Congress will be more diverse and probably more divisive. The old Congress is working on finishing up business by the end of the year, including funding the government. I’m hoping the new Congress will be able to work better...Read More