University of Alberta Faculty of Law Blog

Welcome!

Today, we have Dr. Tom Palmer speaking at Noon in 237/

 

Also - later today and for the weekend, the Laskin Moot is being held in Edmonton. Welcome.

No Free Speech in Canada?

The Supreme Court affirmed unanimously, although with only six Justices and none of the two new ones, that basically some restrictions on speech are valid.

The story is here, here, and here. The reaction depends on where you stand, so see here, here, here, and here.

Basically the law is the same. The test has been switched from subjective to objective. You can say bad stuff but just not too bad. 

A few thoughts:

1. Is time to start talking about repealing Section 1 of the Charter? How many times do we need to hear our self-righteous judges say "yes, this violates your rights, but ..."? 

2. Do Canadians have any moral authority to criticize other illiberal countries when their governments restrict the freedoms of their citizens? After all, if six judges (or however many hear the next case) can say that something is a justified restriction on someone's freedom, what is wrong with some other unelected body saying the same? 

3. Perhaps we should start electing our judges. At least that way, our judges' values will match those of our society. Then, when they rule that a retsriction is justified under Section 1, they have some moral authority to hold that.

4. The Supreme Court should have just kept the law as is. This new nuanced ruling will actually make things worse. It will encourage more litigation before the dust settles on what the new test really means.

5. Did the Supreme Court break the law by re-printing the flyers in the appendix of their decision? After all, if they upheld some of the convictions, and the new standard is an objective one, then it doesn't matter whether the reprints are in a court decision or wherever the were distributed originally.

Roundup

1. If you think your professor is assigning too much reading, you may want to think again in light of this syllabus.

2. It turns out that calling kids fat is not that nice, even if the state does it.

3. Why do biglaw lawyers worry about comas when in-house counsel don't?

4. Crazy titles are not just about Tall Ships.  Tea Cosies, Chicken Coops, Sharepening Pencils all get the nod for funny titles.

5. Does culture matter even in the cold sciences of economics and psychology? It turns out, yes!

Student Opportunities

The deadline for the paid Koch Internship and full-time Associate Program is this Friday, March 1^st. Students who are interested in either program should submit their applications. Here is more information: 

·         The Koch Internship Program is a paid internship program that offers the unique chance to work in a substantive role for some of the top liberty-advancing organizations . In addition to exploring a career path within a non-profit organization, interns engage in weekly professional education. Students of all academic levels and recent graduates are encouraged to apply. Interns are paid $10.00/hr and are provided metro benefits. The Summer 2013 internship program begins on June 3, 2013. Visitwww.kochinternshipprogram.org to apply.

·         The Koch Associate Program is a full-time job opportunity that equips individuals with the skills to advance free society throughout their careers. In addition to working in a full-time position at a partner organization , associates build their knowledge, skills, and network through weekly professional education and management training at the Charles Koch Institute. Positions are available for candidates with 0-10 years of work experience. Associates receive pay that is competitive and commensurate with their work experience and education level; benefits are included. The 2013-14 program begins in June 2013. Visit www.kochassociateprogram.org to learn more and apply.

If you are a law student who is thinking of something different for the summer, instead of the usual law firm job, you should consider applying to these.

Baby Sloth

It is always time for baby sloths:

 

Speaking English Make you Poor?

Does speaking the English condition its speakers to engage in economic policies that make them poorer in the long run? Poorer relative to whom, you ask? According to Yale's behavioural economist Keith Chen, the answer may be yes when compared to speakers of other languages whose treatment of time differs from Ennglish.

In his paper, he classified languages into two groups: "Strong future-time reference languages (strong FTR) require their speakers to use a different tense when speaking of the future. Weak future-time reference (weak FTR) languages do not." English speakers will say "I will go to class tomorrow", while Mandarin speakers only need to say "I go to class tomorrow".

Apparently that extra step means that "[s]peakers of languages which only use the present tense when dealing with the future are likely to save more money than those who speak languages which require the use a future tense". He further found that "compared to speakers of languages which use a future tense, speakers of languages with no real future tense are:

• Likely to have saved 39% more by the time they retire
• 31% more likely to save in a year
• 24% less likely to smoke
• 29% more likely to be physically active
• 13% less likely to be obese."

