NESLReference

Detainees transferred to Guantanamo

2006-09-09T13:08:00.000-04:00

From the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, September 6, 2006:

Biographies of High Value Terrorist Detainees Transferred to the US Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay .

Human rights: Israel / Lebanon

2006-09-06T13:45:00.000-04:00

United Nations
UN Human Rights Council names experts to probe Israeli civilian killings in Lebanon
United Nations press release
September 1, 2006

No Justice, No Peace? re Hassan Nasrallah war crimes
Michael I. Krauss, Professor of Law, George Mason University School of Law, and J. Peter Pham, Director, Nelson Institute for International and Public Affairs, James Madison University
August 4, 2006

The UN-NGO Connection: spreading the message of hate and terrorism
Anne Bayefsky, Senior Fellow, Hudson Institute, and Visiting Professor Law, Touro Law Center Institute for Human Rights
June 12, 2006

Human Rights Watch
Fatal Strikes: Israel's indiscriminate attacks against civilians in Lebanon
Human Rights Watch
August 2006

Letters between Kenneth Roth, Executive Director of Human Rights Watch and Avi Bell, Professor of Law, Bar Ilan University and Visiting Professor of Law, Fordham University Law School, and others

Amnesty International
Israel/Lebanon: deliberate destruction or “collateral damage? Israeli attacks on civilian infrastructure
August 23, 2006

Amnesty International redefines war crimes
Alan Dershowitz, Professor of Law, Harvard Law School
August 23, 2006

Persuasive authority : acquisition and use

2006-09-06T13:30:00.000-04:00

The other day a student at the reference desk asked if NESL's acquisition of titles implied pre-screening such that he could safely assume any source he'd find here would not be, to put it bluntly, bunk.

Certainly we screen potential acquisitions. For secondary authority, factors considered include the credentials, reputation, prior works of authors or publishers, the importance of the subject to curriculular or professorial research goals, plus currency, format, functionality, and price. Alas, none of this guarantees against the acquisition of bunk.

Below, arguably, in the context of human rights and the law of war, some recent bunk debunked, illustrating that, for this generation of law students, new media may become a factually and legally significant component of their legal research.

Reuters and Associated Press
Reuters Doctoring Photos from Beirut?
Little Green Footballs blog
August 5, 2006

Other instances of 'fauxtography'
Little Green Footballs blog
September 2, 2006

The Corruption of the Media: Final Report re Qana
EU Referendum blog
Richard North and Helen Szamuely
August 15, 2006

The Red Cross Ambulance Incident
Zombie blog
August 23, 2006

Reuters Admits, then covers up taking Hezbo instructions
Kerry Rowe, The American Thinker blog
September 5, 2006

Money laundering: report

2006-09-03T11:29:00.000-04:00

The Financial Action Task Force ( FATF ), an inter-governmental body created at the G-7 Summit in 1989, with currently 31 member countries (plus the European Commission and the Co-operation Council for the Arab States of the Gulf), was invited to assess the United States' compliance with FATF's recommendations. Here is the 17-page report, June 23, 2006: Summary of the Third Mutual Evaluation Report on Anti-Money Laundering and Combating the Financing of Terrorism - United States of America .

FATF standards are comprised of the Forty Recommendations on Money Laundering and the Nine Special Recommendations on Terrorist Financing .

The Counterterrorism Blog provides a summary of the above-mentioned report in this post .

FATF reports on other countries here .

U.S. Sentencing Commission: report

2006-08-30T19:42:00.000-04:00

U.S. Sentencing Commission: Preliminary Quarterly Data Report , through June 30, 2006. Data on sentencing relative to the federal sentencing guideline ranges in light of U.S. v. Booker , 543 US 220 (2005), which rendered the guidelines advisory rather than mandatory.

ABA accreditation task force

2006-08-29T10:59:00.000-04:00

Yesterday, the new chairman of the ABA Section of Legal Education and Admission to the Bar formed a task force to "take a fresh look at accreditation from a policy perspective".

Blogging at The Volokh Conspiracy , Professor Bernstein comments generally here .

Controversy specifically concerning ABA accreditation diversity Standard 211 was noted in NESL blogpost of April 15, 2006 .

New NESL database: Wilson Retrospective

2006-08-28T11:02:00.000-04:00

On August 24, 2006, NESL activated an IP-linked subscription to H.W. Wilson's Index to Legal Periodicals, 1908-1981 (onsite). This complements NESL's existing subscription to Index to Legal Periodicals and Books, 1982-. These two databases can be searched individually or together on the WilsonWeb interface (linked on NESL Database List both under the I's and the W's).

