Law Librarian Blog

Publications by the Office of Inter-American Law and Programs, OAS

Francisco J. Montero, Organization of American States, Office of Inter-American Law and Programs writes to call attention to recent Publications by the Office of Inter-American Law and Programs

The Office of Inter-American Law and Programs is offering its most recent publications to the public on issues of international law in our web page.  The following volumes are available at this moment:

1. Course of Internacional Law.    Volume on the Courses on International Law, held annually in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.  The course is organized by the Inter-American Juridical Committee and the General Secretariat since 1974.  The texts are published in the original language in which the courses were given. 

   We are offering our publications on the courses held in the year 1997 (50th Anniversary of the Organization of American States), 1999 (The new challenges in international public and private law), 2000 (Universalism and regionalism), 2001 (Human person and international contemporary law), 2002 (Natural resources, energy, the environment, and international law) and 2003 (International Law and the Maintenance of International Peace and Security

2. Serie Temática. Collection that compiles the Courses on Internacional Law since its inception. There are two volumes available:

   Volume I: Private International Law in the Americas (1974-2000).  This volume gathers all the courses of Private International Law offered between 1974 and 2000.

   Volume II: Inter-American System (1974-2001).  This volume contains all the courses on the Inter-American System offered between 1974 and 2001.

3. Workshop on Internacional Law (Jornadas de Derecho Internacional).  Activities relating to the teaching of international and Inter-American law and the exchange between professors and disciplines of public and private international law of the member States.   This volume is published in the original language in which the conference was given. 

We are offering the books on every workshop celebrated since 1999:

   Workshop celebrated in Montevideo, Uruguay, 1999.

   Workshop celebrated in Cordoba Argentina, 2000.

   Workshop celebrated in  México, México 2001.

   Workshop celebrated in  Florianopolis, Brasil 2002.

If you have questions, please contact:

Francisco J. Montero
Organization of American States
Office of Inter-American Law and Programs

2004 Annual Survey of State Government Tax Collections

"The State Government Tax Collections (STC) report provides a summary of taxes collected by state for up to 25 tax categories.  These tables and data files present the details on tax collections by type of tax imposed and collected by state governments. "
View the report.

Ron Jones, Univ of Cincinnati Law Library

Ownership & Access in Scholarly Publishing Webcast

The webcast "Ownership & Access in Scholarly Publishing" co-sponsored by the University of Maryland, Baltimore (UMB) Health Sciences and Human Services Library (HS/HSL) and the Johns Hopkins University (JHU) Libraries on April 6, 2005 has been archived.

To view the archived webcast, go to http://www.openaccess.umaryland.edu/webcast.html

Review of The Sucess of Open Source

Rob Vega (User Services Librarian, Valparaiso University) reviews Steven Weber's highly regarded work, The Success of Open Source (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 2004) in the May 2, 2005 issue of First Monday.

New York University Public Law and Legal Theory Working Papers

Announcing the New York University Public Law and Legal Theory Working Papers, part of the NELLCO Legal Scholarship Repository found at http://lsr.nellco.org/

EDITOR: Barry Friedman, Jacob D. Fuchsberg Professor of Law, New York University School of Law

This email contains a table of contents, followed by abstracts and some general information.

TABLE OF CONTENTS:
Benedict W. Kingsbury "The International Legal Order".
Subject area: International Law, Public Law and Legal Theory
http://lsr.nellco.org/nyu/plltwp/papers/6

Richard H. Pildes "The Constitutionalization of Democratic Politics - The Supreme Court, 2003 Term".
Subject area: Comparative Law, Constitutional Law, Public Law and Legal Theory
http://lsr.nellco.org/nyu/plltwp/papers/5

Youngjae Lee "Law, Politics, and Impeachment: The Impeachment of Roh Moo-hyun from a Comparative Constitutional Perspective".
Subject area: Public Law and Legal Theory
http://lsr.nellco.org/nyu/plltwp/papers/4

