Periodically on Thursdays, we present a significant excerpt, usually from a recently published book or journal article. In every case the proper permissions have been obtained. If you are a publisher who would like to participate in this feature, please let us know via the site’s contact form.

Challenging Exile Japanese Canadians and the Wartime Constitution

Author: Eric M. Adams and Jordan Stanger-Ross
Publisher: UBC Press
Publication Date: July 1, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-990735-75-2 (pbk)
E-book and audiobook also available
Release date: Oct. 15, 2025
ISBN:9780774872843
328 pages, 6 x 9
71 b&w photos, 4 maps, 4 b&w illus.
Paperback | . . . [more]

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.

For this past month, the three most-consulted English-language decisions were:

1. R v Yalahow, 2024 ABKB 328

[1] Abdullahi Hassan Yalahow and Christopher William Wilson were charged with Second Degree Murder contrary to sec. 235(1) of the Criminal Code. Yalahow was also charged with intentionally discharging a firearm at a place knowing that other persons were present contrary to sec. 244.2(1)(a) as well . . . [more]

Over thanksgiving weekend, in a Montreal hotel lobby, I spotted a cluster of matching suitcases with identical jackets draped over them, each one with “Canada” in bold letters across the back. I turned to my family and asked, “Do you think they’re part of Team Canada, travelling together, prepping for the winter Olympics?” My family wasn’t nearly as curious, but they could see the pure joy and excitement all over my face. That moment made me think about the best legal marketing teams I know, because they operate the same way. They win when they’re focused, when moving in the . . . [more]

“Expedition, economy and concision are sound practices in administrative adjudication.”

Justice David Stratas, Canadian National Railway Company v. Canada (Transportation Agency), 2025 FCA 184, para. 47

In this recent decision of the Federal Court of Appeal about railway interswitching rates, the court observed that the Canadian Transportation Agency had never “conducted a full and rigorous statutory interpretation analysis, i.e., explicitly examining the elements of text, context and purpose” of those rates. Justice Stratas stated that “[c]utting corners and conclusory statements, without more, are not how the Agency should roll … only explicit and rigorous analysis will do…”

He . . . [more]

After ten hours of flying, an eight-hour layover, a seven-hour timezone change, and one missed flight, I finally made it to my second Legal Design Summit in Helsinki. In 2023, I reluctantly left Helsinki after buzzing with excitement about the like-minded community I had just met and the interesting work being done across the globe to improve access to justice using legal design techniques. The momentum of the event had been fueling my professional interests and writing over the last two years, but it was time for a “re-up”.

After its 2024 hiatus, the Legal Design Summit was back this . . . [more]

As a supplement to our Sunday Summary each month, Supreme Advocacy LLP in Ottawa presents Supreme One-Liners, a super-short descriptive guide to the most recent decisions at the Supreme Court of Canada. Supreme Advocacy LLP offers its more comprehensive weekly electronic newsletter, Supreme Advocacy Letter, summarizing all Appeals, Oral Judgments and Leaves to Appeal granted.

Appeal

Criminal Law: Mandatory Minimums
Quebec (Attorney General) v. Senneville, 2025 SCC 33 (40882)

Mandatory minimum for child sexual exploitation abuse material unconstitutional. . . . [more]

In early 2025, I participated in the Society for Experiential Education’s Experiential Education Academy. One of the sessions I attended focused on reflection, one of the eight principles of good practice in experiential learning. While we discussed the benefits of reflection, what struck me most was a comment made during the session: students needing to be taught how to reflect.

That’s right, reflection is not an innate ability. It is a skill we must learn.

That knowledge clarified many of my past experiences in legal education. Student don’t often like to reflect. Of course, they don’t, they don’t understand its . . . [more]

There is a story about a business owner, we will call him Joe, who hired two people to help him unload large barrels of wine.

The wine was very expensive and he specifically instructed the workers to be very careful.

Unfortunately, as happens in life, one of the workers slipped as he was unloading the barrel and it cracked, spilling all the contents on the ground.

Joe was very angry. He told the workers that he will sue them for damages if they don’t pay him for the now unusable wine.

The workers were very poor and they begged Joe . . . [more]

I’m frequently asked to track down cases that lawyers can’t find. Most of the time the problem is an incorrect citation, but sometimes the problem is that the (usually older) case isn’t available in any online databases or print reporters. I’m now running into a new challenge: does the case exist or is it an AI hallucination?

I generally start with the assumption that the problem is an incorrect citation. In this situation, the most common issues are the misspelling of a party name or missing or incorrect numbers. I use multiple resources (e.g. CanLII, Lexis+, Westlaw Canada) and search . . . [more]

Guidance for lawyers on generative AI use consistently urges careful verification of outputs. One popular framing advises treating AI as a “first-year associate”—smart and keen, but inexperienced and needing supervision. In this column, I take the position that, while this framing helpfully encourages caution, it obscures how generative AI can be deceptive in ways that make it fundamentally dissimilar to an inexperienced first-year associate. How is AI deceptive? In short, generative AI can fail in unpredictable ways and sometimes in ways that mimic reliability, making errors harder to detect than those flowing from simple inexperience.

Before elaborating, three important caveats . . . [more]