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Articles by Sam Muller
The Role of Social Value in Data-Intensive Health Research
1 Introduction Research involving human participants is traditionally, ethically justified through social and scientific value of the proposed research, a favorable risk-benefit ratio, and informed consent of research [1-3]. The practice of data-driven research and the use of health data to develop machine-learning and deep-learning algorithms and artificial intelligence (AI) systems complicates these grounds for ethical justification, in particular the requirements of informed consent.
The Music of John Williams
The Music of John Williams presented an opportunity for patrons from across Brisbane to gather in the Concert Hallat QPAC and experience the Queensland Symphony Orchestra demonstrating their expertise in front of an audience filled with die‑hard Star Wars fans, film lovers, and aspiring musicians.
My Walk With Justice Past
Sam Muller · Follow 3 min read · -- Sam Muller August 30, 2024 Earlier this week I wrote about my walk with Justice Future. This week I will tell you about my walk with Justice Past. Call for Justice — Art and the Law in the Low Countries 1450–1650 is a brilliant, mind-opening book, looking at perceptions and developments concerning justice from 1450 to 1650, through art and writing.
Summer Lessons from Justice Future, Past and Present - Part 1
Sam Muller · Follow 3 min read · -- Sam Muller August 28, 2024 This summer holiday, I walked with Justice Future, Justice Past and Justice Present. Like a similar walk did with Ebenezer Scrooge before me, it opened my eyes. The first walk was with Justice Future in Ireland, that joyful, melancholic, beautiful island. In Peter Lynch’s monumental novel, The Prophet Song, it takes a turn to authoritarianism.
A Moonshot for Nature and Justice?
Sam Muller · Follow 5 min read · -- Sam Muller Making and implementing effective strategies and policies for nature conservation and climate change needs effective justice and rule of law. We don’t have that, especially in the places where it is needed most, like the Congo Basin. We must find ways to integrate strategies and policies for nature conservation and climate change with justice and rule of law. Some first thoughts below. It needs a lot more. Please join the thinking.
By Sam Muller My second, and still-in-the-works novel, People of Dust, revolves round a mysterious disappearance of booksellers. To make the plot work, I needed a city with a flourishing book industry and, naturally, a large reading public. My genre was fantasy. Wouldn’t a technologically advanced and socio-politically sophisticated city seem too modern or science-fictionist to fit in? Then I got my Eureka-moment.
I Will Paint the Night
Reading Time: 26 minutes 1 – Death doesn’t knock “That night, Liminalin, One God, appeared to them in a dream. His four heads were crowned with gold diadems. His loincloth was of silver, and his cudgel iron. He said, ‘Follow me, and I will lead you to your future’. And his voice was the roar of a thousand black-lions.” – Song of Sallonia – Book One Mother died and took the memories with her. No trace of her existence remained in the castle, other than me. And the painting in Father’s study.
Why the Sea is Boiling Hot
Reading Time: 21 minutes Six people sit at the table. Dinner is the prelude. The real business will come after the dessert: murder. My neighbor on the right raises his glass. “May your thoughts take wind, young lady.” The smile on his cadaverous face fails to reach his sunken eyes. The hand holding the glass trembles, the amber liquid swirling like a troubled sea. Pater Biell, a priest of the Fire God, that’s all the file said.
Opinion: We must talk about better justice systems
Photo by: Sora Shimazaki from Pexels In his report “Our Common Agenda,” the United Nations secretary-general refers to an “ever deeper crisis of trust” and a “frayed social contract.” The 12,000 leaders that the World Economic Forum surveyed for “The Global Risks Report 2022” saw the rising risks of “social cohesion erosion” and “livelihood crises.” Writing about the “2022 Edelman Trust Barometer” report, Edelman’s CEO says that distrust “is now society’s default emotion” and that societal...
Balancing privacy rights with surveillance economy
“Minds have been opened and changed over the past few months,” legal author and commentator Richard Susskind wrote in a 2020 article titled The Future of Courts. “Many assumptions have been swept aside.” The global pandemic has forced lawyers and justice system stakeholders out of their normal physical environments and into what on the surface appears to be the safe harbour of the virtual world.