Youngjae Lee "The Constitutional Right Against Excessive Punishment".
Subject area: Public Law and Legal Theory
http://lsr.nellco.org/nyu/plltwp/papers/3

Rebecca Hollander-Blumoff and Matthew T. Bodie "THE EFFECTS OF JURY IGNORANCE ABOUT DAMAGE CAPS: THE CASE OF THE 1991 CIVIL RIGHTS ACT".
Subject area: Employment Practice, Law and Society, Public Law and Legal Theory
http://lsr.nellco.org/nyu/plltwp/papers/2

Barry Friedman "The Cycles of Constitutional Theory".
Subject area: Constitutional Law
http://lsr.nellco.org/nyu/plltwp/papers/1

Ron Jones, University of Cincinnati Law Library

Libraries Win a Stunning Court Victory

CNET News is reporting that a panel of the D.C. Court of Appeals today unanimously struck down government rules requiring television and other hardware makers to include copy protection in their units.

Last November, the FCC issued rules requiring manufacturers to include technology that recognized a broadcast flag. The American Library Association, among others, sued the Commission saying the rules sharply curtailed the fair use of copyrighted materials. The Court agreed, stating that the FCC did not have the statutory authority to regulate hardware that was not engaged in transmission. The case is American Library Association v. FCC, 04-1037. The opinion is at http://pacer.cadc.uscourts.gov/docs/common/opinions/200505/04-1037b.pdf

Mark Giangrande, DePaul Law Library

Litigation 101

From the ABA's Young Lawyers Section:

Litigation 101: Checklists that just might save your case

Experienced pilots use checklists on every flight to deal with the complexity of modern aircraft. Lawyers can do the same to manage the complexity of litigation. Don't forget a single step in depositions, appeals, or any of the everyday tasks of law practice with checklists from Litigation 101.

Ron Jones, University of Cincinnati Law Library

Locating Court Dockets Online

From the Virtual Chase:

The Secrets of Online Document Retrieval:

Paul Bush, founder of Legal Dockets Online, explains how to find court dockets via LexisNexis CourtLink and CourtExpress ClearCase. He discusses the search features as well as inexpensive ways to retrieve matching dockets. The article previously appeared in the July 2004 issue of Law Technology News and is reprinted here with permission. Paul updated the pricing information that appears in the article.

Ron Jones, Unv Cin Law Lib

Iraqi Special Tribunal Rules Flawed

Human Rights Watch has issued a briefing paper critical of the Iraqi Special Tribunal Rules of Procedure and Evidence.

DOJ's Attorney Workforce Diversity Study

The Memory Hole has the DOJ's Attorney Workforce Diversity Study in two versions, censored and uncensored. According to the Memory Hole

The report has been complete for almost two years, but the Department stalled its release, despite numerous Freedom of Information Act requests.

The report appeared on one of the FOIA sections of the Department's Website sometime in October. It's one of the most heavily-redacted government documents in recent memory. Even Congress' report on 9/11 had a smaller percentage of its contents blacked out. The Memory Hole has posted a version with no redactions; instead, those sections are highlighted in yellow, so you can easily zoom in on the parts originally deemed too embarrassing for us to see.

See the Memory Hole piece for more.

H.W. Wilson Upgrades WilsonWeb Information System

Enhancements to WilsonWeb include:

• New Search Default for Full Text Databases
• New Basic Search Screen
• New Persistent URLs for Records

Read more about it.

University of Pittsburgh School of Law Working Paper Series

Announcing new papers in the University of Pittsburgh School of Law Working Paper Series, part of the bepress Legal Repository found at http://law.bepress.com/repository

PUBLISHER: The Berkeley Electronic Press
EDITOR: Pat Chew, Associate Dean for Research and Professor of Law

This email contains a table of contents, followed by abstracts and some general information.

