Contracts: forms of agreement

The Contracting and Organizations Research Institute (CORI) is making over 25,000 (so far) actual contracts (obtained through various public disclosures) available for free (registration required), online searching. CORI bills itself as "an interdisciplinary research institute dedicated to the study of the organization and structure of economic enterprise and of the effects of legal, political, social, and economic institutions on the structure and performance of economic organizations. CORI was founded to encourage and enable empirical research on contracting and organizational structure, drawing on such fields as economics, law, business, and related social sciences."

One can search the entire digital contracts collection, called the CORI K-Base, at once, or limit the search to any combination of 10 categories: Business Recombinations, Business Transactions, Compensation/Employment, Finance, Franchise Agreements, Governance, Litigation, Reorganization/Bankruptcy, Securities, and Miscellaneous.

Register here.

Disable your popup blocker to use the site.

[Source: E-Lawlibrary Weblog]

Legal aspects of the reconstruction of Iraq

Last week, the Washington Post profiled Iraqi Special Tribunal judge Raid Juhi, so far the only publicly-identified judge on the tribunal. Juhi serves as the chief investigative judge for the tribunal and his team will decide where there is enough evidence to prosecute. I came across this story through Tribunal News Stories, which is linked from NESL's War Crimes webpage.

One way of keeping track of the development of Iraq's nascent democracy is by reading blogger Arthur Chrenkoff's periodic "Good News from Iraq" round-ups. Part 24 was posted today. For example, today he talks about the involvement of the International Human Rights Law Institute at DePaul University and their Legal Education Reform Project involved in training Iraqi law professors in "rule of law principles".

Another place to look for legal (as well as economic and social) news is the weekly Iraq Humanitarian and Reconstruction Assistance Update of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), which is tasked with substantial involvement in supporting Iraq's democratic reforms.

NESL library has 62 titles under the subject heading "Democracy", 15 of which are limited to democracy in the United States, and 6 under "Democratization", as well as related titles under "Representative government and representation".

Scalia on C-Span today

U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Antonin Scalia on "Constitutional Interpretation" at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, DC. Livestreamed at C-Span, 4:00 p.m. Eastern Standard Time.

The Lawyer of Madison County

The library has been mostly quiet during Spring break. We look forward to your return, and in the spirit of some light vacation reading this weekend before classes restart, take a look at this gem from Madison County, Illinois, in which an "Alton attorney accidentally sues himself".
[Source Overlawyered].

For his sake, we hope the judge is not a Letterman fan

Tonight Show host Jay Leno has been served a Subpoena to testify in the Michael Jackson trial. Along with the subpoena he was also served a copy of the court's broadly worded gag order, threatening "persons subpoenaed" with contempt if they speak about any number of subjects related to the case. Mr. Leno promptly filed a motion for clarification that the gag order doesn't apply to him. Apparently Mr. Leno has been in stand up comedy for so long that he immediately assumed that the court's gag order was, in this case, merely a "gag" order.

Our Government at Work

I learned about this website, which is dedicated to the cool things our government does, from the InterAlia blog.

Don't believe in the coolness of our government at work? Take a look at the coolgov.com posting of February 22, 2005. Highlights include such diverse items as U.S. Treaties in Force, the tracking of the flu virus across the United States, a day in the life of U.S. Airlines as modeled by NASA, and a history of how Dagwood met and married Blondie (from the Library of Congress). From prior posts I learned that our government is tracking piracy at sea, and how not to smuggle drugs in peanut butter.

This quirky blog may not be the most in depth research site around, but it certainly is interesting.