Law Librarian Blog

PolyDoms: Mapping of Human Coding SNPs onto Protein Domains

From the press release:

Researchers from Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center and the University of Cincinnati (UC) Academic Health Center at the Computational Medicine Center, have established a powerful new gene information resource designed to aid biomedical researchers in more effectively identifying small alterations in the human genome that are associated with individuals' susceptibility to disease.

Developed with funding from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) and the National Cancer Institute (NCI), PolyDoms integrates the results of multiple genetic computational analyses and protein functional modeling. It provides biomedical scientists with important information on the theoretical probability of changes in genomic sequence (non-synonymous coding Single Nucleotide Polymorphism) being disease-relevant and an indication of whether they warrant further clinical investigation.

PolyDoms offers researchers a single, highly versatile, web-based tool that integrates diverse biomedical research information concerning genetic influences of disease with computational predictions of the impact of genomic changes on protein structures and functions. It has a user-friendly graphical and downloadable format that provides researchers with a list of genetic variations that they can analyze in their patient groups to gain more information regarding causes and susceptibility to disease.

Check out PolyDoms: Mapping of Human Coding SNPs onto Protein Domains. [JH]

2006 Major Parties Congressional Campaign Finance Reports

The National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) campaign finance reports are now available.  [RJ]

The Culture of Prison Sexual Violence

From the National Institute of Justice: "This study, funded by the NIJ, analyzes prison sexual violence and inmate sexuality from an inter-disciplinary perspective and provides groundwork for practical managerial innovations and research-oriented approaches to inmate safety."  [RJ] 

Chinese Prohibition's Version of the Speakeasy

The Washington Post's Edward Cody reports on underground Internet cafes in Despite a Ban, Chinese Youth Navigate to Internet. [JH]

Shepard's Brief Suite, A "Must Have" Desktop Utility

LexisNexis has created a great set of productivity-enhancing tools in the Shepard’s Brief Suite™ The product includes four powerful document-drafting and legal-validation tools that help you create and review legal documents (e.g., briefs, pleadings, memoranda). These desktop-based applications provide Shepard’s analysis within your work product, offer formatting guidance, automatically construct Tables of Authorities and add Shepard’s hyperlinks to internal Microsoft® Word documents and Web pages.  Take a tour!

Brochures:

• Shepard's Brief Suite: Four Steps to a Better Brief
• Shepard's® BriefCheck™ for the Web

File under "must have." [JH]

Friday Fun: Top 10 Magic Trick Tutorial Videos

Check them out! [JH]

EEOC Releases Enforcement Statistics and Litigation

From the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission: "The statistics presented on the following tables reflect charges of employment discrimination and resolutions under each of the statutes enforced by the Commission, and by the various types of discrimination."  [RJ]

CRS Report Reviews Implementation of Detainee Interrogation Requirements

INTERROGATION OF DETAINEES: OVERVIEW OF THE MCCAIN AMENDMENT      
CRS Publication Date:  12/19/2006
Document No.:  RL33655
Author(s):  Michael John Garcia, American Law Division

Abstract:  This report discusses the McCain Amendment, as modified and subsequently enacted into law. This report also discusses the application of the McCain Amendment by the DOD in the updated 2006 version of the Army Field Manual, particularly in light of the Supreme Court's ruling in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld. In addition, the report discusses the Military Commissions Act of 2006 (P.L. 109-366), which was signed into law on October 17, 2006. The Act includes provisions that reference or amend the McCain Amendment.

CRS Reports can be obtained from www.GalleryWatch.com. Individual reports are available from www.pennyhill.com. [RJ]

Habeas Corpus and An Era of Limits

Interesting article from the L.A. Times: "Constitution says those in custody can seek liberty in court, but what of Guantanamo?"  [RJ]

More Law Profs Employed by Firms

Interesting article from the National Law Journal: "Harvard law professor Laurence Tribe is one of many high-profile legal scholars employed by law firms in addition to working as full-time faculty members."  [RJ]

Opening: Reference and Research Services Librarian, UR Law Library

Reference and Research Services Librarian
William Taylor Muse Law Library
University of Richmond School of Law

The William Taylor Muse Law Library at the University of Richmond seeks a Reference and Research Services Librarian.

