March 2009 Archives

TREC Legal Track Making Progress on E-Discovery Searching
The work of the Legal Track of the Text Retrieval Conference (TREC Legal Track) is improving search techniques for electronic discovery, according to Jason Krause’s article, “In Search of the Perfect Search,” ABA Journal, April 2009. Krause reports that researchers in TREC Legal Track have identified the following techniques that appear to yield search results better than those realized by litigators working independently and using traditional Boolean techniques:

• “[L]awyers need to work with opposing counsel to identify good search terms and to negotiate proposed Boolean search strings.” A hypothetical example of such a negotiation is available at http://abajournal.com/files/booleanexample-1.pdf ;

• Lawyers should “use sampling—testing to see whether the search engines are finding documents known to be relevant. That means deploying what e-discovery experts call iterative feedback loops. These involve a team of lawyers and other in-house experts conducting searches in stages, and conferring with counsel and experts from the opposing party to determine whether the process is working”; and

• Lawyers, when designing “a search, [] should identify the data types and then prove that the search tool they’re using works with those data types.”

[Robert Richards via Law Librarian Blog]

Blog Considers Future of Legal Information
Source: Robert Ambrogi's LawSites

If you don't know what is meant by "legal informatics," I suggest this quote as an oversimplified definition: "Everywhere, more and more courts, legislatures, and agencies are putting information on the Internet in more and better ways using improved technologies." The quote is from Thomas R. Bruce, cofounder and director of the trailblazing Legal Information Institute at Cornell Law School. It appeared on his blog recently, part of a thoughtful, longer post about the need for legal information professionals throughout the world to be more directly engaged in a conversation about mapping the future of legal information.

If there is to be such a conversation, it will have to confront a variety of difficult topics -- access, transparency, standards, technology, government policies, IP laws and about the roles of government and private commerce. It is a conversation the LII hopes to help move forward with its launch last week of a new blog, VoxPopuLII. Bruce describes the blog this way:

Our new guest blog, VoxPopuLII, is designed to help the conversation along with biweekly posts from folks you may not have heard from before. They’re from all different tribes in all different places on the intellectual and global map. We’ve asked for their big ideas — and if you’ve got big ideas of your own, I’d invite you to get in touch with me about writing something for us. And of course we invite your comments and suggestions about what you find there.

The first post in the series, What is a Legal Information Institute?, comes from Kerry Anderson, deputy director and head of IT for the Southern African Legal Information Institute. The blog promises to be host to a conversation well worth following.

In this occasional feature, we highlight recently asked questions and brief answers from the Law Library reference desk.

Q: Where could I find information on the history of medical malpractice in the US?
A: The Making of American Law, Trials contains one report of a medical malpractice trial. The Making of American Law: Legal Treatises 1800 - 1926 has several treatises that address the law of medical malpractice.

Q: I need articles about Hernandez v. Texas for an undergrad paper. How do I find them?
A: LexisNexis Academic has eleven articles with Hernandez v. Texas in the title.

Have your own reference question? Call or email the reference desk at 612-625-4309 or law-ref@umn.edu.

Law Librarian Group Calls for Ending Publication of Law Reviews in Print Format
Print publication of law reviews is back in the news. Paul Lomio recently reported on Legal Research Plus that the Durham Statement on Open Access to Legal Scholarship calls for all law schools to stop publishing their law reviews in print format and to rely instead on creating definitive versions of their journals in digital formats and making the law review articles readily accessible in online respositories by using a standard set of metadata to catalog each one. The list of signitories to the Statement, all directors of some of the nation's major academic law libraries, is printed below the text of the Durham Statement.

Durham Statement on Open Access to Legal Scholarship
February 11, 2009

Objective: The undersigned believe that it will benefit legal education and improve the dissemination of legal scholarly information if law schools commit to making the legal scholarship they publish available in stable, open, digital formats in place of print. To accomplish this end, law schools should commit to making agreed-upon stable, open, digital formats, rather than print, the preferable formats for legal scholarship. If stable, open, digital formats are available, law schools should stop publishing law journals in print and law libraries should stop acquiring print law journals. We believe that, in addition to their other benefits, these changes are particularly timely in light of the financial challenges currently facing many law schools.

Rationale: Researchers – whether students, faculty, or practitioners – now access legal information of all sorts through digital formats much more frequently than in printed formats. Print copies of law journals and other forms of legal scholarship are slower to arrive than the online digital versions and lack the flexibility needed by 21st century scholars. Yet, most law libraries perceive a continuing need also to acquire legal scholarship in print formats for citation and archiving. (Some libraries are canceling print editions if commercial digital versions are available; others continue to acquire print copies but throw them away after a period of time.)

It is increasingly uneconomical to keep two systems afloat simultaneously. The presumption of need for redundant printed journals adds costs to library budgets, takes up physical space in libraries pressed for space, and has a deleterious effect on the environment; if articles are uniformly available in stable digital formats, they can still be printed on demand. Some libraries may still choose to subscribe to certain journals in multiple formats if they are available. In general, however, we believe that, if law schools are willing to commit to stable and open digital storage for the journals they publish, there are no longer good reasons for individual libraries to rely on paper copies as the archival format. Agreed-upon stable, open, digital formats will ensure that legal scholarship will be preserved in the long-term.

