Cornell Law Library's InSITE Website Reviews

Reviews published in the September 17, 2007 issue of InSITE:

• AILA InfoNet
• American Constitution Society for Law and Policy
• Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law
• Reflink
• SIPRI: Stockholm International Peace Research Institute

[RJ]

AILA InfoNet

The American Immigration Lawyers Association is the professional organization for U.S. immigration lawyers, established to promote justice and to advocate for fair and reasonable immigration law and policy.  This site is intended for the benefit of its members, as well as for journalists, managers, and others who need legal information on immigration.  In addition to federal and state legislation and cases, there is a unique section of Featured Topics, such as "Workplace Enforcement," "Violence Against Women," and "Comprehensive Immigration Reform."  Under each topic, materials such as press kits, proposed legislation, practice pointers, analyses, and conferences are gathered.  For a significant fee, members of the Association can access AILALink, a fully searchable, web-based immigration law library of immigration laws, regulations, court decisions, treatises, forms, and much more.  This website is up-to-date and easy to use, with an advanced internal search engine and a growing portion of the documents available in Spanish. [PC]

American Constitution Society for Law and Policy

Founded in 2001, the American Constitution Society for Law and Policy (ACS) bills itself as “one of the nation’s leading progressive legal organizations.”  ACS is focused on ensuring that individual rights, equality, and access to justice occupy a central place in American law.  The website highlights ACS special projects and issue groups.  The special projects pages provide information on judicial nominations, as well as Supreme Court previews.  The issue groups are part of an ACS initiative, "The Constitution in the 21st Century."  The eight issue groups cover topics ranging from access to justice to separation of powers.  Within each issue group users will find news stories and links to relevant materials from the most recent ACS convention.  Under the "Separation of Powers" issue group, users will want to review the Index of Presidential Signing Statements, 2001-2007.  The index is published in PDF and for each act cites to the signing statement, indicates the provision objected to, and notes the reason for objection.  Also, each objection is assigned one or more categories from a set of twenty-three.  These categories include constitutional, doctrinal, structural, and other justifications for objection. [MM]

Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law

Stanford University’s Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law (CDDRL) strives to “promote innovative and practical research on the design and implementation of policies to foster democracy, to promote balanced and sustainable growth, and to advance the rule of law in countries undergoing dramatic change.”  Founded in 2002, the center supports specialized teaching, training, and outreach activities, as well as interdisciplinary research.  Program research focuses on five primary topics: evaluating international influences on democratic development, comparative democracy, democracy in Taiwan, economic performance, and the rule of law.  CDDRL’s publications include academic publications, working papers, reports and policy briefs, journal articles, books and book chapters, and op-ed pieces.  CDDRL also hosts frequent workshops and research seminars.  Select presentation transcripts are available. The site is keyword searchable. [JJ]

Reflink

Sponsored by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), Reflink is a web portal of materials on refugee-related topics.  More than 300 links have been compiled and thematically organized to facilitate research and information searching on topics related to refugees and other persons of concern to UNHCR.  Users may access the portal through three main areas:  “Primary Sources,” “Subject-Based Sources,” and “Other Useful Sources.”  “Primary Sources” is broken down into subcategories such as “Academic Institutions” and “Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs).”  The “Subject-Based Sources” area contains sub-categories such as “Ethnic Groups and Minorities,” “Guerrilla and Terrorist Groups/Terrorism,” and “Children.”  A drawback of the site is that the individual pages are not date-stamped, so users cannot easily determine when the links were last verified.  One nice feature of the site is that a separate page has been created which contains the entire contents for easy downloading and printing. [BWK]

SIPRI: Stockholm International Peace Research Institute

SIPRI, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, was established in 1966 “to conduct research on questions of conflict and cooperation of importance for international peace and security…” The SIPRI home page is uncluttered and easily navigated. The News column on the left side, the Research column on the right, and the navigation bar across the top form a static frame for viewing selected information, so one is never lost. "News" refers to recent SIPRI papers, databases, surveys, and reports, all posted within the last three months.  "Research" focuses on arms control, chemical and biological weapons, and arms production, to name a few areas. Each Research page identifies the researchers, articulates the purpose of the project, provides background information and an overview of the research done, and links to relevant publications and websites. The links across the top lead to Databases, Library, and Publications. A notable database is "Facts on International Relations and Security Trends"(FIRST), a collaborative effort that pulls in data from research institutions around the world. FIRST is an integrated database that allows simultaneous searching of over 50 different sources covering international relations and security, each of which may also be searched individually. Finally, a refreshing feature allows users to search the SIPRI library catalogue, arrange to borrow materials, or buy publications. [JC]

InSITE contributors: J. Callihan, J. Jones, B. Kreisler, M. Morrison, J. Pajerek (editor)

About InSITE: InSITE highlights selected law-related Web sites in two ways: as an annotated publication issued electronically and in print; and, as a keyword-searchable database. The law librarians at Cornell evaluate potentially useful Web sites, select the most valuable ones, and provide commentary and subject access to them.

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