Reflections on the Law Library

No links here, just a snapshot, as National Library Week approaches, of what goes on in the NESL library at any given moment and the variety of our patrons.

Observed in a 20 square foot area:

• a 70 something attorney pours over a volume of the United States Code Service, carefully recording notes on a yellow legal pad;
• beside him, a 20 something current student prepares for class using a casebook open beside one of the library's circulating laptops: her wireless connection to the NESL network allows her to simultaneously work off a Westlaw TWEN page in one window, and Instant Message in another;
• behind them a 40 something alumni, who has just dashed into the library from his nearby office, stares intently at a document he had retrieved while using our public access Westlaw terminal.

Each of these patrons found needed materials and resources they were able to use comfortably. Not bad.

"Baseball is the most legalistic of sports"

So reads the first sentence of the first of two-part commentary "Baseball, the Law, and the Rules" (discussing Barry Bonds, Mark McGwire, Pete Rose, and the Hall of Fame) recently posted at Findlaw by Howard Wasserman, Assistant Professor of Law at Florida International University College of Law: Part One and Part Two .

Youth at risk - report

Recommendations from the American Bar Association Youth at Risk Initiative Planning Conference, March 22, 2006.

Congressional committee terrorism-related hearings

The Counterterrorism Blog has posted a list of terrorism-related committee hearings scheduled to be held the week of March 27th.

In general, hearings are published two months to two years after they occur, but a transcript might be loaded much faster on the Committee's own webpage. You can also look for video on C-Span .

Another place to look would be GPO Access on this page .

On Westlaw, hearings are in CONGTMY (November, 2004-) or USTESTIMONY (1993- selected coverage; full coverage from 1996-). On Lexis, the directory path is: Legal > Legislation & Politics U.S. & U.K. > U.S. Congress > Committee Hearing Transcripts. Lexis has several transcript databases, from 1993-.

NESL authorized users may access LexisNexis Congressional Indexes on the web through the NESL Database List, and select "Advanced Search" where you can limit your search to hearings, 1824-. The document may be on the web product in full-text or it may be an abstract with a CIS-NO., which is used to find the full-text microfiche in NESL library. We also have the print version "CIS Index to Publications of the United States Congress", which also will give you the CIS-NO. for the microfiche card.

Formatting is Important!

See Caldwell v. Caldwell, 2006 ILRWeb (P&F) 1435 [ND Cal], 2006 WL 618511, footnote 2, where the court criticized the briefs submitted and refused to consider any of the information in either party's footnotes because they were formatted incorrectly. Here is the court's footnote:

As the court noted at the hearing on the instant motions, both parties filed briefs in violation of Civil L.R. 3-4(c)(2), which requires that all footnotes be of the same font size as the body of the text. Accordingly, and in view of the violation, the court hereby STRIKES all footnotes cited in the parties' briefs, and declines to consider the substance of any content contained therein.

In Massachusetts, formatting requirements for appellate briefs are specified in Rule 20 of the Rules of Appellate Procedure.

Torture and Detention, China - report

Here is the advance edited copy of Civil and Political Rights, Including the Question of Torture and Detention, Mission to China, , the report of the special rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment, 10 March 2006, commissioned by the United Nations.

Massachusetts Report on Haleigh Poutre Case.

Yesterday, the report of three-member Massachusetts Governor’s Special Panel for the Review of the Haleigh Poutre case presented their findings and recommendations. Among the recommendations for children in state custody are new levels of protection whenever there are physician decisions to withhold life sustaining treatment.

The report also notes that this case represents a systemic failure in the child welfare, health care and mental health systems to provide the safety net that children deserve – not just at the Department of Social Services (DSS), but at all levels, public and private.

NESL Professors making news

Two of our Professors, Prof. Victor Hansen and Prof. Lawrence Friedman, have an op-ed piece in today's Jurist, entitled The Army and the Constitution: Time for Congress to Step In.

A third Professor, John Cerone, recently published an ASIL Insight article on their website, analysing The Danish Cartoon Row and the International Regulation of Expression. Professor Cerone is a regular Insight contributor.

Copyright law

From Duke Law School's Center for the Study of the Public Domain, Tales from the Public Domain: Bound by Law?" a primer - in comic book form - regarding how documentary filmmaking is affected by copyright law.

Hurricane Katrina - reports

From the insurance consultant Towers Perrin, Hurricane Katrina: analysis of the impact on the insurance industry , October 2005.

From Popular Mechanics, Now What? The Lessons of Katrina looking at the disaster from a technical, engineering point of view.

State anti-terrorism criminal statutes -chart

From the American Prosecutors Research Institute, this chart showing state-by-state new offenses/laws, enhancements/amendments to existing offenses, added responsibilities for prosecutors, or enhancements/changes to intelligence gathering, from September 2001 - October 2003, that could be applied to prosecute acts of terrorism under state law.

Spring Training

On the first day of spring, a few words about spring training seems appropriate. No, not the boy's of summer prepping for their long season of baseball in Florida and Arizona, but the spring training schedules for LexisNexis and Westlaw here at New England School of Law. The schedule for Westlaw classes is available here and the LexisNexis schedule is available here. If you are unable to attend one of the scheduled classes, both offer online interactive training. Click on the link for online training to see WESTLAW's offerings and here to see Lexis's offerings.

