Law Librarian Blog

The American Idea: The Best of the Atlantic Monthly

The American Idea: The Best of the Atlantic Monthly
edited by Robert Vare

List Price: $35.00
Hardcover: 688 pages
Publisher: Doubleday (October 16, 2007)
ISBN-10: 0385521081
ISBN-13: 978-0385521086

Book Description: This extraordinary anthology brings together seventy-eight of the magazine's most acclaimed and influential articles, including "Letter from Birmingham Jail," by Martin Luther King, Jr., one of the 20th century's most famous reflections upon—and calls for—racial equality; "Broken Windows," by James Q. Wilson and George L. Kelling, which gave birth to a new way of thinking about law enforcement; "The Roots of Muslim Rage," by Bernard Lewis, which prophetically warned of the dangers posed to the West by rising Islamic extremism; and "The Fifty-First State," by James Fallows, which previewed in astonishing detail the mess in which America would find itself in Iraq—a full six months before the invasion. The collection also highlights some of The Atlantic’s finest moments in fiction and poetry—from the likes of Twain, Whitman, Frost, Hemingway, Nabokov, and Bellow—affirming the central role of literature in defining and challenging American society.

Check out the book's Table of Contents on its website. [JH]

Hoover Planned Mass Jailing in 1950

Interesting article from the N.Y. Times:

"A newly declassified document shows that J. Edgar Hoover, the longtime director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, had a plan to suspend habeas corpus and imprison some 12,000 Americans he suspected of disloyalty.

Hoover wanted President Harry S. Truman to proclaim the mass arrests necessary to “protect the country against treason, espionage and sabotage.” The F.B.I would “apprehend all individuals potentially dangerous” to national security, Hoover’s proposal said. The arrests would be carried out under “a master warrant attached to a list of names” provided by the bureau.

The names were part of an index that Hoover had been compiling for years. “The index now contains approximately twelve thousand individuals, of which approximately ninety-seven per cent are citizens of the United States,” he wrote." 

Friday Fun: Bad Day at the Office

I've seen "rage against the machine" happenings like the ones in this video in a law firm office! Hat tip to Lisa Wernke, Acquisitions Librarian, University of Cincinnati Law Library for sharing. [JH]

Should Law Profs Require Student Blog Participation?

That's the question Adjunct Law Prof Blog editor Mitchell Rubinstein asked after noting that Barry Law School Adjunct Professor Marc John Randazza gives credit for student participation on his blog, The Legal Satyricon. The question has created a mini-dust storm in the blogosphere. Check out the comments to Rubinstein's original post and the following posts and their comments:

• Susan Cartier Liebel's post, Knickers Are Twisting Over Innovative Adjunct Telling Students They MUST Blog on Build a Solo Practice
• Scott Greenfield's post, Adjunct Accused of Misblawgary on Simple Justice
• Randazza's Post
• And Rubinstein's follow-up post on Adjunct Law Prof Blog

[JH]

Belated Happy Birthday Wikipedia

Wikipedia turned 7 years old on January 15th. Hat tip to LISNews. [JH]

Researchers: Beware the IE Cache on a Public Terminal

Interesting article from eWeek.com:

"If you use Internet Explorer to access Google's Gmail on public terminals, you may be leaving a lot of sensitive information exposed in the browser's cache, according to a warning from Web application security specialist Cenzic.  However, Microsoft has downplayed the risk, insisting this is "not a product vulnerability."   Cenzic spokesman Mandeep Khera said his company's researchers figured out a way to use CSRF (cross-site request forgery) in combination with the improper use of caching directives to hijack Gmail credentials from the IE cache.

The issue is specific to Gmail on IE and Cenzic believes both Microsoft and Google should apply fixes to secure customers, especially those using computer kiosks in a library or Internet café.   After a "thorough investigation," Microsoft has dismissed the threat as overblown. "In the scenario in question an attacker would need authenticated access to the system in order to modify files located in the cache. With that level of access, an attacker could install malicious programs that would have more impact than the scenarios described," a Microsoft spokesman said in a statement sent to eWEEK."

Obviously overblown.  Who ever heard of Microsoft IE being vulnerable...[RJ]

What Did the Professor Say? Check Your iPod

Interesting article from the N.Y. Times:

"Students staring at their iPod screens may be taking a break with a music video — or they may be reviewing a tough chemistry lecture.

