#Clawbies2014

The end of the year is just around the corner, and this means that it’s time for the Clawbies ― the (virtual) awards given out to (some of) the best Canadian law blogs. So here, without further ado (and in no particular order) are my nominations.

• Paul Daly’s Administrative Law Matters: I nominated Prof. Daly’s thoughtful blog, which manages to make the rather dry area of administrative law more interesting than you’d think likely, last year. For a reason that escapes me, he didn’t win, so I’ll nominate him again, and will keep doing it until he does. And probably after that too.
• Karim Renno’s À bon droit: Mr. Renno produces a steady stream torrent of reports about Québec cases,  posts on civil litigation, weekly overviews of his favourite new blog posts, historical flashbacks, and probably other things I miss because he is, really, impossible to keep up with. He has also recently been battling it out with Prof. Daly on the standard of review for procedural fairness ― something I haven’t (yet) had the courage to do. In short, he is prodigiously prolific, and just prodigious.
• Michael Spratt’s blog: Mr. Spratt does a wonderful job of the sad, but most necessary, task of explaining the theatre of the absurd sometimes described as the Harper government’s criminal law policy. He also produces podcasts that explain important points about the criminal justice system. The combination of on-the-ground experience and thoughtfulness that he brings to his blog make it a pleasure to read.

I also want to put in a good word for a couple of blogs to which I have been able to make some very modest contributions (which unfortunately disqualify me from actually nominating them):

• CanLII Connects, CanLII’s offspring that that centralizes summaries and commentary on judicial decisions by practitioners, students, and bloggers, and integrates them with CanLII’s full-text decisions.
• And the CBA National Magazine’s Blog, run by Yves Faguy, which provides a platform for all kinds of commentary as well as Mr. Faguy’s invaluable summaries of comments on law-related events elsewhere on the web.

Last but not least, I want to thank the people who have nominated Double Aspect, and especially Prof. Daly and Mr. Faguy, who have said some very nice things about it, for their support. It’s very flattering and a great honour.