In a time of extreme pressures on law school budgets, moving to all electronic publication of law journals will also eliminate the substantial costs borne by law schools for printing and mailing print editions of their school’s journals, and the costs borne by their libraries to purchase, process and preserve print versions.

Additionally, and potentially most importantly, a move toward digital files as the preferred format for legal scholarship will increase access to legal information and knowledge not only to those inside the legal academy and in practice, but to scholars in other disciplines and to international audiences, many of whom do not now have access either to print journals or to commercial databases.

Call to Action: We therefore urge every U.S. law school to commit to ending print publication of its journals and to making definitive versions of journals and other scholarship produced at the school immediately available upon publication in stable, open, digital formats, rather than in print. We also urge every law school to commit to keeping a repository of the scholarship published at the school in a stable, open, digital format. Some law schools may choose to use a shared regional online repository or to offer their own repositories as places for other law schools to archive the scholarship published at their school.

Repositories should rely upon open standards for the archiving of works, as well as on redundant formats, such as PDF copies. We also urge law schools and law libraries to agree to and use a standard set of metadata to catalog each article to ensure easy online public indexing of legal scholarship.

As a measure of redundancy, we also urge faculty members to reserve their copyrights to ensure that they too can make their own scholarship available in stable, open, digital formats. All law journals should rely upon the AALS model publishing agreement as a default and should respect author requests to retain copyrights in their scholarship.

Richard A. Danner, Duke Law School
Taylor Fitchett, University of Virginia
Margaret A. Fry, Georgetown University Law Center
Paul M. George, University of Pennsylvania School of Law
Claire M. Germain, Cornell Law School
S. Blair Kauffman, Yale Law School
J. Paul Lomio, Stanford Law School
Harry S. (Terry) Martin III, University of Texas Law School
Kent McKeever, Columbia Law School
Jim McMasters, Northwestern University School of Law
John G. Palfrey, Harvard Law School
Radu Popa, New York University Law School
Judith M. Wright University of Chicago Law School

Source: Law Librarian Blog

Legal Planet is an environmental law and policy blog launched by UC Berkeley and UCLA in January. This collaborative effort highlights the efforts of the following Centers:

Center for Law, Energy and the Environment (Berkeley Law)

Climate and Energy Policy Institute (Berkeley Law)

Emmett Center on Climate Change and the Environment (UCLA Law)

Environmental Law Center (UCLA Law)

Global Commons Project (Berkeley Law)

Richard S. Ziman Center for Real Estate (UCLA)

In this occasional feature, we highlight recently asked questions and brief answers from the Law Library reference desk.

Q: What is legislative history and why is it used?

A: Legislative history consists of the records generated by a legislature as it develops legislation. It exists for any bill that is introduced, regardless of whether that bill is finally enacted. Legislative history serves two purposes. First, it is used as evidence of the intent of the legislature in enacting a law. This evidence can support an interpretation of an existing law that is ambiguous, especially when there are no court rulings interpreting the law. Second, legislative history is used to track the progress of bills while they are under consideration in the legislature. Special tools help record the progress of a bill through each step in the prescribed lawmaking process. When you conduct legislative history research, you should focus on finding bill texts (all versions, if possible), floor proceedings (debates, votes), and committee proceedings (e.g., minutes, testimony, exhibits). We recommend the following guides for help in finding legislative history.

Finding Federal Legislative History at http://local.law.umn.edu/library/pathfinders/federallegislativehistory.html

United States Laws and Legislation Guide at http://govpubs.lib.umn.edu/guides/leg.phtml (lists materials produced at each step in the legislative process)

Minnesota Legislative History Step by Step at http://www.leg.state.mn.us/leg/leghist/histstep.asp

Have your own reference question? Call or email the reference desk at 612-625-4309 or law-ref@umn.edu.

26th ANNUAL SMITH-BABCOCK-WILLIAM STUDENT WRITING COMPETITION

The Planning & Law Division of the American Planning Association is pleased to announce its 26th Annual Smith-Babcock-Williams Student Writing Competition. The winning entry in the competition will be awarded a prize of $2,500 and will be submitted for publication in The Urban Lawyer, the law journal of the American Bar Association's Section of State & Local Government Law. In addition to the first prize, the Competition will award a second prize of $1,000 and up to two Honorable Mention prizes of $250. Deadline is June 8, 2009.

For rules and more information see: http://www.planning.org/divisions/planningandlaw/writingcompetition/

The Judge as an Author/The Author as a Judge
Ryan Witte's The Judge as an Author/The Author as a Judge [SSRN] starts with the premise that an appointment to the federal bench is a life-long publishing deal. Recognizing that some judges stay faithful to the rigidous framework of judicial opinion writing, some don't -- some judges summon their inner novelist or poet to add life to the pages of the print and online reporting system. From the abstract:

The use of humor, poetry, and popular culture in judicial opinions is not without its criticism. This paper is divided into two main topics; the first discusses the judge as an author. The section will begin with an examination of the audience of judicial opinions and an outline of the different styles of judicial opinion writing. The section will also examine the advantages and disadvantages of using literary tools to advance the law.