These days, students who miss an important point the first time have a second chance. After class, they can pipe the lecture to their laptops or MP3 players and hear it again while looking at the slides that illustrate the talk.

At least two companies now sell software to universities and other institutions that captures the words of classroom lectures and syncs them with the digital images used during the talk — usually PowerPoint slides and animations. The illustrated lectures are stored on a server so that students can retrieve them and replay the content on the bus ride home, clicking along to the exact section they need to review.

When it’s time to cram, the replay services beat listening to a cassette recording of a class, said Nicole Engelbert, an analyst at Datamonitor, a marketing research company in New York."  [RJ]

White House Fact Sheet: Year in Review: 2007

From the White House.  [RJ]

News Stories This Week Poll

I thought I would test drive a possible new blog feature today. [JH]

How important were these stories to you?

• New self-destructing palm species discovered. A self-destructing palm tree that flowers once every 100 years and then dies has been discovered on the Indian Ocean island of Madagascar, botanists said Thursday. CNN coverage.
• New ultra-thin MacBook Air notebook computer unveiled. Steve Jobs took the wraps off a super-slim new laptop at the Macworld trade show on Tuesday, unveiling a personal computer less than an inch thick. CNN coverage.

Be True to Your School

Check out the ten law schools who graduated the most law teachers on Brian Leiter's Law School Reports. The data was obtained from 7,820 tenured and tenure-track law professors listed in the AALS Directory of Law Teachers.

The data was provided to Leiter by a Michigan Assistant Dean in response to Leiter's recent Ludicrous Hyperbole Watch: University of Michigan Law School post. Leiter (JD '87 and Ph.D in philosophy '95 from Michigan) writes, "The data [as supplied] was presented in aggregate form, which works to the advantage of larger schools like Michigan." Ah yes, crunch the numbers to make your school look good. Leiter reworked the data for a more appropriate per capita ranking.

Beware the thin-skinned law school administrator. [JH]

Does Court Secrecy Undermine Public Health and Safety?

THE SUNSHINE IN LITIGATION ACT: DOES COURT SECRECY UNDERMINE PUBLIC HEALTH AND SAFETY?:  Hearing Before the Subcomm. on Antitrust, Competition Policy and Consumer Rights of the S. Comm. on the Judiciary 110th Cong. (2007).  [Webcast]

Member Statement

• The Honorable Patrick Leahy

Testimony

• Johnny Bradley
• Honorable Joseph F. Anderson, Jr.
• Robert N. Weiner
• Leslie A. Bailey
• Stephen G. Morrison
• Prof. Richard Zitrin

Reforming U.S. Immigration Policy: Open New Pathways to Integration

New report from the Brookings Institution:

"Roughly 12 million people reside illegally in the United States. More are joining the workforce, and nearly half of these households have children. Congress tried but failed to pass legislation to change the functioning of current immigration policy.

Recommendations

The next President, in order to ensure the economic, social, and civic integration of illegal immigrants, should support policies that:

• recognize the economic role and contribution of undocumented workers by implementing an earned legalization program
• create an Impact Aid Program that would offset state and local expenditures related to the program
• create a New Americans Initiative—a program to support state-level public-private partnership that would help all immigrants integrate into American society in a systematic, coordinated, and effective way, through local government and nonprofit programs

[RJ]

Cornell Law Library's InSITE Website Reviews

Reviews published in the January 14, 2008 issue of InSITE:

• Debatepedia
• Dying Speeches & Bloody Murders: Crime Broadsides Collected by the Harvard Law School Library
• Human Rights
• Martin Luther King, Jr., Research and Education Institute
• OpenCongress

Debatepedia
http://wiki.idebate.org/

The International Debate Education Association has teamed with students and alumni from Georgetown University to create Debatepedia, a wiki project that seeks to be the “Wikipedia of debate and deliberation.”  As a wiki, Debatepedia allows users to document published and original arguments, thus empowering individuals in the decision-making process.  Specific debate categories are organized by subject area, geographic region, and hot topic.  Subject areas include Business, Individual Rights, Legal, Religion, and Crime.  Hot topic categories range from Abortion to Welfare.  Under these groupings users will find specific debates.  Within the Legal subject area, debate topics include divorce, hate crimes, prisoners, and school prayer.  Each debate topic may include one or more questions to which users may contribute a pro or con argument.  Many of the debates are still being developed.  While the site can be fun to browse, students may find it beneficial to both read and contribute to the debates. [MM]

