Ask three ABlawggers for their favourite Canadian law blogs, and you end up with more than three different answers. It appears our bloggers cannot confine themselves to a single favourite, and so we have restricted ourselves here to academic / law professor blogs.Jonnette Watson Hamilton, ABlawg’s most prolific blogger, writes: “Osgoode Hall’s The Court — which was 2007’s “most important new Canadian law blog” — continues to provide timely, thoughtful and in-depth analysis of Supreme Court of Canada decisions. One of the reasons for the outstanding nature of the contribution this blog makes to legal scholarship is the number of law students, practicing lawyers and law professors from all across Canada who are among its contributors. Regardless of the area of law, The Court has someone who can comment on new cases with expertise. The Court states that it “aims to become the premier online location for information about Canada’s highest court” and I think it has achieved this aim.”
Jennifer Koshan, Coordinator of ABlawg, agrees with this assessment, and adds that: “The Court provides valuable context for Supreme Court cases and other national legal developments that enriches my teaching of constitutional law.” Koshan’s favourite thread on The Court this year dealt with the role of Chief Justice McLachlin in Henry Morgentaler’s Order of Canada award. These posts (and the resulting commentary) provided rich fodder for the topic of judicial independence in constitutional law.
It is no surprise that Greg Hagen, our faculty’s IP specialist and technical advisor for ABlawg, chooses the following law blogs as his tie for favourite: “I visit Michael Geist’s blog almost every day. Geist’s blog is a current and comprehensive source on internet and copyright news. His brief commentaries usefully put the news into a broader perspective. His site contains links to other tech law blogs and often links to primary materials which are useful for research purposes. Howard Knopf’s Excess Copyright blog contains perceptive, passionate and often humorous commentary on selected Canadian and international copyright news. Although Knopf practices copyright law, he keeps in touch with academic writings and posts his own academic contributions.”
Last but not least, Koshan nominates the University of Alberta Faculty of Law’s blog for the following reasons: “I love U of A bloggers’ irreverence and wide ranging subject matter – where else can you find movie reviews, obituaries, live blogs, and case and political commentary all in the same week? I also admire the number and range of comments posted in response to U of A bloggers’ posts, which show a high level of reader engagement. In fact, I often read the U of A blog to find comments on ABlawg posts. It works like this – one of us will write a post on ABlawg, Russ Brown will comment on it on the U of A’s blog, and then readers respond to his post, indirectly commenting on ours. Russ and Moin Yahya also provided helpful advice when we were setting up ABlawg in 2008. Calgary / Edmonton rivalry may be alive and well in hockey, but not in the blawgosphere.”