NEW Database: Investor-State LawGuide Database

As of this month, the Nahum Gelber Law Library is subscribed to the Investor-State LawGuide Database. ISLG’s technology links you to the specific passages in arbitral decisions and awards where a tribunal discusses a particular legal instrument or prior arbitral decision. The database includes such features as Subject Navigator, Article Citator, Jurisprudence Citator, Terms & Phrases and Full-text search. All materials relevant to publicly available ICSID, NAFTA and ad hoc tribunal decisions are available in ISLG’s comprehensive document directory. These materials can be filtered in a variety of ways to enable you to obtain the research results you need.

To access the database, go: Law subject guide / Foreign legislation and cases / Arbitration.

NEW Database: Global Health and Human Rights Database

Last fall, Lawyers Collective and the O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law at Georgetown University in Washington DC have launched the Global Health and Human Rights Database. The Database is a fully searchable free online database of more than 1000 judgments, constitutions and international instruments on the intersection between health and human rights. The Database is the first attempt to comprehensively make available health and human rights law from both common and civil law jurisdictions, and features case law and other legal documents from more than 80 countries and in 25 languages. It also provides 500 plain-language summaries and 200 original translations of case law previously unavailable in English.

To access the database, go: Law subject guide / Foreign legislation and cases / Human rights.

Parliament’s Historical Debates Available Online

The Library of Parliament, in collaboration with Canadiana.org, is launching its Historical Debates of the Parliament of Canada digital portal.  The portal provides free public access to digital versions of the historical debates of the Parliament of Canada in both official languages.  It includes all published debates of both the Senate and the House of Commons from Parliament 1, Session 1 until coverage provided on the Parliament of Canada page.

Dot or no dot (while citing codes) that is the question

According to the questions that we received at the reference desk recently, there seems to be quite a confusion if a period (full stop/ dot) should be used at the end of the footnote when you are referring to a code. I contacted the editor of the Cite Guide, Alexander Max Jarvie, who kindly provided this clarification that I am sharing with you:

“The period that appears at the end of examples provided elsewhere in the Legislation section is intended as an indication of the terminal period for the entire citation. Although we have removed most periods from citation forms in the 7th edition, a citation footnote is still a sentence and as such punctuation is used in normal fashion. Hence, if the citation to a codal article is the last (or the only) source to be referenced within a particular footnote, a period would follow. To illustrate these rules in practice, I have provided examples below:
2 Art 1214 CCQ.
Canada Act 1982 (UK), 1982, c 11.
35 See Canada Act 1982 (UK), 1982, c 11; see also art 1214 CCQ.”

Legal Databases Training for Law Students

The Nahum Gelber Law Library is pleased to offer database training by legal publishers to the McGill Law School students. The sessions will take place in the Law Library Computer Classroom (main floor of the library) :

  • CAIJ (Centre d’accès à l’information juridique)
    Wednesday, October 30th, 2013 from 12h30-14h
    Me Munja Maksimcev
  • QuickLaw (LexiNexis)
    Friday, November 1st,  2013 from 12h30-14h
    Mr. Ron Jones
  • Azimut-Juris.doc (SOQUIJ)
    Wednesday, November 6th, 2013 from 12h30-14h
    Me Véronique Abad
  • Westlaw Canada (Carswell)
    Friday, November 8th, 2013 from 12h30-14h
    Me Michel Tremblay

Sign-up sheets are available in the Law Library Computer Classroom.

New UN Research Guide

The UN Library created a new research guide that reflects the complexity of the UN’ documentation and helps the users to navigate it. The UN Documentation Research Guide presents an overview of selected UN documents, publications, databases and websites. It provides details on the patterns of documentation of the active principal UN organs. It presents documentation of the organs and subsidiary bodies involved in areas of interest to many researchers. You can find the link to the new guide in the Law Subject Guide under Guides and aids for legal research.

Archives of the Civil Code Revision Office of Quebec (C.C.R.O.) are online

The archives contain the working papers of one of the principal organs for private law reform in Quebec history. The archives are made up of the C.C.R.O.’s working papers, reports, correspondence, minutes of meetings, internal memoranda, etc., dating mostly between 1966 and 1979. The President of the C.C.R.O., Professor Paul-André Crépeau, donated his copies of the material to McGill University. There are approximately 4000 documents in the archives, stored in over 300 volumes. The total collection of the papers of the C.C.R.O. in the possession of McGill University amounts to approximately 40,000 pages.

In 1995, an index to the archives was created by Professors John E.C. Brierley and Nicholas Kasirer that has been incorporated into the database. In 2008, with significant support from the Wainwright Trust, a project of digitizing the archives was begun. This led to the creation of this website, with the assistance and support of the Library Technology Services section of McGill University Library.

The archives of the C.C.R.O. is a rich source for those interested in the working methods of the agency charged with a re-codification of private law in the civilian manner in North America.

L’Alter Ego – Code de procédure civile du Québec est dans AZIMUT

Lancé en avril 2012, ce service est le fruit de la collaboration de la maison d’édition Wilson & Lafleur et de SOQUIJ. L’Alter Ego – Code de procédure civile du Québec dont la renommée n’est plus à faire bénéficie de l’environnement de diffusion de SOQUIJ, dont des liens vers plus de 12 000 décisions, provenant de ses banques. Tout comme pour la version imprimée, vous accédez au contenu par une table des matières ou par un index des sujets. De plus, vous avez accès à un moteur de recherche vous permettant de retrouver un article ou un terme particulier parmi près de 11 500 annotations.