The second section addresses the role of the artist as a judge. This section will study a small segment of judges who, in addition to the law, maintain an outside career as an author or artist. Judges who fit into this group include authors of books, operas, and magazine articles, and their opinions are often written in a manner which reflects their experience. This section will also discuss the advantages (and potential drawbacks) of having these unique judges deciding cases dealing with a wide range of author's issues, including copyright and free speech, both substantively and stylistically.

Source: Law Librarian Blog

McDonald, Avril, Jann K. Kleffner, and Brigit Toebes, eds. Depleted uranium weapons and international law : a precautionary approach.
The Hague : T.M.C. Asser Press ; West Nyack, NY : Cambridge University Press [distributor], c2008. Call number: KZ6385 .D47x 2008

Publisher’s Description:
This book provides an in-depth analysis of the international legal aspects of the use of depleted uranium (DU) ammunition and armour. The military use of DU has been surrounded by considerable controversy, mainly as regards the health and environmental risks that such use entails. The debate about DU has thus far been highly polarised, with one end of the spectrum rejecting any risk whatsoever and the other end suggesting that the use of DU leads to severe health and environmental consequences, including Gulf-War syndrome, whenever it is used. Rather than settling these controversies, the book takes as a starting point a precautionary approach in light of the considerable remaining scientific uncertainties. It examines various principles and rules of international law, which would be at play if the health and environmental concerns regarding the use of DU were to materialize.

Jones, Bernie D. Fathers of conscience : mixed-race inheritance in the antebellum South. Athens : University of Georgia Press, c2009. Call number: KF4755 .J66 2009

Publisher’s Description:
Fathers of Conscience examines high-court decisions in the antebellum South that involved wills in which white male planters bequeathed property, freedom, or both to women of color and their mixed-race children. These men, whose wills were contested by their white relatives, had used trusts and estates law to give their slave partners and children official recognition and thus circumvent the law of slavery. The will contests that followed determined whether that elevated status would be approved or denied by courts of law.

Bernie D. Jones argues that these will contests indicated a struggle within the elite over race, gender, and class issues-over questions of social mores and who was truly family. Judges thus acted as umpires after a man's death, deciding whether to permit his attempts to provide for his slave partner and family. Her analysis of these differing judicial opinions on inheritance rights for slave partners makes an important contribution to the literature on the law of slavery in the United States.

Are you prepared for that first legal research assignment from your employer?
Think you should know this stuff, but don’t?
Do you get queasy at the thought of legal research?

Grow confident in your research skills to impress current and future employers!
Plan to attend these FREE basic legal research brownbag sessions March 24-26:

Tuesday March 24; 12:15-1 pm in Room 475
Mary Rumsey will present: Street-Smart Research
--Avoid scary Westlaw/Lexis bills, 4 keys to good online searching, Toolkit for efficient searching

Wednesday March 25; 12:15-1 pm in Room 475
George Jackson will present: Administrative Law Research
--What’s the CFR? What’s the FR? Working with Rules & Regulations

Thursday March 26; 12:15-1 pm in Room 475
Vic Garces will present: Treatises and Legal Encyclopedias
--Learn how to research smarter with secondary sources, legal encyclopedias, and treatises

*No RSVP needed; attend 1, 2, or all 3!

"Rex Gradeless" at Social Media Law Student has identified some law schools and academic law libraries that are using Twitter feeds to communicate with students. Mr. Gradeless reports that the feeds are used to inform students about snow delays, on campus events, website updates, and student accomplishments. Law professors are even jumping on adding announcements to these Twitter pages.

See the list of Twitter feeds at the Law Librarian Blog.

Chiu, Iris H.-Y. Regulatory convergence in EU securities regulation.
Alphen Aan Den Rijn : Wolters Kluwer ; Frederick, MD : Sold and distributed in North, Central and South America by Aspen Pub., 2008. Call number: KJE2247 .C45 2008

Publisher’s Description:
This outstanding book offers a new approach to the legal issues raised by the drive for convergence in securities regulation. The author offers a deeply informed and insightful examination of the implications for regulatory and policy design if regulatory convergence were to be rigorously implemented. After setting the development of the idea of regulatory convergence in historical context and defining what the term means, she goes on to investigate the web of legal issues surrounding the concept and its implementation, including the following:
• the benefits and drawbacks of the existing regulatory competition between Member States;
• ground-up (waiting for divergences to evolve through competitive processes) versus top-down mandatory convergence;
• regulation of intermediaries;
• the regulation of financial market transparency (visibility of pre-trade and post-trade information) and its effect on the business model of stock exchanges and markets;
• interpretations of market abuse in Member States;
• the rise of multilateral trading facilities (MTFs);
• theories on multi-speed clustering among like-minded Member States;
• the role of the Committee of European Securities Regulators (CESR); and
• the relationship of national penalties and enforcement convergence.

Arguing that the current patchwork of primary Directives and Commission Regulations is unlikely to secure convergent textual law, the author suggests that a rigorous pursuit of regulatory convergence should be based on adopting a systemic structure in designing regulatory features to achieve convergence. She proposes that regulatory convergence should capture four aspects of the law sources of law, interpretation and administration, supervision of compliance, through an overarching ‘cybernetic’ model which focuses on theand enforcement selection, transduction, and effectuation of norms, as well as on information and feedback processes and securing compliance with the norms.