TABLE OF CONTENTS:
Sandra D. Jordan "Have We Come Full Circle? Judicial Sentencing Discretion Restored in Booker and Fanfan".
Subject area: Criminal Law and Procedure
http://law.bepress.com/pittlwps/papers/art14

Michael J. Madison "FAIR USE, SOCIAL PRACTICES, AND THE FUTURE OF COPYRIGHT REFORM".
Subject area: Intellectual Property Law
http://law.bepress.com/pittlwps/papers/art13

Michael J. Madison "Things and Law".
Subject area: Arts and Literature, Commercial Law, Computer Law, Intellectual Property Law, Law and Society, Law and Technology, Property-Personal and Real, Science and Technology, Secured Transactions, Trade Regulation
http://law.bepress.com/pittlwps/papers/art12

George H. Taylor "Transcending the Debate on Legal Narrative".
Subject area: Arts and Literature, Civil Rights, Jurisprudence
http://law.bepress.com/pittlwps/papers/art11

George H. Taylor "Racism as "the Nation's Crucial Sin": Theology and Derrick Bell".
Subject area: Civil Rights, Jurisprudence, Law and Society, Politics, Public Law and Legal Theory, Religion http://law.bepress.com/pittlwps/papers/art10

Alexander Tsesis "The Thirteenth Amendment Enforcement Authority".
Subject area: Civil Rights, Constitutional Law, Legal History
http://law.bepress.com/pittlwps/papers/art9

Ron Jones, Uni Cin Law Lib

Factiva & RSS

From Factiva:

Factiva and NewsGator Technologies Team Up on Enterprise RSS to Enable Intelligent Information Delivery

Companies break new ground in delivering premium content alongside nontraditional sources of information

DENVER, CO, and NEW YORK — May 4, 2005 - Factiva®, a Dow Jones and Reuters Company Factiva®, the leading global provider of digital business content and services to the enterprise, and NewsGator Technologies, Inc., the leading RSS software platform company, today announced an agreement to jointly release Enterprise RSS that will bring the first business RSS solution to corporate users around the world.

Read more about it.

Ron Jones, Unv Cin Law Lib

Not-So-Obvious Features of Electronic Documents Can Haunt

In an interesting twist to the release of a U.S. government report surrounding the death of Italian agent Nicola Calipari in Iraq, the PDF version of the report had redacted text that apparently was revealed through the simple cut and paste technique.  The report's prepared had apparently blacked out portions of the text by inserting black triangles over existing text rather than deleting that text.  Thus, the information was hidden and not removed.  The details of this are reported in this CNET news article.   There is a related CNET story from March of last year that discusses the same issues with Microsoft Word.

Although the articles don't mention this, there is an implication for libraries.  In academics, libraries sometimes are used to investigate plagiarism charges.  Revealing hidden text can certainly offer more detail for analysis.  The flip side, of course, is the deletion (but non-removal) of information from business or other documents.  The second CNET story, for example, focuses on documents prepared in a lawsuit brought against DaimlerChrysler by SCO.  Apparently, the suit was targeted against the Bank of America.  The documents, however, were edited at a point in time to substitute BOA with DaimlerChrysler.

If there is a flip flip side, then it is for each of us to remember that any document we create electronically and subsequently distribute may have sensitive or embarrassing text hidden away just waiting to be discovered.  Although I'm not completely familiar with techniques to avoid this problem, I'm going to spend some time looking for preventative measures.  When I find relevant materials, I'll post references to the Blog.

Before I close this post, I'll just ask, what other government documents out there might have this same problem?

Mark Giangrande, De Paul Law Library

Bluebook Rule 10.5(a)

So when you're citing a Supreme Court from the 1800s, when the reporters didn't include the date a case was decided but only the term (e.g., "October Term, 1878"), what do you use for a date? That's the problem UCLA Law Prof Eugene Volokh faced when he was proofreading one of his works. Read on.

Thanks to  NESLReference for the tip

The Government Domain - Resources for Information Management

Peggy Garvin (Garvin Information Consulting), author of The United States Government Internet Manual, has authored "The Government Domain: Federal Resources for Information Professionals" on LLRX.com.

