Author Archives: Admin

Judging Former Colleagues: A Collection of Justice Woolley’s ABlawg Posts

By: Admin

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Our former colleague Alice Woolley is being formally sworn in as a Justice of the Alberta Court of Queen’s Bench today. We take this opportunity to highlight Justice Woolley’s contributions to ABlawg over the ten years that she was a contributor, while we still called her “Alice”.

Alice wrote a clean 100 posts for ABlawg between December 2007 and July 2018. Actually, while the number may be clean, the titles were as colourful as Alice’s language, as we noted in our first brief farewell to her in ABlawg’s 2018 year in review post, including Regulating Lawyer-Client Sex, Law Schools’ Dirty Little Secret, and Defending Rapists, to name a few. This is a good time to mention that we are not really judging her, either for leaving us and becoming a judge, or for her posts themselves. We were simply trying to come up with a Woolley-esque title.

Many of Alice’s posts had over 2000 hits on ABlawg – she had a very impressive number of readers. Her most viewed posts were: When Judicial Decisions Go from Wrong to Wrongful – How Should the Legal System Respond? (over 5300 hits); What has Meads v Meads wrought? (cowritten with Jonnette Watson Hamilton, with over 3400 hits); and The Incarcerated Complainant: Submissions to the Minister of Justice (also with over 3400 hits). The Woolley posts that received the most comments were What has Meads v Meads wrought?; What Ought Crown Counsel to do in Prosecuting Sexual Assault Charges? Some Post-Ghomeshi Reflections; and Defending Rapists.

Alice’s large readership was no doubt sparked by the controversy of the topics she blogged on, as well as her clearly articulated positions on the issues they raised. In addition to the posts noted above on sexual assault, vexatious litigants, and legal education (see also her posts on Trinity Western Law School here, here, here, and here), she blogged on lawyers’ and judges’ ethics in a range of areas (see e.g. Top Ten Legal Ethics posts here, here, here and here), the regulation of the legal profession (see e.g. Ontario’s Law Society: Orwell’s Big Brother or Fuller’s Rex? and A National Code of Conduct?) and administrative law more generally (see e.g. her posts on the legacy of Dunsmuir here, here, here and here). And then there was the Volkswagen Scandal.

Alice also blogged in a regular column for Slaw, which ABlawg regularly cross-posted to reach an even broader range of readers (for Amy Salyzyn’s Slaw post on Alice’s contributions, see here).

We will greatly miss Alice’s ABlawg posts, especially at times like this when the issues of the day call for out analyses of questions like – in relation to Michael Cohen – Is a Bad Lawyer a Bad Person? and – in relation to Jody Wilson Raybould – whether Prosecutors [are] Ministers of Justice? (although Alice had a different spin on that issue). We are looking forward to blogging on Justice Woolley’s decisions, and wish her all the best on this special day.

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ABlawg: Year in Review 2018

By: Admin

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2018 was a notable year for ABlawg as we celebrated our tenth anniversary in February. ABlawg also received its first cite by the Supreme Court of Canada, with the Supreme Court citing Nigel Bankes’ post, The Duty to Consult and the Legislative Process: But What About Reconciliation?, in Mikisew Cree First Nation v Canada (Governor General in Council), 2018 SCC 40 at para 51. This year also saw ABlawg publish its largest series of posts on a single topic, with 13 posts contributing to the debate on Bills C-68 and C-69 which purport to overhaul the National Energy Board, the federal environmental impact assessment regime, and several other pieces of the federal environmental legislative framework.

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Discrimination and Harassment Case Highlights the Difficulties in Choosing the Appropriate Forum

By: Linda McKay-Panos

PDF Version: Discrimination and Harassment Case Highlights the Difficulties in Choosing the Appropriate Forum

Case Commented On: LL v Canadian Natural Resources Ltd, 2018 ABQB 879

LL sued her former employer Canadian Natural Resources Ltd (CNRL) for damages for its failure to protect her (as her employer) from ongoing sexual harassment and abuse. LL also claimed damages for constructive dismissal. CNRL applied to have the actions summarily dismissed or for an order to have portions of LL’s claims struck (at paras 1-3).

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The Alberta Law Reform Institute Begins Project Selection

Website of the Alberta Law Reform Institute

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By: Barry Chung

Since 2016, the Institute has received over 50 law reform suggestions from the public, legal community and various service organizations. There was a wide variety of topics that ranged from the appointment of Provincial Court Judges, Indigenous Peoples and reconciliation, autonomous vehicle legislation, and Business Corporations Act compliance to name just a few.

While the majority of these topics are important and worthy of consideration, only a few will make it through ALRI’s rigorous selection process.

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Alberta and British Columbia: How the constitution makes you best pals – Constitutional Perspectives

Presenter: Fenner Stewart (Professor, University of Calgary)

 PDF Version: Alberta and British Columbia: How the constitution makes you best pals – Constitutional Perspectives

Summarized By: Alexander Crisp, JD Candidate 2020, University of Calgary

Editor’s Note: This is the fifth in a series of blog posts that provides summaries of presentations from the ninth annual Energy Regulatory Forum, held in Calgary on May 28, 2018, as summarized by student attendees.

On May 28, Professor Stewart from the University of Calgary shared his views on Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain Expansion (TMX), and some of the constitutional tools that the British Columbia (BC), Alberta and federal governments have at their disposal to use on the project.

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