Berry, Ira R. and Robert P. Martin, eds. The pharmaceutical regulatory process.
2nd ed. New York : Informa Healthcare, c2008. Call number: KF2036.D7 P47 2008

Publisher’s Description:
Providing in-depth coverage of the procedures utilized by pharmaceutical companies for regulatory compliance, this reference describes the history and development of regulations, standards, and guidelines that affect pharmaceutical product approval and commercial sale in the United States-standing alone as the only authoritative guide to address the complex web of regulatory requirements, application processes, and quality control issues influencing the pharmaceutical industry.

Changes Proposed for Civil Trials
Source: The Virtual Library Cat's Eye View blog

In their final report issued this week, a task force of prominent plaintiffs' attorneys and defense attorneys from the American College of Trial Lawyers agreed on something. They called for changes that would transform the current civil discovery rules--including replacing notice pleading with fact-based pleading, revising the rules for initial disclosures, and making civil discovery more targeted and time-limited. The College's Task Force on Discovery and the University of Denver's Institute for the Advancement of the American Legal System, issued the report based on an 18-month joint project to examine the role of discovery in perceived problems, such as delays and prohibitive litigation costs, in the American civil justice system. The anticipated "public discussion and debate" will no doubt follow.

Here are selected new resources from LLRX.com:

Guide to International Refugee Law Resources on the Web
This updated research guide by Elisa Mason directs readers to some of the key texts and resources available on the Web that can help shed light on, and provide a context for, many of the issues currently being deliberated in the refugee law arena. The guide covers international and regional instruments, human rights and humanitarian law, international bodies (especially the UNHCR), national legislation, case law, and periodicals.

Criminal Law Resources: Social Networking Online and Criminal Justice
The activities of users and the information being posted on social networking sites are having wide ranging effects on the administration of justice, law enforcement investigation, prosecution and defense. Ken Strutin's guide provides a snapshot of many of the novel and varied uses of social networking evidence in the field of criminal justice.

Knowledge Discovery Resources 2009: An Internet MiniGuide Annotated Link Compilation
Marcus P. Zillman's compilation is dedicated to the latest and most reliable resources for knowledge discovery available through the Internet. This wide ranging selection of resources provides specialized tools, applications and sources relevant to researchers from many disciplines

The U of MN Law School has added a business law concentration to its degree programs. For more information, see http://www.law.umn.edu/current/concentrations_businesslaw.html

In addition, this initiative on Business and Public Policy has recently been announced by the Brookings Initiative:

Brookings Institution: Initiative on Business and Public Policy [pdf]
http://www.brookings.edu/projects/business.aspx

The focus on the Brooking Institution's Initiative on Business and Public Policy is to provide "analytical research and constructive recommendations on public policy issues affecting the business sector in the United States and around the world." The Initiative is primarily concerned with working in the areas of financial reform and competitiveness. Scholars, policy analysts, and others can click through the site to look at their latest policy briefs, op-ed pieces, and conference proceedings. In terms of thematic offerings, visitors shouldn't miss the "Fixing Finance" series of papers, which include documents such as, "The Origins of the Financial Crisis" and "Regulating Insurance After the Crisis". Also, visitors should look through the "Top Topics" area and sign up to receive their periodic Economic Studies Bulletin via email.

This review was part of the Internet Scout Project.
Copyright Internet Scout, 1994-2009. Internet Scout (http://scout.wisc.edu/), located in the Computer Sciences Department of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, provides information about the Internet to the U.S. research and education community under a grant from the National Science Foundation, number NCR-9712163. The government has certain rights in this material. Permission is granted to make and distribute verbatim copies of the entire Scout Report provided this paragraph, including the copyright notice, are preserved on all copies.

Burton, Steven J. Elements of contract interpretation.
Oxford ; New York, N.Y. : Oxford University Press, c2009. Call number: KF801 .B874 2009

Publisher’s Description:
Unclear contracts are common, and a large number of litigated cases in the U.S. require clarification of the parties' agreement. The process of clarifying an unclear contract involves three legal tasks. A judge must first identify the terms to be interpreted, then must determine whether the terms are ambiguous and encompass the rival interpretations advanced by the parties. Finally, if the terms are ambiguous, a finder of fact must resolve the ambiguity by choosing between the rival interpretations. Performing these tasks often involves the question of what evidence may be considered. Further, the courts may decide contract interpretation issues based on the agreement's literal terms, or the parties' objective or subjective intentions.

Steven J. Burton's undertaking in Elements of Contract Interpretation is a comprehensive treatment of these issues. By identifying the concrete and legally provable elements that contract interpreters may use, he has written an invaluable resource for both practitioners and scholars alike. This book also proposes an optimal law of contract interpretation for the courts' consideration.

