Blogging law profs

Today in the National Law Review: Blogging Law Profs Assault Ivory Tower, an article by Leigh Jones. Arguably, this author's negative view of the genre may be inferred by the headline's use of the word "assault". Regarding the explicit blawg skepticism contained in the article of one Professor Katharine Litvak, of the University of Texas School of Law, Ms. Litvak is no relation to any NESL librarian of a similar name!

Anti-Terror measures under fire

Two recent new reports criticize U.K. policies relating to anti-terror measures and torture at Guantanamo.

The first is the annual Human Rights Report [PDF]] of the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee includes a recommendation that the government clarify its policy on the use of information obtained by other states through torture, and demands that support for the "prison regime" at Guantanamo be withheld.

The second report, Human Rights: A Broken Promise, by Amnesty International, criticizes the anti-terror measures taken by the Blair government and the language of legislation now going through Parliament.

These reports come shortly after the United Nations report calling for the United States to close Guantanamo.

White House Report on Federal Response to Hurricane Katrina

The White house has released a report on the response to Hurricane Katrina. Read here in html or here in PDF.

The Library of Congress launches site: Trial of Saddam Hussein

The new site at the Library of Congress provides historical context, links to tribunal documents, and access to the Iraqui laws being tested, as well as discussions of the legal process itself.

Students who are researching in this area should also consult Grotian Moment: the Saddam Hussein Trial Blog, and the Jurist PaperChase News, for recent developments and commentary.

Law school accreditation standards

The Council of the American Bar Association Section of Legal Education and Admission to the Bar has released this letter regarding changes to accreditation standards dealing with diversity and disability which the Council approved February 11, 2006. The letter contains the text of these revisions of Standards 210 through 212, which will be presented to the ABA House of Delegates for a final vote at the ABA August convention. Here are the old standards currently in force.

Professor Paul L. Caron of the University of Cincinnati College of Law, who runs Tax Prof Blog has a number of posts and links to professorial commentary here . Professor David Bernstein of George Mason University School of Law may have gotten the ball rolling with this editorial entitled "Affirmative Blackmail" in the Wall Street Journal last Wednesday. Blackprof.com has a number of posts under its category "Law School" archived here .

There'll be much more from all sides in the debate between now and August, I'm sure. One way to search for blog commentary is via Google Blog Search .

Al-Qa'ida documents

The treasure trove of confiscated Al-Qa'ida documents in the Department of Defense's HARMONY database are slowly (very slowly!) being translated, and some of them have been declassified. Twenty-eight translated documents have been given to the Combatting Terrorism Center (CTC) at West Point. Of these, twenty five are now available as .pdf files here. This document list includes Document #AFGP-2002-600048, Al-Qa'ida's Bylaws , and five letters from Bin Laden. Also, the CTC has produced a report on Al-Qa'ida's organizational vulnerabilities based on these documents.

Guantánamo Bay -UN Report

The United Nations Office of the High Commissioner on Human Rights has issued a report prepared by five independent investigators calling on the United States to close immediately the detention centre in Guantánamo Bay and bring all detainees before an independent and competent tribunal or release them.

Child Support Guidelines

The official Massachusetts Court system website has posted the new child support guidelines which are effective as of February 15, 2006 here . This URL will be cataloged in Portia in due course.

Westlaw Releases Regulations Plus.

Today, WESTLAW released a resource that helps close one of the last gaps in researching in primary authority: the lack of an annotated Code of Federal Regulations. Important features of Regulations Plus include: a note of decisions like feature which links to opinions and agency decisions citing the regulation, links to Federal Register pages (eventually back to the start of the Federal Register in 1936), links to prior versions of the regulation in older versions of the CFR (will assist researchers in quickly seeing how a regulation read in the past), a new 1.4 million entry index linked to the CFR, and the ability to track agency development and releases through an alerting service. To read more and see an online demo click here. NESL students interested in attending training on Regulations Plus can register for a searching regulations class here.

NGO report on global health care corruption

Transparency International, headquartered in Berlin and with 85 chapters worldwide, has released its 2006 Global Corruption Report, which has as its focus corruption in the health care sector. Hospital waiting lists, bribes-for-healthcare, corruption in the pharmaceutical sector, the medical profession, corruption and HIV/AIDS, all are addressed. There are also individual country reports.

This NGO, billing itself as "the global coalition against corruption" also has a quarterly newsletter and a sourcebook (downloadable, 2.22MB zip file)entitled "Confronting Corruption: the elements of a national integrity system.

Many states of the union

Courtesy of software company called AskSam, a searchable database of all State of the Union Addresses from 1790-2006. The entire database of speeches may be searched at once, as well as individual speeches.