U.S. Anti-Corruption Law Hurting Haiti’s Re-building Efforts?
A throwaway line near the end of an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal this week has got bloggers buzzing about whether a U.S. anti-corruption law may be deterring foreign investment in earthquake-ravaged Haiti, thus inhibiting the small island nation’s efforts to rebuild itself. WSJ editorial board member Mary Anastasia [...]

Old Legal Debts and the Indian Act
The Financial Legal Post’s Julius Melnitzer says that Borden Ladner Gervais’ [BLG] appeal in Borden & Elliot v. Temagami First Nation “is shaping up as potentially embarrassing to BLG, if not downright ugly.” Others might put it more strongly, actually, in that BLG’s alleged bad faith respecting the aboriginal [...]

SCOTUS chief to (not) retire
Breaking news: John Roberts, the Chief Justice of the United States, is retiring “for personal reasons,” Radar online reported yesterday. Actually, just kidding! Radar, known more for following Hollywood celebrities than Supreme Court justices, retracted the story less than an hour later, but not before it had ricocheted across the Web: The Huffington Post [...]

SCC Poised for Retirement Boom
In case you weren’t keeping track, seven of the Supremes will be eligible to retire by next year. “The impending retirements could give Prime Minister Stephen Harper, or whoever succeeds him as prime minister, a rare opportunity to overhaul the top court’s composition and thereby perhaps influence or reshape the court’s [...]

Khadr’s lawyers blast government’s ‘perverse’ reaction
The Harper government showed bias and bad faith and acted in a “perverse” manner by not requesting the return of Omar Khadr from Guantanamo Bay, or so say Khadr’s lawyer’s in their filings this week, according to The Globe and Mail. The lawyers’ move comes just days after the Canadian government [...]

Feds to appeal ruling in Vancouver safe-injection site case
Federal Attorney General Rob Nicholson announced earlier this week that the government would seek leave to appeal to the Supreme Court in PHS Community Services Society v. Canada (Attorney General), 2010 BCCA 15. “This case raises important questions regarding the doctrine of interjurisdictional immunity and [...]

YouTube Lives as California Gay Marriage Trial is Re-enacted
It’s Hollywood to the rescue. The U.S. Supreme Court may have nixed District Court Judge Vaughn Walker’s plans to make video of the trial in Perry v. Schwarzenegger, the so-called California gay marriage case, available publicly on YouTube, but an enterprising group of Los Angeles-based filmmakers have decided to [...]

SCC Decision in Khadr Today
Will the SCC defy, or defer to, the Harper government? Today, the SCC delivers its judgment in Prime Minister of Canada et al. v. Omar Ahmed Khadr (discussed on TheCourt.ca here, here and here). In doing so, it will also deliver its verdict on lingering issues about the government’s “duty to [...]

As briefly surveyed in last Friday’s Amici Curiae, the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, No. 08-205, is causing quite the stir in judicial circles for its recognition of corporations as legal persons entitled to First Amendment protection. What many conservative commentators are calling a major victory for free [...]

Let Money Talk
The U.S. Supreme Court delivered a “blow to democracy” in a “disastrous” judgement yesterday, The New York Times editorial board declared, urging the U.S. Congress to “act immediately to limit the damage of this radical decision.” In its bitterly-divided 5-4 ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Elections Commission, the high court found restrictions [...]