Peggy identifies federal websites that provides resources  for librarians, web developers, publishers, archivists, and other organizers of knowledge.

Ron Jones, University of Cincinnati Law Library

GPO Plans Making News

Read all about it.

Librarians worry important information is being lost

Librarians air frustrations

Librarians face existential crisis

Recent Practitioner Releases from LexisNexis

Fourth Circuit Criminal Handbook, 2005 Edition
Chief U.S. Magistrate Judge Carl Horn, lll

Price: $130.00
Publisher: Michie
Format: 1 volume, softbound
ISBN: 0820574597
©2005

Publisher's Description
This comprehensive and popular handbook is the product of years of careful study and practical application of Fourth Circuit criminal decisions. Covering hundreds of criminal issues, Fourth Circuit Criminal Handbook gives litigators, judges, law clerks, and federal enforcement personnel clear, practical analysis geared to the needs of a busy criminal law practice.

Chief U.S. Magistrate Judge Carl Horn, formerly First Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Western District of North Carolina, has written and lectured widely on Fourth Circuit criminal and civil law and procedure. In addition to revising his Fourth Circuit Criminal Handbook annually, Horn is the author of Michie's Fourth Circuit Criminal Reporter and Horn's Federal Jury Instructions for the Fourth Circuit: Criminal Edition. Judge Horn received his B.A. with honors from the University of Virginia in 1973, and his J.D. from the University of South Carolina Law Center in 1976.

Gilbert Criminal Law and Procedure of New York - 2005 Edition
 
Price: $159.00
Publisher: Matthew Bender
Format: 1 volume, hardbound
ISBN: 0820560146
©2005

Publisher's Description
This indispensable one-volume publication features the complete New York Criminal Procedure Law, Penal Law, and Correction Law, with case annotations following each statutory provision. Also included are relevant criminal provisions of the Civil Practice Law and Rules, Executive Law, Family Court Act, Judiciary Law, Public Health Law, Vehicle and Traffic Law, and Court Rules.

Features of the 2005 edition include:

Updated criminal statutes, revised to include changes effected during the 2004 legislative session. Several new crimes were added to the list of violent felony offenses during this session. A sentence of life imprisonment without parole was mandated for the offense of criminal possession of a chemical or biological weapon in the first degree, criminal use of a chemical or biological weapon in the first degree, and a new provision of murder in the second degree. In addition, a new supplemental sex offender victim fee is now required, in addition to the surcharge and crime victim assistance fee.

Also includes hundreds of concise, authoritative case annotations, the Outline of New York Laws on Plea Bargaining, Sentence, and Youthful Offender Procedures, by The Honorable William C. Donnino, and the New York Court System Chart and Court Directory

Judicial Council of California Civil Jury Instructions, 2005 Edition   
Judicial Council of California
 
Price: $104.00
Publisher: Matthew Bender
Format: 2 volumes, softbound
ISBN: 082056379X
©2005

Publisher's Description
Use what the judge is using with the Official Judicial Council of California Civil Jury Instructions (CACI). The 2005 edition includes all new and revised instructions approved in February 2005 by the Judicial Council for use immediately. These plain-English instructions cover 40 topics including Evidence, Contracts, Torts, Civil Rights, Eminent Domain, and much more. Rule 855 enacted by the Judicial Council states that "Use of the Judicial Council Instructions is strongly encouraged. If the latest edition of the civil jury instructions approved by the Judicial Council contains an instruction applicable to a case and the trial judge determines that the jury should be instructed on the subject, it is recommended that the judge use the Judicial Council instruction unless he or she finds that a different instruction would more accurately state the law and be understood by jurors." 

Tablet PC Pilot Program at University of Virginia

Microsoft, Thomson Learning and HP have released the first research findings of the pilot project launched in 2004 at the University of Virginia. The pilot provided select students with HP tablet PCs, Thomson's research and database information, and Microsoft's One-note software.

Florida Enacts Jessica Lunsford Act

CrimProf Blog has the story.