Dying Speeches & Bloody Murders: Crime Broadsides Collected by the Harvard Law School Library
http://broadsides.law.harvard.edu/

The Harvard Law School Library has digitized its collection of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century British crime broadsides, covering the years 1707 to 1891.  Broadsides were a form of street literature printed on one side of the page and were sold to the crowds that gathered for public executions.  Intended for the lower classes, broadsides recounted the crime, the trial of the accused, and included a purported confession.  Broadsides were often styled “Last Dying Speeches” or “Bloody Murders.”  Harvard’s collection of 500-plus broadsides is “one of the largest recorded and the first to be digitized in its entirety.”  The collection may be browsed by title or searched.  Keyword searching is available by title, name, date, site of publication, and subject.  The category search allows users to select one or more items from any of six categories: crimes, year of publication, site of publication, printers, condemned, and victims.  In addition to the Harvard collection, the site links out to other digitized broadside collections. [MM]

Human Rights
http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/humanrights/

The Human Rights digital exhibit at the United Kingdom’s National Archives website uses original documents scanned from their collection to illustrate the progression of rights “we today take for granted.”  Covering the eleventh through twentieth centuries, the site is divided into discrete time periods for easy browsing.  Within each, background history for that period is presented, as is a timeline of major events and links to scanned documents relevant to the period.  A glossary provides definitions of less familiar terms, which are also hyperlinked within the exhibit.  For quick access to all the scanned documents, the document index lists in chronological order the exhibit images available.  As most of the documents are illegible to our modern eyes, transcriptions are provided, as are translations where appropriate.  For researchers interested in human rights or legal history, this is a worthwhile website that weaves together primary source material with historical context. [JJ]

Martin Luther King, Jr., Research and Education Institute
http://www.stanford.edu/group/King/index.htm

The Martin Luther King, Jr., Research and Education Institute at Stanford University builds on the Martin Luther King, Jr. Papers Project undertaken by Stanford professor Clayborne Carson and for 22 years has served “as the institutional home for a broad range of activities relating to King’s life, the civil rights movement in the United States and the history of struggles worldwide to achieve social justice.” The site is divided into four areas in addition to a Home page with news, mission statement, requests for support, and FAQs.  Major navigation tabs link to the Papers Project, which in conjunction with the King Center is undertaking the task of publishing 14 volumes of King’s papers (Vol. V is now available for purchase); the Liberation Curriculum, to assist high school teachers in teaching about social justice; Public Programs such as conferences, seminars, workshops, dramatic workshops, and King Day celebrations; and About the Institute. The Papers Project has the most coverage on the site, including information about each volume published and a document inventory that is browseable by year and searchable by keyword. The Papers Project lists other publications by King and about King, such as compilations of sermons and speeches, and full text of some articles in HTML (many by Prof. Carson.)  A powerful segment of the site is “The Voice of King” which plays stirring excerpts from King’s sermons, speeches, and autobiography.  Overall, the Institute site contains an enormous amount of information via the King Encyclopedia, an Interactive Chronology, King biography, selected quotes, and daily “news” from the Civil Rights struggle with inspirational quotes from King’s Freedom Journal. Finally, the Institute lists recommended readings and additional links for researchers and offers a fee-based research service as well. The various types of information available make the site a bit confusing to navigate, so the best way to appreciate the wealth of information is by visiting the Site Map which neatly organizes the contents and makes selecting topics simple. [JC]

OpenCongress
http://www.opencongress.org/

OpenCongress is the latest project of the Sunlight Foundation, in partnership with Participatory Politics, designed to bring the full legislative process into the open.  Using bill texts, voting records, and committee reports from Thomas ( http://www.thomas.gov/); campaign contribution information from OpenSecrets.org; news from Google News; and blog posts from Technorati and Google Blog Search; OpenCongress brings together the “big picture” behind each bill on the Hill.  In addition to searching the site, users can browse by bill number, senator or representative name, House or Senate committee, industry, or topical issue, and track or share their interests using RSS feeds and tagging.  Voting trends are analyzed for every politician, stating with whom they most and least frequently vote.  For all categories, results can be ranked by name, most viewed, most blogged, most in the news, etc.  OpenCongress also provides a number of widgets and applications to download, as well as its own blog that reports on Congressional activities.  This is an informative site with a friendly user interface to track legislation and get the “behind the scenes” scoop on Congress. [JJ]