Iraqi Intelligence Service documents

Director of National Intelligence, John Negroponte, has released a number of confiscated Iraqi Intelligence Service documents .

According to a Washington Post article today, these are "the first of thousands expected to be declassified over the next several months". These will be posted to: http://fmso.leavenworth.army.mil/products-docex.htm.

Tort costs- report

Tillinghast , an insurance industry consulting firm, has put out an annual report on tort costs for the past twenty years. The most recent of these reports was released March 13 and is here (23 pages). "Tillinghast's calculations get lots of attention in Washington" says The Wall Street Journal in "Math Divides Critics as Startling Toll of Torts is Added Up" (free online access).

Here are Tillinghast's reports for 2004 (19 pages), and 2003 (29 pages).

The Value of Comparative & International Law to the U.S. Courts

The U.S. Supreme Court website recently posted the text of a Ruth Bader Ginsburg speech at the Constitutional Court of South Africa, February 7, 2006, entitled "A decent Respect to the Opinions of [Human]kind": The Value of a Comparative Perspective in Constitutional Adjudication.

Justice Ginsburg's speech begins "In the United States the question whether and when courts may seek enlightenment from the laws and decisions of other nations has provoked heated debate...the view I have long held [is]If U.S. experience and decisions can be instructive to systems that have more recently instituted or invigorated judicial review for constitutionality, so we can learn from others ... now engaged in measuring ordinary laws and executive actions against charters securing basic rights."

She recognized the opposite position, quoting Justice Scalia: "To invoke alien law when it agrees with one's own thinking, and ignore it otherwise, is not reasoned decisionmaking, but sophistry.'" She also mentions Richard Posner's criticisms. See No Thanks, We Already Have Our Own Laws: The Court Should Never View a Foreign Legal Decision as a Precedent in Any Way, Legal Aff., July-Aug. 2004.

One perspective on this interesting controversy is on its way to the United States Supreme Court in the case of Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, 415 F.3d 33 (D.C.Cir. 2005), Cert. Granted 126 S.Ct. 622 (U.S. Nov 07, 2005) (NO. 05-184). Hamdan was detained in Afghanistan, and the case involves the legality of military tribunals, the inherent power of the President, and whether American courts can judicially enforce individual rights protected under Article III of the 1949 Geneval Convention in an action for a writ of habeas corpus challenging the legality of detention by the Executive branch? The Circuit court reversed a District Ct. opinion which accepted Hamdan’s argument that the federal court could in fact enforce the Geneva Convention Relative to theTreatment of Prisoners of War, Aug. 12, 1949, 6 U.S.T. 3316(“1949 Geneva Convention”).

To date, over 50 Amicus briefs have been filed in the Hamdan case. Students may, of course, access a helpful list on Westlaw or Lexis, and anyone doing research in this area ought to also review the postings and analysis at the ScotUS blog, http://www.scotusblog.com/

Law Professor Blogger Census

Associate Professor Daniel J. Solve, of George Washington University Law School, blogging at Concurring Opinions posts his latest law professor blogger census today. There were 255 blogging profs in all, and they are charted (by school) with hotlinks into each of their blogs.

Saddam Hussein Trial nears end

A recap of the Prosecution evidence presented so far can be found on Professor Michael Scharf's Grotian Moment Blog, at http://law.case.edu/saddamtrial/entry.asp?entry_id=95

Country Reports on Human Rights Practices

On March 6, 2006, Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice released the 2005 Country Reports. The most recent print volume NESL has is 2004; however the Portia record links to this 2005 report online.

"The Country Reports on Human Rights Practices cover internationally recognized individual, civil, political and worker rights, as set forth in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. These rights include freedom from torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, from prolonged detention without charges, from disappearance or clandestine detention, and from other flagrant violations of the right to life, liberty and the security of the person."

Sentencing Reform - report

A 56-page report from The Constitution Project. More information here .

Economic crimes

"The Center for the Study of Economic Crimes is a collaborative project of Florida State University College of Criminology in Tallahassee, Florida, and St. Thomas University School of Law in Miami Gardens, Florida. . . The Center's purpose is to assist policymakers, enforcers and the public in defining fraudulent and other activities victimizing consumers, business and government agencies. It seeks to produce reliable research and information on trends, cross-jurisdictional comparisons, and victim and offender characteristics."

Their website, containing 10,000 or more documents related to fraud is Fraud Update .

United States Sentencing Commission - report

The 277-page Report on the Impact of United States v. Booker on Federal Sentencing has just been released by the United States Sentencing Commission.

Fingerprint Misidentification - Madrid Bombing

In a 330-page report , the U.S. Department of Justice explains how an Oregon attorney, Brandon Mayfield was arrested in May, 2004 in connection with the Madrid terrorist bombings on the basis of a faulty fingerprint match. The principle causes are given as: the unusual similarity of the prints, bias from the known prints of Mayfield, faulty reliance on extremely tiny details, inadequate explanations for differences in appearance, failure to assess the poor quality of similarities, and failure to examine LPF 17 (the Madrid bag) following the April 13 Negativo Report.