The study is not without its critics, obviously. But an interesting and provocative study, nonetheless.

One more reminder for Palmer talk

The Faculty of Law will be hosting (in conjunction with the Institute for Liberal Studies) Dr. Tom G. Palmer, Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute, Washington, DC. as one of its centenary speakers. He is also the director of Cato University, the Institute’s educational arm.  The talk will be on in room 237, February 28, 2013, from 12pm to 1pm  plus or minus depending on how many questions he gets. 

His talk is titled:  "After the Welfare State: Big Government, the Financial Crisis, and the Debt Crisis"

I had posted some more detailes earlier, so you can check here for more information.

Student Video Contest

The L.V. Hackley Endowment for the Study of Capitalism and Free Enterprise is hosting an economic music video contest. To enter, students create a 3 minute video and can simply add new lyrics to an existing song. Winners receive $2,500 and the professor of the winning entry gets $500. Entries are due May 15, 2013. For more details, you can visit http://hackleychair.wordpress.com/2-economics-music-video-contest/.

Misc.

1. If you win the lottery, don't get too excited, otherwise you may blow up your own house.

2. I always say 'better later than never', and in the case of Mississippi ratifying the thirteenth amendment, now is as good a time as ever.

3. Students usually drop courses, but what happens when a professor teaching an online course does that?

4. In the UK, the right to light might be over! I had always thought there were no negative easements, even by adverse possession, but what do I know about property law!!

 

Titanic Torts

No I am not talking about whether the owners or operators of the Titanic were liable to those who died (or their estates) in the sinking? I am talking about the movie Titanic, which ends with Jack dying in the water while Rose lives, because she was on the raft/debris. 

If Jack's estate were to sue Rose for not letting him onto the debris, would they have a case? Would there be a duty to rescue? There was, after all, a special relationship. Rose still had that necklacke, so she definitely had deep pockets. And, it turns, out, Jack and Rose could have both fitted comfortably on the raft without risk of tipping it. Yup, they would have survived! So was Rose negligent in that she ought to have invited Jack aboard the raft?

I leave that as a question for a torts exam, if I ever teach it.

How to Avoid Huge Ships

I still have not figured out what the book titled How to Avoid Huge Ships (earlier edition here) is really about. There is a limited preview on Google books, and Amazon had none. That being said, this has to be an interesting title, to put it mildly. In fact, it features in this book about strange book titles.

The irony of this title has not been lost on the all those who left comments on Amazon's page. Here are a few of them:

Luthierzan sagely observes that:

Upon investigation I find it very disturbing that the 1990s British Columbia NDP government did not read this book before purchasing the ill fated "fast ferries". Look what happened to them!

A very concerned parent writes: 

As the father of two teenagers, I found this book invaluable. I'm sure other parents here can empathize when I say I shudder at the thought of the increasing influence and presence of huge ships in the lives my children. ... huge ships are everywhere and it doesn't help that the tv and movies make huge ships seem glamorous and cool. This book helped me really approach the subject of huge ships with my kids in an honest, open and non judgmental way. Because of the insights this book provided, I can sleep a little better and cope with the reality that I can't always be there to protect my kids from huge ships, especially as they become adults..... [read the entire comment at the link]

 

Another Monsanto Patent Case

Almost ten years agao, biotechnology giant Monsanto appeared in the Supreme Court of Canada, and asserted its patent rights. The result was Monsanto v. Schmeiser. The Supreme Court, in a nutshell, held that Monsanto owned its seeds, and therefore when others re-used their seeds, they would be reproducing their patented product without permission.

The case generated much academic and professional commentary. Now, the Americans are about to experience the same (or similar) issue at their Supreme Court.  As this story also explains, the stakes are high as ever. (h/t How Appealing for both stories). 

The business of biotechnology requires a lot of litigation it seems. The Centre for Food Safety reports that:

• As of January 2013, Monsanto, alleging seed patent infringement, had filed 144 lawsuits involving 410 farmers and 56 small farm businesses in at least 27 different states.

It will be interesting to see what the US Supreme Court does. If it overtunrs the lower court's holding that Monsanto is in the right, this will cause a revolution in patent law. It would also cause a conflict with our Supreme Court's holding. On the other hand, it may just affirm the lower court's decision. This, of course, begs the question of why they decided to hear the case in the first place. Stay tuned!

