Charter Protection against Unlawful Police Action: Less Black and White Than It Seems

Pre-Charter, in principle the police had limited powers. However, in practical terms it was not possible for a private citizen to object to all police action that fell outside those powers: realistically it was only if the police action were egregious enough to rise to the level of a tort or an offence that there was a mechanism for review. That is, there was a lot of grey area in between the things the police clearly were allowed to do and those they clearly were not allowed to do. The Charter changed that. By making “lawfulness” the standard for deciding whether there was an unreasonable search or an arbitrary detention, the Supreme Court in the ory banished the grey area, making it possible to review any action falling outside the strict limits of police powers. However, experience led to the conclusion that those “strict limits” might in fact be too strict, and so paradoxically the restraint mechanism of the Charter has led in some instances to the expansion of police power. Further, the particular approach taken to expanding police powers amounts to potentially declaring all of the previous grey area to fall within the powers of the police. This paper argues that that is an undesirable strand in Charter jurisprudence, and that it could be avoided by dealing with grey area issues at the remedy stage, as section 24(2) anticipates, rather than at the stage of deciding what powers police have

Arbitrary Detention: Whither — or Wither?: Section 9

This paper points to the surprising fact that 25 years of Charter decisions have not produced a section 9 jurisprudence. The Supreme Court of Canada has said relatively little about arbitrary detention, and much of what it has said is in need of clarification. To date, no consistent framework for analyzing section 9 claims has been articulated: A quarter-century of case law on the right to be free from arbitrary detention has not yet resulted in a clear definition of either the word “arbitrary” or the word “detention”. Indeed, among the relatively few cases which have been decided, the most significant results have been to recognize the existence of new police powers. In that event, the primary effect of section 9 case law to date has been to limit personal rights rather than to protect the m. This paper considers three issues: (1) whether “arbitrary” has or should be equated with “unlawful”; (2) what “arbitrary” means, and (3) what “detention” means. The analysis proceeds in two stages: first, by considering the first 25 years of case law, and the n by considering the start of the second 25 years — or, more simply, everything up to the Supreme Court’s decision in R. v. Clayton and the n Clayton itself. The intent is to show that both prior to and after Clayton, the Court has not created a section 9 jurisprudence. Important questions were left essentially unaddressed until this most recent decision. Clayton addressed some of those issues, but it did so in a way that still does not create anything which could be called a section 9 jurisprudence. Indeed, that decision seems to reflect a retrograde approach which would be more detrimental than beneficial to the protection of Charter rights in general

Making Trial Within a Reasonable Time a Right Once More

Jordan got it right. The use of presumptive ceilings to determine whether there has been a violation of a Charter right is a blunt instrument which eliminates most of the ability of judges to consider the individual circumstances of cases and to exercise discretion. It allows no role for what might seem to be an important consideration, the seriousness of the offence. Had this been the Court’s first attempt at structuring the right, it would seem unsophisticated and simplistic. But of course Jordan is not the first attempt at outlining the contours of the right to a trial within a reasonable time: it is more like the third or fourth. And as a response to the reality which confronted the Court — a reality of the Court’s own making — Jordan made the right choice in eliminating as much discretion as possible

Charter Protection against Unlawful Police Action: Less Black and White Than It Seems

Pre-Charter, in principle the police had limited powers. However, in practical terms it was not possible for a private citizen to object to all police action that fell outside those powers: realistically it was only if the police action were egregious enough to rise to the level of a tort or an offence that there was a mechanism for review. That is, there was a lot of grey area in between the things the police clearly were allowed to do and those they clearly were not allowed to do. The Charter changed that. By making “lawfulness” the standard for deciding whether there was an unreasonable search or an arbitrary detention, the Supreme Court in the ory banished the grey area, making it possible to review any action falling outside the strict limits of police powers. However, experience led to the conclusion that those “strict limits” might in fact be too strict, and so paradoxically the restraint mechanism of the Charter has led in some instances to the expansion of police power. Further, the particular approach taken to expanding police powers amounts to potentially declaring all of the previous grey area to fall within the powers of the police. This paper argues that that is an undesirable strand in Charter jurisprudence, and that it could be avoided by dealing with grey area issues at the remedy stage, as section 24(2) anticipates, rather than at the stage of deciding what powers police have