While the retrospective index is not a full-text databse, it should link directly into full-text if available on HeinOnline, a full-text retrospective journal database to which NESL also subscribes. A search on the phrase "Portia Law School" (NESL's original name) yielded a citation to a 1931 issue of Notre Dame Lawyer in which the case White v. Portia Law School, 174 NE 187 (Mass), was discussed. Look on the left side of the Wilsonweb interface and click on the icon of a piece of paper (mouse on the icon reads "Check for full text"). You will go into Portia catalog; then click on HeinOnline and find the volume and page. In this case, the name of the journal was changed from Notre Dame Lawyer to Notre Dame Law Review, but you can find the article by volume (6) and page (380). The article is entitled "Writ of mandamus. Reinstatement of expelled student. The Notre Dame Laywer, 6 March 1931, p. 380-1. .

The 1982- Wilson database also will link into HeinOnline; and, in addition, there are approximately 250 of the journals for which Wilson directly provides full-text. You can see which journals have full-text available by selecting "Legal Periodicals and Books" database, and then clicking either "Database Descriptions" (above the database name) or "Journal Directory (on the left-hand side). There you can create a dynamic list by selecting search by "Full-text".

Since Wilson and Hein are subscription databases, you must either view them online or log into the proxy server remotely with the barcode on the back of your NESL ID card.

Topic selection: cited legal blogs

2006-08-27T10:40:00.000-04:00

As promised to law review associates in the context of suggesting that legal blogs may help generate ideas for their articles (posted here because it may be of more general interest):

Judicial opinions in which blogs are cited ;

Law review articles in which blogs are cited .

Welcome back!

2006-08-27T10:36:00.000-04:00

Advice for second-year law students, from:

David Bernstein , Professor of Law, George Mason University School of Law;

Jim Lindgren , Professor of Law, Northwestern University School of Law.

And, of course, welcome back also to third and fourth-year students, faculty and staff.

Welcome!

2006-08-27T10:20:00.000-04:00

Welcome, class of '09 and '10.

Advice for entering law students, from:

Ilya Somin , Assistant Professor of Law, George Mason University School of Law;

Orin Kerr , Associate Professor of Law, George Washington University Law School and Brannon Denning , Associate Professor of Law, Cumberland School of Law;

Betsy McKenzie , Director of Moakley Library and Professor of Law, Suffolk University Law School;

CALI's Advice for new law students: web roundup . (CALI is a publisher of computer-assisted legal instruction.);

The Wall Street Journal Online - link roundup (some overlap with above).

Lastly, our advice: the law librarian is your friend!

Internet freedom of expression - report

2006-07-20T12:55:00.000-04:00

From Amnesty International UK , this 32-page July, 2006 report: Undermining Freedom of Expression in China: the role of Yahoo!, Microsoft, and Google .

According to the report, although all three companies are "complicit in the Chinese government's denial of freedom of information. . . Google has come closest to acknowledging publicly that its practices are at odds with its principles" - Google's 'first principle' being identifed in the report as 'Do no evil'.

Even when applied, Google's aspirational principle appears to be applied inconsistently: complaints have arisen about domestic news sources eliminated from Google News for hate speech ; yet until Hezbollah television, Al Manar, was taken out of service recently , Google maintained it as a news source on Google News despite, as NESL blogged on April 6, 2006 , Al Manar's having been listed as a terrorist entity by both the U.S. Treasury and State Departments.

International Corruption: Tongsun Park

2006-07-13T15:19:00.000-04:00

Tongsun Park has been convicted of conspiracy in his capacity as an unregistered agent of Saddam Hussein.

Claudia Rosett has written extensively on the oil-for-food scandal generally, and kept a blog specifically on this Tongsun Park trial.

A good background article on the nexus between Park and the Oil-for-Food program, as the trial began, is: The U.N.'s Day in Court: Oil-for-Food Hits a New York Courtroom" , June 28, 2006.

And the first entry of Ms. Rosett's trial blog , dated June 30, 2006 began:

"Welcome to the World of Oil-for-Food. The biggest scandal ever to hit the U.N. Arguably the biggest scam in history, in which a U.N. program became a vehicle for a murderous tyrant to scam, skim, and steal billions meant for relief.

And so we come to the trial of Tongsun Park, accused by federal prosecutors of acting as an unregistered agent of Saddam Hussein, accused of playing a vital role in a secret “back-channel” network carrying messages and money between Baghdad and the U.N. executive suite."

Daubert

2006-07-13T13:47:00.000-04:00

Professor David Bernstein, bloogging at The The Volokh Conspiracy references a law review article by NESL Professor Joelle Moreno .