Wigfall Robinson, Mildred and Richard J. Bonnie, eds. Law touched our hearts : a generation remembers Brown v. Board of Education.
Nashville : Vanderbilt University Press, c2009. Call number: LC212.52 .L39 2009

Publisher’s Description:
In February 1954, President Eisenhower invited Chief Justice Warren to dinner at the White House. Among the guests were well-known opponents of school desegregation. During that evening, Eisenhower commented to Warren that "law and force cannot change a man's heart." Three months later, however, the Supreme Court handed down its unanimous decision in Brown, and the contributors to this book, like people across the country, were profoundly changed by it, even though many saw almost nothing change in their communities.

What Brown did was to elevate race from the country's dirty secret to its most urgent topic of conversation. This book stands alone in presenting, in one source, stories of black and white Americans, men and women, from all parts of the nation, who were public school students during the years immediately after Brown. All shared an epiphany. Some became aware of race and the burden of racial separation. Others dared to hope that the yoke of racial oppression would at last be lifted.

The editors surveyed 4750 law professors born between 1936 and 1954, received 1000 responses, and derived these forty essays from those willing to write personal accounts of their childhood experiences in the classroom and in their communities. Their moving stories of how Brown affected them say much about race relations then and now. They also provide a picture of how social change can shape the careers of an entire generation in one profession.

Please take note that the Law Library service hours will change over spring break (March 14-22).

The Law Library will be CLOSED Sat-Sun March 14-15 and Friday March 20-Sunday March 22.

UMN Law students will still have 24/7 access to the library through their UCard, but the circ desk and reference office will not be staffed on those days.

Monday March 16 to Thursday March 19 the Library will be OPEN 8 am to 4:30 pm. The Reference Office will be open 9 am to 4:30 pm.

Security monitors will be on duty 3:30-7:30 pm M-Th, with limited coverage each weekend.

At this point most everyone has heard of LibraryThing, the most popular social cataloging website online, and perhaps even of the Amazon-owned Shelfari, but here are a few websites for book lovers that you may not have heard about. Read the whole post at iLibrarian.

Among the favorites on the list:

GoodReads : http://www.goodreads.com/
GoodReads is a robust social cataloging site in which members can create lists, write reviews, form groups, create trivia questions about titles, and converse in forums.

World War II Poster Project wins 2009 ACRL IS Innovation Award
March 10, 2009

CHICAGO — The Bucknell University World War II Poster Project, developed by Abby Clobridge, librarian and digital initiatives group leader, and David Willson Del Testa, assistant professor of history, at Bucknell University, is the recipient of the 2009 Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) Instruction Section (IS) Innovation Award. Sponsored by Lexis-Nexis, the annual award recognizes a project that demonstrates creative, innovative or unique approaches to information literacy instruction or programming. A prize of $3,000 and a plaque will be presented to Colbridge and Del Testa during the 2009 ALA Annual Conference in Chicago at the IS program at 3:30 p.m. on Sunday, July 12.

“The IS Awards Committee chose the Bucknell University World War II Poster Project because of its creative and collaborative approach to research, information literacy and technological skills within the context of an introductory history course and a special collection,” said award committee Co-chair Emily Rogers, assistant professor and reference librarian at Valdosta State University.

Read more at the press release site.

American Library Association announces winner of annual James Madison Award
Ceremony to be held during Freedom of Information Day at Newseum

March 6, 2009
WASHINGTON, D.C. – The American Library Association (ALA) today announces that the winner of the annual James Madison Award is Thomas M. Susman, the director of the American Bar Association’s (ABA) Government Affairs Office.

The James Madison Award, named in honor of President James Madison, was established by the ALA in 1986 to honor individuals or groups who have championed, protected and promoted public access to government information and the public’s “right to know” on the national level.

The honor is presented annually on the anniversary of Madison’s birth during Freedom of Information (FOI) Day. Susman will be presented with the award Friday March 13, 2009, during the Freedom Forum’s 11th Annual National FOI Day Conference to be held in the Newseum’s Knight Conference Center.

ALA President Jim Rettig said Susman, who practiced with the D.C. law firm Ropes & Gray for 27 years before being named to his current position at the ABA in 2008, has shown a long commitment to the importance of open access to government information.

“Tom has stood shoulder to shoulder with our nation’s librarians in our efforts to make government information available to the public and our long, historic fights to protect library patrons’ privacy,” Rettig said.

Sen. Patrick Leahy (VT), the 1989 winner of the ALA James Madison Award, said Susman has been a steady defender the public’s “right to know.”

“Tom Susman has seen the importance of the public’s ‘right to know’ both from inside and outside the realm of policymaking,” Leahy said.

“He has also seen the fragility of laws like the Freedom of Information Act, especially when agencies drag their feet. Tom has always been a dependable ally in the struggle to keep the flame alive.”

More information on the ALA James Madison Award, including a list of previous winners, can be found here.

Rob Richards, LLB contributing editor, has published "Cost-Effective Research in U.S. Bankruptcy Law" in the Spring issue of PLL Perspectives at 7. (updated web version (March 7, 2009)). The article provides suggestions for quick and inexpensive ways to locate relevant U.S. bankruptcy law and facts.