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

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. This information can be accessed via:

1. Searchable database or by browsing current and archived
   issues on the web:

        Click InSITE at http://www.lawschool.cornell.edu/library

2. RSS feed ( http://www.lawschool.cornell.edu/lawlibrary/insiteasp/public/rss.asp )

3. Via e-mail subscription: send the following request to: lyris@cornell.edu:

        join INSITE-L "your name"

where your name (include the quotation marks) is the name you want to be available to the list's administrator.  You must send this message from the e-mail address where you want to receive the e-list's messages.

4. Print format for the Cornell Law School community.

Impact of Undocumented Immigrants on Public Treasuries

CBO's The Impact of Unauthorized Immigrants on the Budgets of State and Local Governments: CBO drew the following conclusions:

• State and local governments incur costs for providing services to unauthorized immigrants and have limited options for avoiding or minimizing those costs.
• The amount that state and local governments spend on services for unauthorized immigrants represents a small percentage of the total amount spent by those governments to provide such services to residents in their jurisdictions.
• The tax revenues that unauthorized immigrants generate for state and local governments do not offset the total cost of services provided to those immigrants.
• Federal aid programs offer resources to state and local governments that provide services to unauthorized immigrants, but those funds do not fully cover the costs incurred by those governments.

See also, Immigration Policy Center Reports:

Assessing the Economic Impact of Immigration at the State and Local Level: Recent studies have found that undocumented immigrants, and immigrants in general, are net contributors to the public treasuries and economies of many states and localities. (December 2007)

Undocumented Immigrants as Taxpayers: As the debate over illegal immigration continues to rage, some pundits and policymakers are claiming that unauthorized immigrants do not pay taxes and rely heavily on government benefits. Neither of these claims is borne out by the facts. Undocumented men have work force participation rates that are higher than other workers, and all undocumented immigrants are ineligible for most government services, but pay taxes as workers, consumers, and residents. (November 2007)

[RJ & JH]

Pooling Scholars' Digital Resources

Interesting article from Inside Higher Ed:

"The various and competing efforts to digitize university libraries’ vast holdings have no lack of ambition, but access to documents and copyright issues have been two factors slowing the development of online scholarly repositories. Now, an effort at George Mason University seeks to bypass libraries entirely and delve into scholars’ file cabinets instead.

Or at least, their hard drives. If many researchers have had to scan rare documents or books for their own perusal, there’s a potential treasure trove of material that exists among their combined efforts. Rather than let all that scholarship rot, or waste away in data files, the university’s Center for History and New Media sees an opportunity to create an open archive of scholarly resources in the public domain.

"What about this, what we call the ‘hidden archive’?” said Daniel Cohen, the director of the center. “That’s a scholarly resource that’s not really helping any other scholar.”

In partnership with the Internet Archive, and with funding from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the center is creating a way for scholars to upload existing data files to be optically scanned (to make them text-searchable) and stored in a database available to the public."

Life after the J.D.

Here's an interesting interview of a recent law grad unable to find work for those pondering a career in law on the WSJ blawg. 

A brief item in the New York Post’s Page Six magazine caught our eye. In a story spotlighting women up to their ears in debt, the Post interviewed Kirsten Wolf, a 32-year-old BU Law grad. It left us wanting more, so we connected with Wolf this morning and had her tell us her story. From time-to-time, we’ve focused on the dark side of the law. Put this interview in that category.

Be sure to check out the comments as well. [JJ]

Professional Reading on How to Create a Legal Research Toolbar

Jennifer Greig has recently posted her article to SSRN, "Have You Seen the New Library Bar?: Designing a Legal Research Toolbar."  Here's the abstract:

It seems like more and more people today are selecting their legal research results based on ease of access rather than the completeness of the results. After hearing one too many third-year law students say "I researched my entire paper on Google," I set off to create a tool that would satisfy both the desire for speed and the need for complete and authoritative research results. The tool is a legal research toolbar that integrates into a web browser and provides constant and quick access to library-sanctioned websites and databases. This paper walks readers through the design process of the Barry Law School Toolbar, including conception, negotiating with IT, and testing.

Hat tip to Pat Court at Cornell Law Library.  [JJ]

FDA Announces Cloned Meat Safe to Eat

In a controversial move, the FDA announced yesterday that cloned animals pose no health risk if consumed.  Wired.com has an article here.