Doing Business...report

2006-07-05T18:26:00.000-04:00

Doing Business in 2006: Creating Jobs . 196 pages. A copublication of the World Bank and the International Financial Corporation. From the website Doing Business , the report "investigates the regulations that enhance business activity and those that constrain it." Topics include: starting a business, hiring and firing workers, enforcing contracts, getting credit, closing a business, registering property and protective investors, dealing with licences, paying taxes, and trading across borders.

Doing Business is an information-rich website with a global search of the site available, and the ability to generate an "instant report" on over 150 countries.

Tort reform - national database

2006-06-28T14:12:00.000-04:00

From Torts Prof Blog , a heads-up on a SSRN manuscript that "contains the most detailed, complete and comprehensive legal dataset of tort reforms in the U.S."

Police and the mentally ill - report

2006-06-27T13:04:00.000-04:00

From the Department of Justice, Office of Community Oriented Policing Services, People with Mental Illness . 82 pages. May 2006.

Women's rights: Iran

2006-06-27T12:54:00.000-04:00

Amnesty International USA issued a statement condemning the June 12, 2006 beatings and 70 arrests at a peaceful demonstration of about 5,000 Iranians in support of women's rights in that country.

NESL earlier blogged a much smaller March 8, 2006 International Women's Day rally.

Four journalists covering the June 12 demonstration were beaten and detained, according to Reporters without Borders .

New York University School of Law's Fall, 2006 global visiting professor of law, Ziba Mir-Hosseini, asks "Is Time on the Iranian Women Protesters' Side?"

Child Pornography - report

2006-06-27T11:03:00.000-04:00

From the U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Community Oriented Policing Services, Child Pornography on the Internet , May 2006. 102 pages.

Forensic evidence

2006-06-26T16:07:00.000-04:00

The National Library of Medicine, part of the National Institutes of Health, has created an exhibition Visible Proofs , about the history of forensic medicine and science, including information about technologies old and new, and some audio/video of interviews with medical examiners.

ABA antitrust consent decree violations

2006-06-26T15:17:00.000-04:00

The Department of Justice petitioned the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to hold the American Bar Association in civil contempt for violations of a 1996 consent decree related to their accreditation procedures for law schools. DOJ press release here .

The ABA has stipulated to the violations and agreed to pay a fine of $185,000.

One of the six violations listed in the press release was the ABA's failure to "provide proposed changes to accreditation standards to the United States for review before such changes are acted on by the ABA's Council of the section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar".

An earlier NESL blogpost on proposed revised ABA accreditation standards is here . Update: The American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers has this related June 22, 2006 article: Diversity standards and "social justice": law schools and teacher education accrediting organizations are in the crosshairs . It is not clear whether it is these current proposed revisions that the ABA neglected to provide to the United States for prior review or earlier ones during the period 1996-present.

UPDATE: The ABA's statement .

International Financial Crime - report

2006-06-26T11:21:00.000-04:00

May 12, 2006 GAO report: International Financial Crime: Treasury's Roles and Responsibilities Relating to Selected Provisions of the U.S.A. Patriot Act. 62 pages.

From the report: "Why GAO Did This Study. Money Laundering and terrorist financing can severely affect the nation's economy and also result in loss of lives."

Saddam trial: closing arguments

2006-06-17T12:39:00.000-04:00

Closing arguments are slated to begin Monday, June 19, 2006 in the trial of Saddam Hussein. Running legal commentary can be found at the Grotian Moment: the Saddam Hussein Trial Blog .

Federalist Papers online

2006-06-17T11:16:00.000-04:00

A newly-posted version of the Federalist Papers offers paragraph-level permalinking.

Surveillance and detention: recent cases

2006-06-15T12:40:00.000-04:00

June 9, 2006 American Council on Education v. Federal Communications Commission : Writing for a 3-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, Judge Sentelle upheld the FCC's earlier ruling that broadband internet access and voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) providers are "telecommunications carriers" under the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act and, as such, "must ensure that law-enforcement officers are able to intercept communications transmitted over the providers' networks". 29 pages. Senior Circuit Judge Edwards' dissent begins on page 21.

June 14, 2006 Turkmen v. Ashcroft : In the United States District Court, Eastern District of New York, Judge Gleeson dismissed a class-action claim that the post-September 11 detention of illegal aliens for periods of three to seven months (arguably beyond the period necessary to remove them under immigration law) was unconstitutional, stating "that the government may have been motivated by a desire to keep terrorism suspects in jail pending further investigation does not alter the legality of the detention". The Court let proceed certain civil suits regarding the the conditions of the detainee's confinement. 99 pages

Judicial ethics: Nevada

2006-06-10T15:14:00.000-04:00

Los Angeles Times' investigative series on judicial corruption in Nevada courts. Part One , June 8; Part Two , June 10.