Source: Law Librarian blog

Here is a new product from Versuslaw. It’s another option for online access to free case law. http://mn.findacase.com

See description here: http://www.findacase.com/company/facnetAbout.aspx

Source: Government Relations committee, MN Assn of Law Libraries

Children's Rights: International and National Laws and Practices [pdf]
http://www.loc.gov/law/help/child-rights/index.php

In the 20th century, the children's rights movement came into full flower as both the League of Nations and later the United Nations declared that children need safeguards and protections separate from those of adults. This
authoritative collection created by The Law Library of Congress provides access to the various laws and policies that help protect children in sixteen nations, including Israel, Japan, Mexico, and Russia. For each nation, visitors can read the domestic laws and policies that affect child health and social welfare, education and special needs, child labor and exploitation, and juvenile justice. It's a good idea to start off by reading the introduction by Dr. Rubens Medina before diving into these materials. Dr. Medina offers a nice overview of the development of children's legal rights, and after reading this essay, visitors should click on the "Country Reports" area to learn about the specifics of children's rights and safeguards in different countries around the world.

Enhancing Education
http://ccnmtl.columbia.edu/enhanced/
Educators who are interested in incorporating new technologies into their classroom experience often wonder where to start. They may want to start by visiting the Enhancing Education site, which is maintained by staff members at the Columbia Center for New Media Teaching and Learning at Columbia University. The site is organized a bit like a weblog, as there are different posts organized into subjects that include "Noted", "Solutions", and "Primers". The "Noted" postings highlight interesting technologies that may be of interest to educators, and the "Solutions" entries are composed of a quick "how-to" that addresses a broad range of technologies and approaches to classroom learning. Finally, the "Primers" posts cover the basic elements of a compelling new technology or idea, including incorporating a weblog into the class or peer editing. Visitors can also view the top ten tags on the site, or take a look at the most recent posts.

Neighborhood Effects on Crime and Youth Violence: The Role of Business Improvement Districts in Los Angeles [pdf]
http://www.rand.org/pubs/technical_reports/2009/RAND_TR622.pdf

Business improvement districts (BIDs) are a tool used by concerned members of the business community and politicians to enhance a commercial retail area's economic fortunes. As it turns out, they may also improve the social
environment of their neighborhoods as well. Published in 2009, this study commissioned by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was completed by the RAND Corporation. Throughout its 139-pages the study takes a critical
look at how these BIDs have the potential "to reduce a youth's risk to neighborhood violence" and generally improve the social environment. The study was based on research performed in Los Angeles and the report itself is divided into six chapters. The study notes that the activities of BIDs can help increase informal social control, reducing visible signs of disorder and blight, and provide enriched employment opportunities.

Mapping the African American Past
http://maap.columbia.edu/

The Mapping the African American Past (MAAP) project, produced by a team of researchers and specialists at Columbia University, offers a marriage of African American history and geography in New York City. The project was funded by JPMorganChase, and it allows users to navigate through sites of importance to the African American community throughout the city's past. New visitors may wish to start by watching the short film, "Introduction to MAAP", and then move on over to the "Place in Focus" feature. Here they can learn about places like Five Points, the Abyssinian Baptist Church, and the home of David Ruggles. They can also use an interactive map to toggle through places associated with certain time periods, such as the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries. Additionally, the site also contains lesson plans that address topics that include African American community and culture and "Building New York". The site is rounded out by a series of podcasts which cover all 52 locations featured on the MAAP website.

Copyright Internet Scout, 1994-2009. Internet Scout (http://scout.wisc.edu/), located in the Computer Sciences Department of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, provides information about the Internet to the U.S. research and education community under a grant from the National Science Foundation, number NCR-9712163. The government has certain rights in this material. Permission is granted to make and distribute verbatim copies of the entire Scout Report provided this paragraph, including the copyright notice, are preserved on all copies.

A new research guide on family law is now available on the Law Library’s web site. For the purposes of this research guide “family law” is defined in its broadest sense, including husband and wife, parents and children, the nontraditional family, and the issues of marital property, divorce, custody, support, and family violence. Finding aids and tools such as library catalogs, bibliographies and periodical indexes are covered. The guide also covers various types of materials available in print and electronic formats including, model/uniform laws, treatises, popular/self-help works, related web sites and state law survey resources.

This guide was authored by Reference Librarian Peggy Hall.

It's a Wonderful Law School!

TORT website: http://www.tc.umn.edu/~tort/index.php
TORT on wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theatre_of_the_Relatively_Talentless

On March 6 & 7, 2009, T.O.R.T. will present the Seventh Annual Law School Musical themed around the famous movie It's a Wonderful Life!. Our tale will follow the story of Georgette, a kind and caring 3L who finds herself doubting her decision to go to law school and considering dropping out and going to [gasp] Carlson School of Business. Clarice, a new professor trying to earn tenure, is assigned to try and save Georgie from going to the dark side, and does so by showing Georgie how screwed up the law school would have been if she had never come to Mondale Hall, and of course, hilarious hijinks ensue.

The Inverted Iconoclast
by Krishna Andavolu, Obit Magazine
MARCH 5, 2009

An excerpt of the review:
Anti-death-penalty activists often lament the company the United States keeps by its continued use of capital punishment. Do we really want to be like Saudi Arabia, Yemen, China, Iran or Libya, nations that also execute people? Aren’t we, as a highly developed country, more akin to Great Britain, France or Australia, countries that have abolished the death penalty long ago? And shouldn’t we be ashamed that countries like Cambodia, Rwanda and Haiti have abolished capital punishment before we have?