Responsibilities:  This full-time position will provide reference and research services and instruction for faculty, students and other library users (including one evening per week and a weekend rotation with other librarians), teach Legal Research in the School’s first-year Lawyering Skills program, monitor availability of law-related electronic resources and recommend titles for purchase, prepare and update library research guides, pathfinders and other research tools, and edit library’s newsletter and User’s Guide.  Librarians work twelve months per year and have University faculty status (not eligible for tenure and sabbaticals) and participate in Law School faculty meetings and committees.

Required:  J.D. from ABA-accredited law school or equivalent; Master’s degree in Library and/or Information Science from ALA-accredited institution.

Preferred:  Demonstrated teaching ability and law library experiences.

Salary and Benefits:  The University of Richmond is an Equal Opportunity Employer, and salary and benefits are competitive.   (For more information about benefits, see http://HR.Richmond.edu.)

UR Law Library:  The Law Library has seven librarians and a technology/library staff of 10.  The collection consists of approximately 385,000 volumes. The library serves approximately 500 students and 30 faculty members and is responsible for technology and media services at the Law School.  Visit the Law School website at http://law.richmond.edu/librarytech for additional information.

To Apply:  The deadline for applications is March 30, 2007.  To view a complete position description and to apply, visit www.urjobs.org.  The University of Richmond values diversity in its faculty, staff and student body.   

For information about specific job responsibilities, telephone or email John Barden, Head of Reference and Research Services, at 804-289-8727 or jbarden@richmond.edu.

Listen Up! CJ Roberts Offers Advice to Future Supreme Court Practitioners

While visiting Northwestern University School of Law on February 1 and 2 as the 2007 Howard J. Trienens Visiting Judicial Scholar, Chief Justice Roberts advised law school students (and profs) on how to make their briefs better-read, their arguments more closely followed, and their audience -- justices of the Supreme Court of the United States -- more sympathetic. Read more about it on the Washington Post.

Hat tip to Legal Writing Prof Blog, a member of the Law Professor Blogs Network. [JH]

Cornell Law Library's InSITE Website Reviews

Reviews published in the January 22, 2007 issue of InSITE:

• Center for the Study and Prevention of Violence
• Institute for Politics, Democracy & the Internet
• Marriage Equality USA
• Media Coalition Inc.
• National Data Archive on Child Abuse and Neglect

Center for the Study and Prevention of Violence   
The Center for the Study and Prevention of Violence (CSPV) is a research program of the Institute of Behavioral Science (IBS) at the University of Colorado at Boulder.  CSPV was founded in 1992 to provide informed assistance to groups committed to understanding and preventing violence.  The CSPV website provides visitors with searchable databases of bibliographic information and abstracts of violence-related research and literature, with links to the full text when available.  Databases of violence prevention, intervention, and treatment programs and violence-related curricula, videos, and other resources are also available.  Researchers may be interested in CSPV's Safe Communities/Safe Schools (SCSS) initiative, which offers a wealth of statistical data on school violence, broken down nationally and by state.  Another area of research is the Blueprints for Violence Prevention, which is a national violence prevention initiative created to identify effective violence prevention programs.  So far, the initiative has selected 11 model programs that have been effective in reducing adolescent violent crime, aggression, delinquency, and substance abuse. [BWK]

