The CBC and US President Trump Both Learn Hard Lessons Over the Holidays in Cause-and-Effect Christmas holidays did not come and go without controversy, predictable of course, for these times we live in. Specifically, there was a notable online backlash against Canadian public broadcaster, Canadian Broadcast Corporation (“CBC”), after they aired a slightly edited version of the classic...
TORONTO, ON – Responding to considerable public pressure regarding arcane and unfair Legal Aid requirements, the Ford administration has announced what it has determined to be a more practical and easily understood set of criteria “for the people”. Long have legal professionals and concerned members of the public argued that Legal Aid’s current financial cutoffs have been far too...
Turns out a probable ineptitude for self-improvement isn’t just for individual human beings; it’s for our institutions too! A leaked internal report from Trudeau’s government details several new criminal offences and penalties the Liberals are planning to incorporate into the criminal code by the end of 2020. These proposals were leaked by an anonymous individual who claimed to be a former member...
TORONTO, ON—Committed to improving his physical and mental well being, junior associate Todd Abrams told his peers he was especially proud of the recent lifestyle changes he’s made since January 1st, none of which include curbing his tremendous coke habit. The answer, which went into the specific changes and the way Mr. Abrams could already feel his body responding positively provided a fulsome...
OTTAWA, ON – Still reeling from dangerous rhetoric and military mobilization in the beginning of 2020, our nation is left with a great deal of uncertainty. Several questions are at the forefront of our minds: What threats are legitimate? Which are merely posturing? How is Newfoundland involved? It should be awfully suspicious to all Canadians that Newfoundland has remained shockingly silent...
Crosby’s Golden Goal at the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Winter Games is Obiter’s choice for Sports Moment of the Decade Picking a top sporting moment of the decade is obviously a very difficult process. So many sports are played around the world at such an incredible level. Honourable mentions would go to the Toronto Raptors winning their first title and bringing Canada its first big 4 North American...
OSTRAVA, CZE — Canada’s Akil Thomas deked Russian Goaltender Amir Miftakhov with 3 minutes remaining, giving Canada a 4-3 lead and helping them capture Gold at the 2020 U-20 World Junior Hockey Championships. But the bigger prize for Thomas and many other members of Team Canada, all between 17 and 19 years of age, was that they would not be incessantly tormented on social media for the next few...
On January 3rd, 2018, I went to visit a friend, Simon, at North York General Hospital. We met in high school at De La Salle College (‘Del’), where he was a year behind me. Simon had beaten cancer once, before coming to Del. I spoke to him over the summer, when his osteosarcoma, a type of bone cancer, was back. This time, he said it was terminal. I started law school in September. I...
Post-Recruitment Reflections The Ten Most Ridiculous Questions We Heard From This Year’s Interviews Your candidacy is not credible. I don’t believe that you’ll be at this firm in 5 years. This is a business firm and you clearly care about human rights. Wow, you read someone’s CV and have an idea of what they’ll be like, and then they walk through the curtain and it’s a total surprise!Will...
It’s been a great year for the Muslim Law Students’ Association (MLSA) so far! Our biggest achievement? Finally getting a pull-out banner. It’s huge, you will definitely see it around if you haven’t already. In all seriousness, we have had a lot of fun hosting a wide variety of events this fall, and are grateful for the support and response we have been receiving from students, fellow...
As Osgoode’s main contact with Canadian Lawyers for International Human Rights, CLAIHR Osgoode has been hard at work planning and collaborating on events related to International Human Rights. For our first event, CLAIHR is partnering up with U of T’s Love 146 for their fourth annual conference on Human Trafficking. This event will be held on November 21st at 6pm in Room 1101 of the Sanford...
Have you ever wanted to actually know how your friends are doing when they waste their time playing sports instead of studying? No? Well, you get to anyway! Whew, what a month it has been for Osgoode Intramurals. These law students continue to show that they know how to do more than just read cases. About a month ago we saw Osgoode unite in the annual slo-pitch tournament that happens right near...