Goats Yelling like Humans

I have no idea why anyone thought of compiling this video, but it is very funny:

 

Death at the top of the World

This story about the quest for Mount Everest is a bit morbid, but interesting nonetheless. Over 200 people have died on their way up or down from the daunting mount. It now makes sense to me, but I had never thought of this before, those 200 dead are still on the mountain. I guess it is very difficult to bring those bodies back. Because of the cold and lack of oxygen, they stay preserved and act as markers for the rest of the climbers. 

Congratulations to husband-wife team

He's a Physics professor. She's a Chemistry Professor. They are also husband and wife. And together, Juli Gibbs-Davis and John Davis each received an Alfred P. Sloan foundation award.

Congratulations to them.

Ban Negative Billboards?

Billboards present constitutional lawyers wiith all sorts of challenges. Politicians like to ban them when they advertise taboo subjects. They sometimes ban them when they are too large and distracting to drivers. They ban them for all sorts of reasons.

These retsrictions are then challeneged in the courts. The Courts sometimes strike the restrictions down as unreasonable restraints on speech. Sometimes, they uphold them. The American law reports are filled with cases dealing with billboard restrictions. Law school exams in the United States almost always have a question on some billboard restriction.

In Canada, there have also been many developments in the law of billboards with mixed results (see e.g. here, here, and here).

Now this story about a study by a UofA Psychology PhD student Michelle Chan shows that negative contents in billboards is more distracting than postitive contents. So, for example, words like "war", "cancer", and "abuse" could dangeroulsy distract drivers, while words "love, happy, [and] excitement", drivers were reasonably safe in their driving.

At the end of the story (and I am not sure if her policy recommendations are in her study or just in the interviews), we get:

Chan believes jurisdictions in Canada need to adopt rules that crack down on the content of billboards, similar to laws already in place in Australia. 

This recommendation, of course, raises a whole new set of free speech considerations. This is no longer content restrictions based on subject-matter (i.e. tobaco, alcohol, political, sexually suggestive), or even size/time/place/manner. This is a restriction based on the emotional content (assuming I understood her recommendation properly).

As an aside, while Australia may be able to restrict the content of their billboards, it is not clear that they even have free speech rights in the same way we (or the Americans) do. 

Now assuming I understood the restriction proposal properly, this poses a different dimension of regulation into question. I am not sure how the courts and the law would deal with this in Canada. Suppose the state wishes to put up a public service announcement on a billboard that  says "Speeding Causes Death". This would be out under the proposal, putting aside that the state could exempt itself from any restrictions. On the other hand, "Drive Safely for your Loved Ones" could pass.

So, the same subject-matter might be restricted not based on the subject-matter content but the emotional content. Would this raise free speech concerns? Would the study (and presumably others) be sufficient to bring a section 1 defense justifying the restrictions? Would it matter if the billboards were political or commercial? What if the advertisement was religious in nature and intentionally meant to be negative (e.g. The end is near)?

I have no idea how this would turn out. But, this would definitely make for a great law school exam.

 

The Battle of Hoth redux

The Battle of Hoth was an epic battle in the struggle between good and evil. If you are scratching your head wondering in what ancient century did this 300-esque sounding battle take place, you clearly are not a fan of Star Wars, or more specifically The Empire Strikes Back.

The classic battle scene where the rebel alliance manages to stall the Emperor's forces brings into question the effectiveness of the Empire. 

Indeed, now comes a cogent analysis of how the battle was truly a colosall blunder. Here is a response. In case you don't recall the Battle of Hoth, here is the battle re-enacted in Lego:

 

Zombies and the Law

Maybe I should offer a course called Zombies and the Law. After all, our politicans have taken it upon themselves to assure the Canadian public that we are safe from zombies.

Olympic Oddities

The Olympics always strike me as two worlds: the athletes and the administrators. The athletes, for the most part, are hard working motivated by the ideals of good sportsmanship and hard work.

The administrators are another matter. Case in point: their decision to drop wrestling! Nuff said.

More Student Opportunities

The Foundation for Economic Education is now accepting applications for their free summer college seminars! Seminars offered this year cover a variety of topics and will be hosted in locations around the U.S.