Separated at birth: Lehman Brothers, nukes
An emerging ministers of justice movement by Sam Muller | Oct 28, 2020 Since April, we have been calling for justice leaders of the world to get out of their national cubby holes and come together to share fears, failures, successes, and strategies, just like public health minister are doing. The COVID-19 crisis is too big and too...
The future of global poverty: What if there were multiple horizons for aid post-2015?
by Andy Sumner | Apr 30, 2013 A Brookings paper out this week (here) does something a set of papers have sought to do recently – that is make projections about the future of global poverty. These kind of papers have significant policy implications because it is only by understanding both the future scale and anticipated locations of poverty that properly informed debates can be had on the scale and objectives of future international aid.
What’s in a Name
Messiah. That is the name that last month, a Tennessee judge deemed was inappropriate for a seven-month old baby, holding that « it’s a title that has only been earned by one person and that person is Jesus Christ ». The judge entered an order changing the boy’s name to Martin.
Hugh Lawford Award for Excellence in Legal Publishing - Shortlist Announced
May 5 th 2020 Posted in: The Canadian Association of Law Libraries is delighted to announce the shortlist for the 2020 Hugh Lawford Award for Excellence in Legal Publishing. I am sharing this message on behalf of award committee Chair and Past President of the Association, Ann Marie Melvie. This award honours Hugh Lawford (1933-2009), Professor of Law at Queens’ University and founder of Quicklaw.
Beacon Award winners leading community response efforts during pandemic
“We may have limited resources, but when it comes to taking care of one another we always step up and find a way,” said Michael Farmer, program director of the locally based nonprofit Step By Step and pastor at Risen City Church. In a time when COVID-19 has created and exposed additional needs within their communities, Farmer and two other Charleston-based young leaders — Sarah Stone and Dural Miller — are stepping up to meet those needs in any way they can.
Sam Muller, Jen Watkins: Generation WV fellowship a draw for state (Opinion)
As transplants to the Mountain State, “why did you move to West Virginia?” is a question we hear all the time — from out-of-staters and lifelong West Virginians alike. No matter who the question comes from, it’s almost always delivered with a subtle (or not so subtle) undertone of disbelief.
#Clawbies2019 are Here! - Slaw
As it does every year, December 1st has snuck up us. The date arrives just as the holiday busy season is heating up, and folks are packing their days and evenings with holiday shopping, parties, card-writing and travel plans. In the midst of all this, we ask the Canadian legal community to add one more thing to their plate: participating in the Canadian Law Blog Awards, fondly known as the Clawbies, now in its 14th year. Thankfully, no one ever complains about this “one more thing”.
Slaw and CanLII Release New Ebooks
I’m very pleased to announce that Slaw has partnered with the fine folks at CanLII to produce a series of ebooks of selected content from Slaw.ca. As a publisher with CanLII’s Authors Program, a number of Slaw’s columnists and bloggers have worked with CanLII directly to create highlighted collections of their finest writing on a single interest or issue.
It’s Finally (Sort of) Here!: A Duty of Technological Competence for Canadian Lawyers
For years, Slaw commentators (including myself) have called for Canadian law societies to adopt a duty of technological competence for lawyers. On October 19, 2019, a major development occurred, which has largely gone unnoticed. The Federation of Law Societies of Canada amended its Model Code of Professional Conduct to add the following commentary to the competence rule (r.
How can we talk about it?
We urgently need to figure out how to talk about justice systems at the highest political level. As I have said before in this column: globally, justice systems are not delivering. Read the report of the Task Force on Justice. We need to make them better. That requires a new type of justice leadership and a new way of talking. On 19 and 20 June the ministers of justice of the G7+ met for two days in The Hague. The fact that they met made me rejoice.
Leaks to Media May Decrease after Vice Media Decision
The two biggest political scandals in the news right now – the Mark Norman trial, and the Trudeau/SNC-Lavalin controversy – were exposed by a reliable source who secretly shared information with a journalist. Increasingly this is only viable way that scandals are brought to the public’s attention in this country.