What is clear, is that America’s relationship to the death penalty is unlike anywhere else in the world. It is an “ongoing crucible for the deepest-held ideas about what is just in America,” according to Ted Schillinger, director of the compelling new documentary Robert Blecker Wants me Dead.

Schillinger’s film, which follows the relationship between Robert Blecker, a vociferous, hyperactive proponent of the death penalty and Daryl Holton, a death row inmate in Tennessee, attempts to isolate capital punishment’s ethical core from the mille feuille layers of nuance that surround the practice.

Blecker, a professor at New York Law School, is a self-avowed retributivist, a category that denies easy compartmentalization--as much as it denies easy pronunciation. Simply put, he believes in a 3rd way: fewer people should go to death row, but the worst of the worst, the most heinous transgressors of human law, should be killed.

He is an iconoclast, one of the few pro-death penalty voices in the legal academy and a zealot who articulates what would seem to be a basic ethical and jurisprudential premise: the punishment should fit the crime.

But Blecker’s beliefs are more psychologically complicated than that. Citing the Ancient Greek legal scholar Solon, Blecker refers to the anachronistic concept of “blood pollution,” the poisoning of humanity by the presence of evil-doers. In scene after scene of barnstorming rhetoric of retribution, he describes his very emotional response to killers--hatred and anger--and circumscribes a truly Manichean worldview of good and evil.

Read the whole article at http://www.obit-mag.com/viewmedia.php/prmMID/5300

Extract Text from Images & Scanned PDF Manuals Online
Source: Digital Inspiration

If you are on a budget, the built-in OCR engine of Google Search is almost a perfect option for converting scanned PDFs to text - just put all your scanned PDF images onto a public website and wait for Google spiders to convert them into editable digital text.

Obviously there are two drawbacks associated with the original idea. The PDF conversion process is not real time and second, you need access to a public web server where you can upload the PDF images so that Google bots can find them.

If you aren’t willing to wait that long and need to perform instant OCR without downloading any of the software tools, try OCR Terminal - it’s an online Optical Character Recognition service where you can upload scanned images, multi-page PDF documents or even screenshots and convert them into searchable text documents.

The conversion results, as you can noticed in the screenshot above, are pretty accurate and it also preserves the document formatting and layout. You may download the extracted text as RTF or a Word Document.

Read more at Digital Inspiration.

Patrick Coleman, the acquisitions librarian at the Minnesota Historical Society and a member of the board of directors of Coffee House Press, has been honored with this year's Kay Sexton Award.

By LAURIE HERTZEL, Star Tribune
Last update: March 3, 2009 - 11:27 PM


Patrick Coleman, the acquisitions librarian at the Minnesota Historical Society and a member of the board of directors of Coffee House Press, has been honored with this year's Kay Sexton Award.

The award is given annually to a person who is dedicated to books and to fostering reading in Minnesota.

"I'm seriously humbled by this," Coleman said Tuesday. "I feel I shouldn't be on any list that Elmer Andersen is on."

Coleman has served on the boards of the University of Minnesota's Friends of the Library and the Minnesota Humanities Commission. He writes a blog about the 150 best Minnesota books, a cheerful and deeply knowledgeable look at Minnesota books throughout history. It's at
discussions.mnhs.org/collections/category/150-best-minnesota-books. He has been acquiring historical books for the state for the past 30 years. He remembers quite clearly the book that got him started. "I was maybe 17 years old when I read this autobiography by James Manahan called 'Trials of a Lawyer,'" he said.

Coleman liked the book so much he wanted to buy it, but it was out of print. So he called West Publishing Co., which published law books. "The person on the other end of the phone was more patient than I deserved," he said. "They said, 'Have you tried a used bookstore?'"

Aha. Within two years, Coleman was on his way to amassing a great library of Minnesota books, though it was 20 more years before he found another copy of the Manahan. His avocation became his vocation, and he donated his private collection to the state Historical Society when he began working there.

Previous recipients of the Kay Sexton Award include Emilie Buchwald, founding publisher of Milkweed Editions; Norton Stillman, a longtime bookstore owner and publisher of Nodin Press, and, yes, Gov. Elmer Andersen, who was a well-known book collector. The first award, in 1988, went to Kay Sexton herself, a book buyer for B. Dalton Booksellers.

Source: Star Tribune

Richard W. Painter. Getting the government America deserves : how ethics reform can make a difference.
Oxford ; New York : Oxford University Press, c2009.Call number: KF4568 .P35 2009

Publisher’s Description:
In order to be effective, federal ethics law must address sources of systematic corruption rather than simply address motives that individual government employees might have to betray the public trust (such as personal financial holdings or family relationships). Getting the Government America Deserves articulates a general approach to combating systemic corruption as well as some specific proposals for doing so. Federal ethics law is relatively unknown in legal academia and elsewhere outside of Washington, D.C., but it is binding on over one million federal employees. Lobbyists, federal contractors, lawyers and others who interact with the federal government are also deeply interested in federal ethics law and represent a surprisingly large market for a little-studied area of the law.

