Cornell Law Library's InSITE Website Reviews

Reviews published in the May 5th, 2008 issue of InSITE:

• GLIN: Global Legal Information Network
• PLoL: Public Library of Law
• Trade Observatory
• Tribal Law Journal
• United Nations Scholars' Workstation

[RJ]

GLIN: Global Legal Information Network
http://www.glin.gov/

The Global Legal Information Network (GLIN) is a product of the Law Library of Congress that provides a freely searchable “public database of official texts of laws, regulations, judicial decisions, and other complementary legal sources contributed by [approximately thirty] governmental agencies and international organizations ... in their original languages.”  Every document record includes an English summary, as well as assigned subject terms.  Advanced features allow searching by jurisdiction, publication and issuance date, subject, document type, and language.  Results may be sorted or narrowed by jurisdiction, relevancy, or publication date.  Related legal resources are grouped together for ease of access.  Where available, the original documents are scanned color PDFs.  GLIN is a classic free resource for researching foreign and international law. [JJ]

PLoL: Public Library of Law
http://www.plol.org

The Public Library of Law (PLoL), sponsored by FastCase, provides free online access to extensive primary sources of U.S. law.  The searchable case law database includes all U.S. Supreme Court opinions, federal circuit court opinions from 1950 to the present, and state supreme and appellate court cases from 1997 to the present.  When researching case law, PLoL allows advanced Boolean searching, narrowing by jurisdiction, and exact citation or docket number look up.  Free registration is required to view judicial opinions.  Also available are state and federal statutes and constitutions, state and federal court rules, federal regulations, and select state regulations.  These resources are fed into the PLoL website from their most authoritative free online location.  This allows users to research multiple jurisdictions without navigating to each state’s individual website.  To assist users, PLoL offers two quick video tutorials on finding cases and statutes, as well as a general user guide.  PLoL is a great new open access resource to help people research the law for free. [JJ]

Trade Observatory
http://www.wtowatch.org/         

Formerly known as WTO Watch, Trade Observatory is a project of the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP) and is part of a cluster of sites including “Ag Observatory,” "Health Observatory" and "Community Forestry Resource Center." Trade Observatory "[h]as been documenting the World Trade Organization, the North American Free Trade Agreement, the Free Trade Area of the Americas and other international trade agreements and institutions" and "[w]orking toward fairer trade systems and alternative approaches to globalization."  The site offers an extensive news feed, which offers both press releases and links to coverage, with an emphasis on the World Trade Organization, North American Free Trade Agreement, Free Trade Area of the Americas, International Monetary Fund, and the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development activities.  The news feed is syndicated via RSS.  There is an extensive “Library” of original documents collected and submitted by multiple partner organizations.  This section is browseable by topic or language (English, Spanish, French, and German), and is full-text searchable.  Most documents are available in PDF. [BWK, JPC]

Tribal Law Journal
http://tlj.unm.edu/

The purpose of the online Tribal Law Journal (TLJ), issued by the University of New Mexico School of Law, is to "promote indigenous self-determination by facilitating discussion of the internal law of the world’s indigenous nations." The internal law of indigenous nations encompasses traditional law, Western law adopted by indigenous nations, and a blend of Western and indigenous law. Underscoring this purpose is the recognition that traditional law is a source of law.  In addition to providing the full text of the Journal’s contents, the TLJ website contains Tribal Law Profiles, which provide overviews of indigenous governmental structures and organization.  The Journal also provides multimedia material concerning indigenous issues, although content is somewhat sparse and poorly updated.  The site and journal archives can currently only be searched as a part of the global search of all University of New Mexico School of Law pages. [BWK, JPC]

United Nations Scholars' Workstation
http://www.library.yale.edu/un/

Developed by the Yale University Library and the Social Science Statistical Laboratory, "the United Nations Scholars' Workstation is a collection of texts, finding aids, data sets, maps, and pointers to print and electronic information." The Workstation is maintained by the United Nations Studies program. Topics covered include disarmament, economic and social development, environment, human rights, international relations, international trade, peacekeeping, and population and demography. The site categorizes its links into two areas, "Research Tools to Locate UN Information", which links to particular types of content (i.e. "Numeric Data" or "Maps") and "Research Approaches to UN Information", which categorizes information by different approaches such as UN organizational structure or geographic area. This multi-axis approach makes the site more accessible. The site primarily links to and aggregates external sources; no internal search engine seems to be available. The site is most valuable for demonstrating how the different UN agencies are linked to each other.  [BWK, JPC]