The LSAT has changed forever Every student at Osgoode is well aware of the LSAT (Law School Admission Test). You know, the test that we all were anxious taking? If you can recall, the LSAT was comprised of five sections: two logical reasoning sections, one reading comprehension section, one logic games section, and one writing sample section. The grade assigned would be based on three...
On Tuesday, October 29, hundreds of protestors swarmed the Toronto Public Library in response to a controversial blogger who was hosting a speaking engagement. Megan Murphy, a self proclaimed feminist, had a sold out talk at the library that evening. However, Murphy’s views on transgender women have seriously offended the LGBTQ+ community. She argues that womanhood is...
The slogan “the personal is political” began with the second-wave feminist movement and was popularized by Carol Hanisch. It referred to the idea of ‘consciousness raising’, where women would gather together to discuss the problems within their homes and marriages in order to realize that these problems were universal. Whereas in the 1960s, the phrase was designed to draw attention to...
As a lover of video games, I have always been enamoured by the earliest days of gaming. I grew up with an aging Nintendo Entertainment System in my household – the old grey-and-black box one would use to play the classics of the late 1980’s like Super Mario Bros. or the original Legend of Zelda – and have ever-since had a passion for retro games and gaming. However, until very...
On Wednesday, October 16, 2019, The Osgoode Women’s Network (OWN) held its annual career panel. Every year, OWN invites a diverse panel of lawyers who identify as women to Osgoode Hall Law School to share their journey and experiences practicing law. The panel touches upon various topics, including: entering the profession, what it is like being a woman in law, work-life balance, and overcoming...
Conservative MP on the rural-urban divide, firearms, and the role of law students in a democracy Jamie Schmale (CPC), the newly re-elected Member of Federal Parliament for the rural Central-Ontario riding of Haliburton – Kawartha Lakes – Brock recently sat down with Obiter’s Opinion Editor, Corey LeBlanc, to speak about rural – urban issues, firearms, and the involvement of law students in the...
and One Easy Way to Do It Given the past few months in both Canadian politics and culture, one can be forgiven for thinking the wheels have started coming completely off the proverbial cart. Almost daily we turn on the six o’clock news to hear lurid stories about the Prime Minister wearing blackface, leading politicians ranting and raving about the illegitimacy of gay marriage, Canadian cultural...
Exam time is approaching, which means there has been an uptick in Osgoode’s focus on mental health. With all the calls for “self care!” and “yoga!” it can be tempting to view the school as a bastion of mental health advocacy, but we should instead cast a critical eye onto these efforts and recognize that the stress is coming from inside the house. A professor recently told a...
And the Many Different Ways We Will be Evaluated As we all know by now, exams are right around the corner. As a 1L, it was news to me that a final exam could have so many different forms. Papers, take homes, in-class closed book, and in-class open book, to name a few. Let’s take a look at these and see what’s particularly the most fair (or unfair). The final paper worth 80-100% of your mark is an...
On November 30th, the TTC will stop selling tickets, tokens and passes. “Not to worry,” their subway posters tell us, “PRESTO’s got you covered.” This cheerful reassurance hides the fact that this latest change to service is approaching the last step in a gradual process of de-anonymization: beginning with the introduction of PRESTO in 2009, accelerating with the extinction of the Metropass last...
Don Cherry finds himself off-side with the public, and his employer I already knew what was coming before the final notes of ‘Flame of Victory’ had faded into silence. In fact, wanting to hear Canada’s most controversial sports personality go off was the sole reason why I took a break from paper-writing, and tuned in to the last five minutes of the...
I Didn’t Ask to be a Hero; I Just Declared Myself One To think, it has been about eight months since my father generously donated $500,000 to Osgoode and seven since I received my acceptance. Little did I know that day, my path to becoming a lawyer would be rockier than the beginnings of Justice Abella’s and Bora Laskin’s careers combined. I am no stranger to hardship. My undergraduate...
CIA: Condescending Insufferable Artists Langley, Virginia; November 19th Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, Gina Cheri Haspel announced to the press that the CIA will be undergoing radical changes over the upcoming year. Ms. Haspel began the press conference discussing the history of the CIA and its seven decades of failed operations—be it trying to overthrow democracies, Nazi scientist...