Getting the Government America Deserves analyzes government ethics law from the perspective of an academic critic and that of a lawyer who was the chief White House ethics lawyer for two and a half years. Richard Painter argues that the existing ethics regime is in need of substantial reform since federal ethics laws fail to curtail conduct that undermines the integrity of government, such as political activity by federal employees and their interaction with lobbyists and interest groups. He also contends that in some other areas, such as personal financial conflicts of interest, there is too much complexity in regulatory and reporting requirements, and rules need to be simplified. Painter's solution includes strengthening the enforcement of ethics rules, reforming the lobbying industry, and changing a system of campaign finance that impedes meaningful government ethics reform.

Mayor Coleman, Officials from Across Minnesota Launch Campaign to Save Police, Fire, Libraries

SAINT PAUL — Firefighters, police officers, librarians, mayors, prosecutors and Minnesota families braved snow-covered roads Friday February 27 to announce a statewide campaign that will show how Governor Pawlenty’s proposed cuts to Local Government Aid (LGA) will affect Minnesota cities.

The group, led by mayors from across the state, will educate the public on how LGA is critical to funding services and keeping property taxes low. State lawmakers will also be urged to protect LGA from the governor’s proposed reductions.

“The reason we have snow plows on streets in cities across Minnesota this morning is because of LGA. We have libraries, police, firefighters and parks because of LGA. We need to keep our communities strong, safe and affordable places to live—and we can’t make that happen without LGA,” Mayor Chris Coleman said.

Without LGA, the speakers argued, Minnesotans would see massive increases in property taxes and dramatic cuts in the core services that make their communities strong.

“Everyone here today will be impacted directly by cuts to LGA,” Mayor Coleman said. “But this isn’t just about their jobs. It’s also about Minnesotans who depend on the services they provide—public safety and fire protection at a moment’s notice, prosecution of criminals, and a community library with Internet access for job seekers and reading materials for our children.”

Wadena Mayor Wayne Wolden, who is also president of the Coalition of Greater Minnesota Cities, warned that LGA cuts usually result in property tax increases.

“We have seen the effects of LGA cuts before, and the result is always the same: less services and higher property taxes. In this economy, whether you live in Warroad, Worthington or Wadena, we cannot afford to see our property taxes skyrocket,” he said.

Speakers directed the public and legislators to the website, www.ThankLGA.org, to learn about the LGA program and the specific services that cities may cut if LGA reductions are passed into law. Visitors can also join an online forum to speak up for the services they depend on and voice opposition to the governor’s proposed cuts.

“Anyone who cares about public safety, libraries, parks, or other city services needs to contact their legislators and the governor immediately. Let them know that these cuts will be devastating and must be opposed,” Mayor Wolden said. “The good news is that the governor’s proposed cuts aren’t final. The ball is now in the state legislature’s court and they can stop this from happening.”

Source: City of Saint Paul

Everyone has some kind of place that makes them feel transported to a magical realm. For some people it’s castles with their noble history and crumbling towers. For others it’s abandoned factories, ivy choked, a sense of foreboding around every corner. For us here at Curious Expeditions, there has always been something about libraries. Row after row, shelf after shelf, there is nothing more magical than a beautiful old library.

Read more at: http://curiousexpeditions.org/?p=78

Here is the list of new titles the Law Library acquired in February 2009. The list is on the library's home page.

February Acquisitions List

In addition, here are two highlighted titles of particular interest:

Tamara Relis. Perceptions in litigation and mediation : lawyers, defendants, plaintiffs, and gendered parties.
Cambridge ; New York : Cambridge University Press, 2009.
Call number: K2390 .R45 2009

Publisher’s Description:
Grounded in interpretive theory and offering interdisciplinary insights from sociological, psychological, and gender studies, this book addresses the question - How do professional, lay, and gendered actors understand and experience case processing in litigation and mediation? Drawing on data from 131 interviews, questionnaires, and observations of plaintiffs, defendants, lawyers, and mediators involved in 64 fatality and medical injury cases, the book challenges dominant understandings of how formal legal processes and dispute resolution work in practice. In juxtaposing actors’ discourse on all sides of ongoing cases on issues such as expectations, needs, comprehensions of what plaintiffs seek from the legal system, objectives for mediation, and perceptions of what occurs during attempts at case resolution, the findings reveal inherent problems with the core workings of the legal system. By providing in-depth views on the micro-elements of case processing, the book uncovers important issues about formal and informal justice, the inextricability of disputants’ legal and extra-legal needs, and current paradigms relating to professional, lay, and gendered identities.

Malcolm Langford, ed. Social rights jurisprudence : emerging trends in international and comparative law.
Cambridge ; New York : Cambridge University Press, 2008.
Call number: K370 .S648 2008

Publisher’s Description:
In the space of two decades, social rights have emerged from the shadows and margins of human rights jurisprudence. The authors in this book provide a critical analysis of almost two thousand judgments and decisions from twenty-nine national and international jurisdictions. The breadth of the decisions is vast, from the resettlement of evictees to the regulation of private medical plans to the development of state programs to address poverty and illiteracy. The jurisprudence not only implicates our understanding of economic, social, and cultural rights, but also challenges the philosophical debates that question whether these rights can and should be justiciable.