Institute for Politics, Democracy & the Internet   
In 2002, the George Washington University Graduate School of Political Management developed the Institute for Politics, Democracy & the Internet (IPDI) to promote the development of U.S. online politics in a manner that increases citizen participation and upholds democratic values.  The goals of the IPDI include establishing a research base for the study of online politics, promoting appropriate standards of practice for the conduct of online campaigning, and creating an online public space where good campaign practices and democratic values may thrive.  The Institute’s website contains many important reports, papers, studies, and surveys about these issues which may be of interest to legal researchers.  The materials are abstracted in detail and visitors may easily browse the collection, but neither the site nor the publications are searchable.  The papers are available in PDF. [BWK]

Marriage Equality USA   
Marriage Equality USA (MEUSA), a national organization founded in 2000, grew out of two entities that now constitute the New York and California chapters of the group.  MEUSA seeks “to secure legally recognized civil marriage equality for all, at the federal and state level, without regard to gender identity or sexual orientation.”  The group works to fulfill its mission through education, media campaigns, and partnerships with both gay and non-gay social and civic groups.  Organized into multiple components, the website provides extensive information about the group and offers numerous resources for users.  Pay particular attention to the “Get the Facts” section.  This section is divided into fifteen subsections addressing the legal, financial, practical, and personal issues surrounding marriage and its lack of availability to same-sex couples.  The subsection on “Federal Rights” links to General Accounting Office materials that detail the vast array of federal rights related to marriage.  Other subsections detail the tax burdens faced by same-sex couples, as well as immigration issues peculiar to couples that cannot marry.  Legal researchers also will be interested in the subsection summarizing current marriage cases before the courts. [MM]

Media Coalition Inc.   
The Media Coalition is an association that defends the First Amendment right to produce and sell books, magazines, movies, recordings, videotapes and videogames, and defends the American public's First Amendment right to have access to the broadest possible range of opinion and entertainment.  The Media Coalition Inc. website provides visitors with a "Legislative Update" section, which dates back to 2001.  This section also contains the Coalition's letters and memos written in opposition to state bills.  The "Current Litigation" section offers summaries of current cases in which Media Coalition Inc. is involved; most cases have attached orders, briefs, and opinions.  The "Reports" section of the website provides PDF versions of the organization's detailed research papers and publications.  The "Members Only" section contains PDF catalogues of materials, including books, studies, reports, and cases that are available to lend to Media Coalition Inc. members.  These catalogues contain synopses and annotations in addition to full bibliographic information, which make them good research resources. [BWK]

National Data Archive on Child Abuse and Neglect   
Since 1988, the National Data Archive on Child Abuse and Neglect (NDACAN) has been promoting scholarly exchange among researchers in the field of child maltreatment.  NDACAN acquires micro-data from leading researchers and national data collection efforts and makes these datasets available to researchers.  NDACAN disseminates datasets of archived research for secondary analysis with statistical software, but does not maintain statistics on child abuse and neglect, or provide reports of research findings.  Datasets are available for a fee; most of the documentation for the datasets is available for free.  Visitors may read each dataset's abstract in the site's "List of Holdings" prior to ordering.  The Child-Maltreatment-Research-L (CMR-L) e-mail listserv is available to all child abuse and neglect (CAN) researchers, and an archive of all past posts back to 1996 is offered as well. [BWK]

InSITE contributors: Julie Jones, Research Attorney, Brandy Kreisler, J.D., M.L.S., Matt Morrison, Research Attorney, Jean Pajerek (editor), Head of Technical Services & Information Management, all current or former members of the professional staff at Cornell Law Library.

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.

Digital versions of this information can be accessed via:

1. Searchable database or by browsing current and archived issues on the web: Click InSITE at www.lawschool.cornell.edu/library

2. E-mail subscription. Send the following request: SUBSCRIBE InSITE-L <YourFirstName> <YourLastName> to: listproc@cornell.edu

3. Readers can subscribe to the new InSITE RSS feed at http://www.lawschool.cornell.edu/library/RESOURCES/insite.htm

The contents of InSITE and any recommendations therein are the opinions of the authors and do not reflect the views of Cornell University. InSITE is copyright protected by Cornell Law Library, © 2007 Cornell Law Library. Permission to republish InSITE issues on Law Librarian Blog has been granted. For permissions, contact Jean M. Pajerek [jmp8@cornell.edu].