The intersection of family law and psychology: Exciting new course coming to Vancouver
The Continuing Legal Education Society of British Columbia has just published the details of a new continuing professional development program scheduled for 11 and 12 April 2019 in Vancouver. “A Deeper Dive: The Intersection of Family Law and Psychology 2019” features a multidisciplinary faculty and is open to both legal and mental health professionals throughout Canada.
Blockchain? Probably Not.
Most of what you are being told about the future of blockchain in the legal profession is nonsense. Don’t get me wrong. Blockchain is very cool. And I am the furthest thing from a luddite you will find in the legal profession. I’m a part-time LLM student at the University of Alberta Faculty of Law and Department of Computing Science studying the automation of legal reasoning. I’m an ABA Innovation Fellow for 2018/2019, writing open-source software to automate analogy to prior cases.
Do We Still Need E-mail?
The issue of e-mail management is now old hat for anyone involved in the practice of law. Rather than asking whether lawyers use it, it is a story when lawyers choose not to use it. The world has grown more complicated, though, as we try to figure out where to place our energy integrating new technologies, like Twitter or Google’s Wave, into our work. Even our choices about how to use e-mail have expanded. E-mail often reminds me of books.
A Simple Measurement of Client Value
If you’ve been grappling with the practical, real-world meaning of “value” in legal services delivery — and many of us have been — then I want to start this post by recommending a recently released paper from Prof. Noel Semple of the University of Windsor Faculty of Law. “Measuring Legal Service Value” is available for download at SSRN. A lengthy except is available here at Slaw (Part 1 and Part 2), and it is worth your time and consideration.
The Future of Lawyer Licensing: In Defense of an LPP-Like Program for Articling
Knowledge is fundamentally what the professions offer. As we transform from a print-based society to a technology-based Internet society, the role of the profession will change. In “The Future of the Professions”, Richard and Daniel Suskind define knowledge as having particular characteristics. Its use by one does not diminish what is left for others. It can be turned into machine-processable bits. It is difficult to prevent non-payers from using it.
Measuring Legal Service Value, Part 2
What makes a great law firm? How can one quantify just how great a firm is, and compare it to its competitors? Last time in this space I suggested that legal service value has four elements (full paper here): In principle, a firm’s performance on these four elements of value can be quantified.
Seatbelts On - Slaw
My last column was about Kenya. So is this one. For me, Kenya is currently one of the most interesting countries to follow if you are interested in rule of law development and justice innovation. “I had just started my working day when I got a call from my sister. She had been taken to the police station or her way to work. The matatu bus on which she was traveling had been stopped and checked for seat belts. The passengers not wearing them where taken.
The Case Against Disruptive Innovation in Large Practice
Change is needed in the legal industry. But change simply for the sake of changing isn’t always a good thing. There’s plenty of buzz about McCarthy Tétrault LLP’s “radical” transformation, and rightly so. They’re ridding offices for communal work spaces, finally moving away from the billable hour, and slashing redundant support staff. The effort is to be applauded, but the transition is likely to be bumpy.
Good to Great: Taking Your Law Blog to the Next Level
As a public service, I solemnly swear to write this post without using the word influencer. Not sure if the backstory helps, but here it is…. I was recently asked if I had any ‘general advice’ or tips on how to get a new blog moving in the right direction. “To the next level.” It was an interesting question, perhaps partly because of the individual from which the question came.
Will Canada be prepared for drought in a changing climate?
Have you noticed the growing reports about drought? Cities like Sao Paolo, Atlanta and Austin are nearly out of water. Utah may be entering a 1000 year drought. Australia is struggling. California has only one year of water left in its reservoirs. And so on around the world.
"We'll stop hurting our brothers and sisters"
by Ben Phillips | May 22, 2013 It has become to fashionable to say that G8 meetings never achieve anything. It is also incorrect. Civil society campaigners have made use of G8 meetings in the past to achieve major steps forward on debt, on access to HIV/AIDS treatment, and on maternal and child health.
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