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Book about the McGill Law Journal: The Journal: 60 Years of People, Prose, and Publication

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So many people have published and edited with the McGill Law Journal that the Journal’s institutional memory could fill a book. This was the insight of the Managing Editor of volume 54, Eytan Bensoussan, who came up with the idea of writing a book about the history and legacy of the Journal. James Cummins, a journalist and writer from Ottawa, was commissioned to write the book by the Editor-in-Chief of volume 56. The result is an account of the singular nature of the McGill Law Journal, recounting the ways it was influenced by and has influenced the Canadian legal and political landscape.9781926716251_cover_coverbookpage-v2-modal

The McGill Law Journal is the premiere legal periodical in the history of Canadian scholarship. Since its founding in 1952 by Jacques-Yvan Morin (future leader of the Official Opposition in the National Assembly of Quebec) the Journal has been at the forefront of legal history. It was the first university-based law journal in Canada to be cited by the Supreme Court, and has since been outpaced by no other university journal in the frequency at which the Court has turned to it. And it has always has been run solely by students.

The Journal’s alumni covers a who’s who of the last 60 years in Canada, from international figures to business leaders; from national politicians to larger-than-life legal scholars; from judges to global entertainers. This is the story of the people who made the Journal work; of the people who each made their first real impacts on the world through an unearthly dedication and passion to their job at the MLJ. It is also the tale of the revolutionary ideas that flowed into, and in some situations started, in the pages of the publication they ran.

The book is based on interviews with the Journal’s alumni, a history of legal journals in Canada, and the content of each of the 58 volumes that came to be between 1952 and the end of the 60th anniversary year of the Journal in the spring of 2013. The culmination of this research provides a breathtaking picture of a history that was beginning to slowly fade into the past, strengthening the identity of a key part of Canadian society.

The journal: 60 Years of People, Prose, and Publication is now available at the Nahum Gelber Law Library: KEQ322 M34 2013.

Sources: http://lawjournal.mcgill.ca/en/text/2998, http://49thshelf.com/Books/T/The-McGill-Law-Journal-60-Years-of-People-Prose-and-Publication

Law Rare Books: New Additions to our Digitised Collections

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The Nahum Gelber Law Library is fortunate to house a special collection on French law of Ancien Regime, the Wainwright Collection. It was formed on a basis of the working library of the renowned French jurist and legal historian Francois Olivier-Martin (1879-1952), doctor of law, professor of the legal history, and a prolific scholar who published more than 60 articles and 9 monographs. The Olivier-Martin’s library reflects with a remarkable accuracy the academic interests of its former owner with three major themes of the collection: French customary law, history of professional corporations, and history of pre-revolutionary French law, which found their manifestation in his three most significant works: Histoire de la coutume de la prévôté et vicomté de Paris (1922-1930), Organisation corporative de la France d’Ancien régime (1938), and Histoire du droit français des origines a la Révolution (1948). Those works, which are unrivaled in their use of primary sources and the breadth of the synthesis, are still widely cited by scholars writing about the history of French law or the history of professional corporations.

The copies of Histoire de la coutume…, Organisation corporative…, and Histoire du droit français… currently held in the McGill Law Library formerly belonged to Francois Olivier-Martin and bear multiple authorial manuscript annotations. book 82

Another feature that makes the McGill’s copies of Histoire de la coutume,and Organisation corporative unique is the fact that they contain more than 100 sheets of Olivier-Martin’s research notes, newspaper clippings, and letters. Notes 1 Notes 5

Recently, all three works as well as the enclosed ephemera have been digitised and now available for viewing and downloading via WorldCat:

Electronic McGill Cite Guide, Westlaw Next, and new La Reference

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Since this week, we have access to the new platforms with improved user interfaces for the Westlaw Next Canada and La Reference (former DCL/ REJB).

One of the most important new features of the Westlaw Canada Next is the access to an electronic version of the Canadian Guide to Uniform Legal Citation (8th edition).

All the links in the Law Subject guide and on the Law Library branch page have been updated to lead to the new platforms.

Quelques sources de l’histoire de droit

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Bibliographie d’histoire du droit en langue française, la banque de données bibliographique, est proposée par le Centre lorrain d’histoire du droit (C.L.H.D.) de l’Université de Nancy 2.

Portail numérique d’histoire du droit se propose de rassembler et de mettre à la disposition des chercheurs et enseignants en Histoire du droit toutes les informations pratiques, liens utiles et ressources électroniques diverses destinés à faciliter leur travail de recherche et d’enseignement, et d’assurer, autant que possible, la publicité des événements qui s’inscrivent dans le cadre de cette discipline.

Jus Politicum est une revue et une encyclopédie électronique consacrée au droit politique. Ce site se propose d’être un lieu de dialogue entre juristes, philosophes, historiens et politistes, ainsi qu’un point de rencontre entre cultures nationales, comme en témoignent la diversité de ses organes éditoriaux, ainsi que ses trois langues de travail de la revue (français, anglais et allemand).

Clio@Thémis, la revue fondée à l’initiative de plusieurs chercheurs au Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), associant des enseignants-chercheurs des Universités, souhaite contribuer au développement des débats et échanges scientifiques sur l’histoire du droit. Nomôdos est le blog d’actualités de Clio@Thémis, e-revue d’histoire du droit. 