Cornell Law Library URL: http://www.lawschool.cornell.edu/library

Avoiding "404 File Not Found"

WebCite® is an archiving system for webreferences, which can be used by authors, editors, and publishers of scholarly papers and books, to ensure that cited web content will remain available to readers in the future. If cited webreferences in journal articles, books etc. are not archived, future readers may encounter a "404 File Not Found" error when clicking on a cited URL.

How does it work? A WebCite® reference is an archived webcitation, and rather than linking to the live website (which can and probably will disappear in the future), authors of scholarly works will link to the archived WebCite® copy on webcitation.org. Cross-posted on Law Blog Metrics. [JH]

State by State Budget Information

From the White House: State specific analysis of the 2008 budget.  [RJ]

The Budget: Agency Breakdown

Special Report from the National Journal: "How will the federal government fare under Bush's proposal? CongressDaily delivers budget briefings on each of the major federal departments and agencies." (for subscribers)  [RJ]

Professional Reading: Posner's The Little Book of Plagiarism

The Little Book of Plagiarism
by Richard Posner

List Price: $10.95
Hardcover: 128 pages
Publisher: Pantheon (January 16, 2007)
ISBN-10: 037542475X
ISBN-13: 978-0375424755

Book Description: A concise, lively, and bracing exploration of an issue bedeviling our cultural landscape–plagiarism in literature, academia, music, art, and film–by one of our most influential and controversial legal scholars. Best-selling novelists J. K. Rowling and Dan Brown, popular historians Doris Kearns Goodwin and Stephen Ambrose, Harvard law professor Charles Ogletree, first novelist Kaavya Viswanathan: all have rightly or wrongly been accused of plagiarism–theft of intellectual property–provoking widespread media punditry. But what exactly is plagiarism? How has the meaning of this notoriously ambiguous term changed over time as a consequence of historical and cultural transformations? Is the practice on the rise, or just more easily detectable by technological advances? How does the current market for expressive goods inform our own understanding of plagiarism? Is there really such a thing as “cryptomnesia,” the unconscious, unintentional appropriation of another’s work? What are the mysterious motives and curious excuses of plagiarists? What forms of punishment and absolution does this “sin” elicit? What is the good in certain types of plagiarism?

Provocative, insightful, and extraordinary for its clarity and forthrightness, The Little Book of Plagiarism is an analytical tour de force in small, the work of “one of the top twenty legal thinkers in America” (Legal Affairs), a distinguished jurist renowned for his adventuresome intellect and daring iconoclasm.

See English philospher Nigel Warburton's review of Posner's The Little Book of Plagiarism. Hat tip to Brian Leiter's Law School Reports. [JH]

Is Google on the Verge of Commercializing Interlibrary Loans?

Do you want to pay to read books online? Google Operating System is reporting that Google thinks you will. Google's book search program will give publishers a new option to monetize their content: sell online access. So instead of buying a complete book in print or digital format, you will be able to buy the right to read a copyright-protected work online. I'm assuming this would give folks an option to acquire some information from a book at a price lower than purchasing the title in PDF format. If so, has Google come up with a commercial alternative to interlibrary loans? [JH]

Climate Risk Disclosure by the S&P 500

From the press release: "Despite growing financial losses in various business sectors from climate change, over half of the nation’s 500 largest publicly traded companies are doing a poor job of disclosing climate change risks to their investors, according to a first-ever report analyzing climate disclosure practices among S&P 500 companies last year."  [RJ]

Special Master Reports Now on SCOTUS Website

"Special Master reports are now being posted on the Supreme Court's Web site. On the 'Docket' page of the Web site you will find a link titled Special Master Reports.  The Court will add reports as they are issued in the future. In addition, the Court plans to post past reports as well."  [RJ]