Not the letter, but the spirit of the law (library)

While some law librarians refer to difficult research projects as “ghosthunting”, others don’t have to hunt for encounters with the paranormal.

Just this January, mysterious sounds in the Texas Southern University Law Library prompted an evacuation by library staff. Students reported hearing voices coming from the walls and ceilings of the newly renovated library building. The architects claim that it was a mechanical sound but no one has yet been able to identify the source.

This disruptive specter probably prompted some serious shushing on the part of the librarians and the posting of florescent orange signs on all the doors and carrels reminding patrons, corporeal and non, that there is no talking in the library. However, the Howard County Courthouse Law Library in Maryland houses a more useful ghostly patron. This spirit causes the coffee pot to heat up on its own. Now if the NESL library could get one to distribute spillproof mugs with the coffee, we’d be all set!

For those of you who want to share ghost stories of a legal bent, the ‘Lectric Law Library, a great legal research website with many free legal forms, is willing to publish interviews with reputable and legally significant deceased, but only under the following terms:

"Do not send paranoid conspiracy theory material . . . .However, GENUINE recent interviews with . . . .Thomas Jefferson's ghost or space aliens will be considered as will confirmable material relating to Bill Clinton and the CIA . . ."

Phishing & Pharming: Reader Beware

Do you know the difference between "phishing" and "pharming"? Is Huntington Bank or Washington Mutual looking for your personal information? Please be wary, and educate yourself to recognize these phenomena.

The blog beSpacific today links to an article and a website with useful information for the consumer. They point to the Anti-Phishing Working Group, which can help with alerts and information on specific email scams, and can educate you about the problem and the methods some crooks are using to spoof you.

From definitions on their web site, http://www.antiphishing.org/, the Anti-Phishing Working Group defines the terms as follows:

"Phishing attacks use 'spoofed' e-mails and fraudulent websites designed to fool recipients into divulging personal financial data such as credit card numbers, account usernames and passwords, social security numbers, etc. Pharming uses the same kind of spoofed sites, but uses malware/spyware to redirect users from real websites to the fraudulent sites (typically DNS hijacking). By hijacking the trusted brands of well-known banks, online retailers and credit card companies, phishers are able to convince recipients to respond to them."

Please don't be fooled into responding to an email that asks you for personal information.

Reading the Blogs: Baseball and Taxes

As Spring Training opens and expectations run high, these recent postings tie in two major rites of spring, baseball and taxes! The ContractsProf Blog has an interesting analysis of baseball, contracts, and income tax. It appears that in recently signing as a free agent with the Florida Marlins, slugger Carlos Delgardo, was partially motivated to leave Toronto and sign with Florida because Florida has no income tax. In fact, Delgardo negotiated a tax equalization clause in his contract that requires the Marlins to compensate him if he is traded to a team in a jurisdiction with an income tax.

Notorious author of "Juiced: Wild Times, Rampant 'Roids, Smash Hits, and How Baseball Got Big" and former Red Sox outfielder, Jose Canseco, has some tax problems of his own. The Commonwealth of Massachusetts Department of Revenue is claiming Canseco owes $32,783. Canseco's agent refutes the claim and asserts that the taxes were withheld and his accountant simply failed to file the proper forms.

Now for something research related:

The E-LawLibrary Weblog today, links to the recently released "History of the U.S. income tax" which was prepared by Ellen Terrell of the Library of Congress.

Blogsphere impacts law review publication?

The apparent turf war between legacy media (also known as big media, or MSM -mainstream media) and the blogsphere, which broke onto Main Street, U.S.A. in Rathergate and Easongate (CNN news director who resigned after his accusation that U.S. military had targeted journalists created a blogswarm of criticism) may have reached student-edited law reviews.

An earlier NESL blog post referenced the speed of proliferation of legal blogs (blawgs). Now Associate Professor Orin Kerr, of George Washington University Law School, a regular contributor to The Volokh Conspiracy, posits that the superior timeliness, scholarly depth, and the real-time interactivity of blawgs may spell the end of the traditional Case Comment in student-edited law reviews. Read his provocative comments here. You can add your two cents to the discussion, as he has enabled the comments feature at the bottom of the page.

Patriot Act debate website

The Counterterrorism Blog, has high expectations for intellectual stimulation from a new blog, Patriot Debates , a creation of the Standing Committee on Law & National Security of the American Bar Association. As the name implies, this website will host "dueling essays" on aspects of the USA Patriot Act.

The Counterterrorism blog, one of this librarian's favorite sources for in-depth commentary and interesting links, is edited by Andrew Cochran, who from 2001-03 was Senior Counsel for Oversight and Investigations for the Committee on Financial Services of the U.S. House of Representatives. He was the lead counsel for the committee's oversight of federal money laundering and anti-terrorist financing issues and the international efforts to seize and repatriate Saddam Hussein’s hidden assets. There are several contributing experts to this site.

Regarding the ABA debate blog, Cochran says: "To begin with, check out this piece by Andrew McCarthy, who prosecuted the 1993 WTC bombing case, on why Sections 214 and 215 (the so-called "library records" section, actually a misnomer) should be retained."

Keeping Track of Blogs

The legal "blogosphere" has gotten rapidly out of control, with law-related blogs proliferating at a crazy speed. There are two tools that can be used to manage the huge amount of information that is coming out. The first is Blawg, which is essentially a key-word searchable directory of legal blogs. There is a basic search function, which searches through the brief descriptions of the blogs, and a yahoo-like directory that indexes types of legal blogs, for example those that deal with federal or state law, or those that focus on a particular topic.

The other blawg-management tool is Blawg Republic. Postings from a growing number of blogs (including, for example, How Appealing, Bag and Baggage, and the Volokh Conspiracy) are indexed in one or more of over 30 categories (for example, appellate law, criminal law, Law Professors - there is even a category for Law Libraries). If you are interested in a particular area, you can go to this site and read posts about your topic, no matter where they were originally posted. There is also a simple key-word search function that searches entries digested on BlawgRepublic.

Symposium on counter-terrorism

On Friday, February 4, 2005 from 10:00 a.m. to 3:30 p.m., Duke Law School will host "Meeting the threat: a symposium on counter-terrorism", sponsored by their Program in Public Law, live webcast here.

The morning panel, "Keeping America Safe: Where are we? Where are we headed?" features:

David M. Stone, Assistant Secretary of Homeland Security for the Transportation Security Administration,

Andrew C. McCarthy, Senior Fellow, Foundation for the Defense of Democracies,

Anthony S. Barkow, Assistant United States Attorney, Southern District of New York, and

James A. Candelmo, Assistant United States Attorney, Eastern District of North Carolina

The keynote address will be presented by Michael J. Garcia, Assistant Secretary for Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

The afternoon panel, "Building a Case: Investigating and Prosecuting Terrorism-related Cases" features:

Gerald E. Rosen, U.S. Distrct Judge, Eastern District of Michigan,

William J. Hochul, Chief of Terrorism Division, United States Attorney's Office, Western District of New York,

Geoffrey S. Mearns, Former Federal Prosecutor, and

Andrew C. Hruska, Chief Assistant United States Attorney, Eastern District of New York.