Le portail Fontes Historiae Iuris contient les inventaires et analyses d’archives des cours de justice françaises et européennes d’Ancien Régime et les ouvrages numérisés en histoire du droit et de la justice. Les ouvrages sont classés selon la typologie des sources du droit (Législation, Doctrine, Coutumiers, Recueils d’arrêts, Dictionnaires, Encyclopédies et Lexicographies).

Essentiels du droit français donnent accès à une sélection de titres fondamentaux numérisés à partir des collections patrimoniales de la BnF et consultables dans Gallica. Le corpus est structuré par type de sources du droit correspondant aux axes de la politique documentaire de numérisation en sciences juridiques de la BnF : sources constitutionnelles, sources législatives et réglementaires, jurisprudence, doctrine, sources du droit coutumier et du droit local.

Gallica est la bibliothèque numérique de la Bibliothèque nationale de France. En libre accès, elle regroupe des livres numérisés, des cartulaires, des revues, des photos et une collection d’enluminures.

HathiTrust is a partnership of academic & research institutions, offering a collection of millions of titles digitized from libraries around the world.

New VPN

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Beginning in July 2014, McGill has a new, more secure VPN server. You must go through the steps to install the Cisco AnyConnect VPN client on your computer (a one-time procedure). Thereafter, you only need to click the AnyConnect icon and sign in using your McGill Username and Password. You can then access McGill internal resources, such as departmental and personal files. You can find more about the new VPN here.

Dictionnaires de droit privé en ligne

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Depuis les années 1980, le Centre Paul-André Crépeau de droit privé et comparé a publié les dictionnaires de la terminologie du droit privé québécois issues du projet de recherche Dictionnaires de droit privé et lexiques bilingues. A présent, le Centre offre sur le site web trois dictionnaires en accès gratuit : le Dictionnaire de droit privé (2ème éd.), le Dictionnaire de droit privé des obligations ainsi que Le dictionnaire de droit privé de la famille, dans leurs versions française et anglaise. Dans les projets du Centre est de rajouté au site Le Dictionnaire de droit privé – Les Biens quiest paru en format papier en 2012 et la deuxième édition du Dictionnaire de droit privé de la famille qui paraitra bientôt.

Ces dictionnaires sont des outils de référence uniques  et essentiels pour l’ensemble des juristes québécois, pour les traducteurs juridiques, et pour les juristes travaillant en droit comparé. En exprimant le droit privé dans les langues anglaise et française, les Dictionnaires de droit privé / Private Law Dictionaries sont des outils de connaissance originaux qui tiennent compte du fait que le droit privé québécois évolue dans un cadre linguistique et juridique unique au monde. Ils constituent les seuls ouvrages de terminologie juridique pouvant prétendre refléter la spécificité bilingue et bijuridique de la culture juridique québécoise.

Le Capital au XXIe siècle

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Can you imagine a book about economics being the number 15 on the best-sellers list of the Amazon? It is something rather hard to believe, but it is happening now with the Thomas Piketty book Le Capital au XXIe siècle. Published in French in 2013, and in English translation, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, in 2014, it had the first printings sold out almost immediately. Guardian is writing about Piketty-mania and reviews it for the readers who are not sure they can get through all 800 pages of economic wisdom; CBC sees its influence in the Ontario provincial elections; the Economist, Washington Post, New York Times, and many others publish articles and opinion pieces about Piketty and his theory… This list can be endless. Just take a look at the footnotes to French and English versions of this Wikipedia article – it will give you an understanding of the scope of the hype…

I hope that I have your attention now. We have just got a copy of the French edition of Le Capital au XXIe siècle at the Law Library and an English edition is expected shortly. Enjoy!

New Exhibit: Thought and Action: Fragments of Professor Roderick Alexander Macdonald’s (1948-2014) Life in the Law.

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photoTo honour the life and work of the late Professor Roderick Alexander Macdonald who passed away on Friday, June the 13th, the Nahum Gelber Law Library opens a new exhibit: Thought and Action: Fragments of Professor Roderick Alexander Macdonald’s (1948-2014) Life in the Law.

A teacher, first and foremost, Roderick A. Macdonald will be remembered as one of the most important scholars and thinkers in McGill University’s history. He was a mentor and inspiration to generations of students and law professors, and a transformative force at the Faculty of Law, the University, in Canadian society, and in the broader world. Read the full obituary here.

The exhibit was prepared by Svetlana Kochkina, Librarian at the Nahum Gelber Law Library. 

New Edition of the Red Book is Here!!!

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New, 8th, edition of the Canadian Guide to Uniform Legal Citation, a.k.a. McGill Cite Guide or Red Book is published.

What’s new for the 8th edition:

  • A new section in the General Rules giving guidance for citing to online sources
  • A new section providing a rule for “point in time” citations for legislation
  • A the section on the Government Documents rules was reorganised to provide clarity, especially for Non-Parliamentary Documents
  • A greatly expanded section on online sources, including forms for blogs, twitter, and online video (including a pinpoint form)

At present, we have 3 copies of the new Red Book available: two on Law Library reserve and one in the Reference collection. More copies are expected to arrive by the beginning of the 2014 – 2015 school year.

Bill 52, An Act respecting end-of-life care

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Yesterday, Quebec has become the first province to legalise doctor-assisted death as part of comprehensive end-of-life legislation. Bill 52, An Act respecting end-of-life care, received broad support from nearly 80 per cent of MNAs of the National Assembly. If you are interested in learning more about the legal and ethical issues of euthanasia and the state of right-to-die legislation at different jurisdictions, the McGill Library offers a wide range of publications on the subject.