New Westlaw Features

Westlaw has released a new design and streamlined navigation features. Click here to watch a 90 second clip highlighting the changes.

The second feature, which closely follows on the release of Regulations Plus and Graphical KeyCite Direct History for cases, is Graphical Statutes. Graphical Statutes charts and links legislative changes into a single page timeline display. Links are provided to prior versions of the statute, amending and enacting public laws, selective legislative history documents, and cases that negatively impact the statute. Graphical statutes is available for the United States Code and California, Florida, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylavania, and Texas.

Blogs and Legal Scholarship

The Berkman Center for Internet and Society is sponsoring a conference entitled "Bloggership: how blogs are transforming legal scholarship" to be held at Harvard Law School Friday, April 28th.

The conference is free and open to the public, according to Professor Paul Caron, one of the speakers, who posted the conference agenda on his blog. Neither The Berkman Center's nor Harvard Law School's websites appear to have the symposium calendered yet, so it is not clear whether registration is required even though the program is free; however, the phone number of the Berkman Center is 617-495-7547 and the e-mail is cyber@law.harvard.edu.

The program will feature heavy-hitters like Howard Bashman, of How Appealing , and Glenn Reynolds, of Instapundit , and many others.

Rumsfeld v. F.A.I.R. and new Westlaw feature

The March 6 decision by the United States Supreme Court upholding the constitutionality of the Solomon Amendment, 10 USCA 983(b), requires law schools and other institutions of higher education to grant military recruiters access to students and campuses that is "at least equal in quality and scope" to access "provided to any other employer" if they want federal funds. Thirty-six law schools had sought to overturn on First Amendment grounds due to those schools' opposition to the military's don't ask, don't tell 'policy', which is actually a federal statute (10 USCA 654, enacted November 30 1993). Naturally, the Supreme Court's holding has generated the expected wide range of commentary . More here , and here .

It also affords a good opportunity for the interested law student to view the operation of the new Westlaw feature: Regulations Plus, which launched February 13 of this year and was announced in NESL blog post that date .

If you use Westlaw to retrieve federal regulations implementing 10 USCA 983, e.g., 32 CFR Part 216, "Military Recruiting and Reserve Officer Training Corps Program Access to Institutions of Higher Education", and look at the left-hand frame, you will see the new Regulations Plus features, among which are prior versions of the CFR's year by year, cites to the Federal Register, the enabling statute under which the regulation was promulgated and any other relevant cross references, plus law review analysis of the regulation. Or, you might look at 32 CFR 22.520 "Campus Access for Military Recruiting and Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC)". You also can Keycite the regulations, and set up a KeyCite Alert to monitor changes in the future.

Slobodan Milosevic Proceeds to a Higher Court

Slobodan Milosevic was found dead in his detention cell last night. The proceedings of his case in the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia are on this page of the ICTY site - use the pop-down menu to select an accused name.

International Women's Day in Iran

Human Rights Watch is reporting that "Iranian police and plainclothes agents yesterday charged a peaceful assembly of women’s rights activists in Tehran and beat hundreds of women and men who had gathered to commemorate International Women’s Day". The blog "A Daily Briefing on Iran" has more details and links to three videos of the Iranian women's demonstrations at the bottom of the post. Still photos of the demonstrations are at Arash Ashoorinia's photography blog in the March 08 entry.

Patriot Act Reauthorization

Congress passed the USA Patriot Improvement and Reauthorization Act of 2005 - here is the enrolled bill, H.R. 3199 , e.g., the version passed by both chambers.

The matter of library records, which had been of concern to the American Library Association, has been dealt with as follows, according to the Congressional Research Service summary of the Act available on Thomas : Section 7 "Prohibits making an application for an order requiring the production of library circulation records, library patron lists, book sales records, book customer lists, firearms sales records, or medical records containing personally identifiable information without the prior approval of the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)."

Combatant Status Review Tribunal - Guantanamo

Pursuant to FOIA requests, the Department of Defense has released 53 sets of testimony before the Combatant Status Review Tribunal; 4 sets of testimony before the Administrative Review Board; and 3 Administrative Review board Summaries of Detention/Release Factors - all here .

Librarian's Recommended Reading, Spring Break Edition

Soon the library traffic will briefly dip and many of you will take a little time for family, friends, sports or other entertainments.

It's something of an article of faith of the librarian's soul, however, that there can be intellectual refreshment in reading as well, so . . .

If you are a Jew, know a Jew, have read what various academics have written about the Mideast, think that actions taken by or toward Israel will sooner or later directly affect your life, or just take a detached lawyerly / scholarly interest in human rights, international organizations, and public international law in general, this librarian recommends:

Kenneth Levin, The Olso Syndrome: delusions of a people under siege (2005).

This study of the Arafat era is offered as a potentially useful background for understanding events as they unfold now that the terrorist organization, Hamas, has been democratically elected in the Palestinian Authority.

For those going away, enjoy your week; for everyone else, the reference desk will remain fully staffed throughout the break.