Social Media: The Law Simply Stated

It is a challenge to simply state the law about social media, because there is no such thing as “social media law.” Rather, the law bumps up against social media in many ways. In some cases, existing law can be seamlessly applied to new technologies and means of interaction. In other cases, entirely new paradigms will likely need to be adopted to handle new challenges. Many other cases will fall somewhere in between. Our goal in this Law Simply Stated is to provide some background on the nature of social media themselves, and then to state the basic law in a number of applicable fields. In particular we shall begin with discussion of the definition of “social media,” along with consideration of what we see as an important analytical theme: is this topic a topic? Do the challenges posed by social media have a single solution? Are they matters to which the law can simply adapt, or must new approaches be created? Can the same answer be provided in each context? Following that we will move to discuss basic principles of law in a variety of areas which are relevant to social media. These are: judicial notice; courtroom management; civil discovery; privacy; admissibility of electronic documents; criminal evidence-gathering; employment law; defamation; and finally, cyber-bullying

ArtMaps: A Technology for Looking at Tate’s Collection

This article presents ArtMaps, a crowdsourcing web-based app for desktop and mobile use that allows users to locate, move and annotate artworks in the Tate collection in relation to one or more sets of locations. Here the authors show that ArtMaps extends the ‘space’ of the museum and facilitates a new, pluriperspectival, way of looking at art

Beyond El Niño: unsung climate modes drive African floods

The El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) dominates the conversation about predictability of climate extremes and early warning and preparedness for floods and droughts, but in Africa other modes of climate variability are also known to influence rainfall anomalies. In this study, we compare the role of ENSO in driving flood hazard over sub-Saharan Africa with modes of climate variability in the Indian and Atlantic Oceans. This is achieved by applying flood frequency approaches to a hydrological reanalysis dataset and streamflow observations for different phases of the ENSO, Indian Ocean Dipole and Tropical South Atlantic climate modes. Our results highlight that Indian and Atlantic Ocean modes of climate variability are equally as important as ENSO for driving changes in the frequency of impactful floods across Africa. We propose that in many parts of Africa a larger consideration of these unsung climate modes could provide improved seasonal predictions of associated flood hazard and better inform adaptation to the changing climate

Mice Deficient in T-bet Form Inducible NO Synthase-Positive Granulomas That Fail to Constrain Salmonella.

Clearance of intracellular infections caused by Salmonella Typhimurium (STm) requires IFN-γ and the Th1-associated transcription factor T-bet. Nevertheless, whereas IFN-γ-/- mice succumb rapidly to STm infections, T-bet-/- mice do not. In this study, we assess the anatomy of immune responses and the relationship with bacterial localization in the spleens and livers of STm-infected IFN-γ-/- and T-bet-/- mice. In IFN-γ-/- mice, there is deficient granuloma formation and inducible NO synthase (iNOS) induction, increased dissemination of bacteria throughout the organs, and rapid death. The provision of a source of IFN-γ reverses this, coincident with subsequent granuloma formation and substantially extends survival when compared with mice deficient in all sources of IFN-γ. T-bet-/- mice induce significant levels of IFN-γ- after challenge. Moreover, T-bet-/- mice have augmented IL-17 and neutrophil numbers, and neutralizing IL-17 reduces the neutrophilia but does not affect numbers of bacteria detected. Surprisingly, T-bet-/- mice exhibit surprisingly wild-type-like immune cell organization postinfection, including extensive iNOS+ granuloma formation. In wild-type mice, most bacteria are within iNOS+ granulomas, but in T-bet-/- mice, most bacteria are outside these sites. Therefore, Th1 cells act to restrict bacteria within IFN-γ-dependent iNOS+ granulomas and prevent dissemination

Differential cross section measurements for the production of a W boson in association with jets in proton–proton collisions at √s = 7 TeV

Measurements are reported of differential cross sections for the production of a W boson, which decays into a muon and a neutrino, in association with jets, as a function of several variables, including the transverse momenta (pT) and pseudorapidities of the four leading jets, the scalar sum of jet transverse momenta (HT), and the difference in azimuthal angle between the directions of each jet and the muon. The data sample of pp collisions at a centre-of-mass energy of 7 TeV was collected with the CMS detector at the LHC and corresponds to an integrated luminosity of 5.0 fb[superscript −1]. The measured cross sections are compared to predictions from Monte Carlo generators, MadGraph + pythia and sherpa, and to next-to-leading-order calculations from BlackHat + sherpa. The differential cross sections are found to be in agreement with the predictions, apart from the pT distributions of the leading jets at high pT values, the distributions of the HT at high-HT and low jet multiplicity, and the distribution of the difference in azimuthal angle between the leading jet and the muon at low values.United States. Dept. of EnergyNational Science Foundation (U.S.)Alfred P. Sloan Foundatio