Here are a few new or updated legal resources of note:
Chief Justice Roberts on Legal Research and Analysis
John G. Roberts Jr., Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court, spoke recently at Drake University Law School about how changes in technology have affected the way cases are decided. He recognized computer-assisted research as a powerful tool “for locating potentially relevant material,� but he went on to say:
Finding the law is now not such an important or elusive skill. With the push of a button or two, everyone has every case, for example, that cites a particular regulation or employs the critical legal terminology.
…
But law students and lawyers must continue to focus on what is relevant and what is not. With so much more raw material available at the push of a button, courts, especially mine, increasingly prize shorter and more coherent briefs. We judges can access raw data too, and what we look for from lawyers is help making sense of it all.
You can listen to the entire speech here. It is only 30 minutes long.
New Fact Sheets from the State Department
The U.S. Department of State has issued a flurry of fact sheets including:
Financing for Development
U.S. Commitment to the Millennium Development Goals
Promoting Food Security Worldwide: A U.S. Commitment
United Nations Management Reform
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights
The United States' Response to the Darfur Crisis
The United States' Commitment to Human Rights
Waiting to Be Drawn
What: Exhibit: Waiting to Be Drawn: Political and Editorial Cartoons Focusing on Presidential Election Years
Where: T. R. Anderson Gallery, Wilson Library
When: Through Wednesday, December 31, 2008
Free and open to the public.
This exhibit marks this year’s Presidential campaign and election through a selection from the thousands of editorial cartoons from the collection of Jerry Fearing, long-time editorial cartoonist for the St. Paul Dispatch and Pioneer Press. This group of material is one of the newest additions to the remarkable collections of the Archives and Special Collections department of the University of Minnesota Libraries.