After four years of deliberation, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced today that meat from cloned animals and their offspring is safe to eat.

But despite public unease and lingering scientific uncertainty, the FDA won't require such meat to be labeled or tracked.

Food producers say they're not about to put cloned meat on American dinner plates, as the procedure is too expensive and inefficient, and a third of U.S. adults say they won't eat cloned meat regardless of its approval. Instead, farmers will purchase cloned animals to serve as breeding stock for their entire herds.

Get the FDA press release here, and the final FDA risk assessment of cloned meat here.  More over at Food Law Prof Blog which discusses the pending 2007 Farm Bill which will overrule this new FDA regulation if passed. 

[JJ]

Information Overload

Law.com has a piece on information overload for attorneys, with some discussion of legal research here:

Confronting today's practitioner is a virtual onslaught of daily information that requires organization, analysis and response. Although statistics vary on the amount of information received by an individual in a given day, by 2003, there were over 15,652 Web sites dealing with the issue of "information overload" and its consequences.

The culprit, of course, is technology and the myriad methods by which it throws this information at us. But the receipt and processing of this information is critical to our professional development, and our professional survival now depends on it.

Our daily informational sources are manifold. They include direct, personal contact; telephone and voice mail; text-messaging, telefax and e-mail; and regular mail and FedEx (or its equivalent). We also daily access printed newspapers and magazines, as well as their online equivalents and an infinite variety of Internet resources. As a whole, the influx may appear overwhelming, but taken individually, we must recognize that each component provides a valuable and necessary resource. The key to our professional success now lies in organizing this informational flow and making it work for us.

[JJ]

Tushnet's Weak Courts, Strong Rights

"Tushnet puts flesh on the bones of the claim that constitutionally guaranteed social rights, judicially enforced, are already a part of the jurisprudence of the United States and other countries of interest. He takes this argument some distance beyond where any other scholar has taken it, so far as I know, and he does so with considerable refinement. This book gives a full and strong manifestation of the style, intelligence, and learning that have earned Tushnet his eminence as a scholar of American constitutional law and comparative constitutionalism." -- Frank I. Michelman, Harvard Law School

Weak Courts, Strong Rights: Judicial Review and Social Welfare Rights in Comparative Constitutional Law
by Mark Tushnet

List Price: $29.95
Hardcover: 288 pages
Publisher: Princeton University Press (October 15, 2007)
ISBN-10: 0691130922
ISBN-13: 978-0691130927

Book Description: Unlike many other countries, the United States has few constitutional guarantees of social welfare rights such as income, housing, or healthcare. In part this is because many Americans believe that the courts cannot possibly enforce such guarantees. However, recent innovations in constitutional design in other countries suggest that such rights can be judicially enforced--not by increasing the power of the courts but by decreasing it. In Weak Courts, Strong Rights, Mark Tushnet uses a comparative legal perspective to show how creating weaker forms of judicial review may actually allow for stronger social welfare rights under American constitutional law.

Under "strong-form" judicial review, as in the United States, judicial interpretations of the constitution are binding on other branches of government. In contrast, "weak-form" review allows the legislature and executive to reject constitutional rulings by the judiciary--as long as they do so publicly. Tushnet describes how weak-form review works in Great Britain and Canada and discusses the extent to which legislatures can be expected to enforce constitutional norms on their own. With that background, he turns to social welfare rights, explaining the connection between the "state action" or "horizontal effect" doctrine and the enforcement of social welfare rights. Tushnet then draws together the analysis of weak-form review and that of social welfare rights, explaining how weak-form review could be used to enforce those rights. He demonstrates that there is a clear judicial path--not an insurmountable judicial hurdle--to better enforcement of constitutional social welfare rights.

About the Author: Mark Tushnet is the William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Law at Harvard Law School. His many books include "The New Constitutional Order" and "Taking the Constitution Away from the Courts" (both Princeton). He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Using Wiki-style Citizen Input for Law Reform

Interesting article from the New York Times Magazine:

"When the New Zealand police force said they were open to suggestions about how to rewrite national policing laws, they meant it. In September, they posted the 1958 Police Act online and invited Kiwis and non-Kiwis alike to visit the site and type in their own revisions to the law — extending the concept of “Wiki”-style collaborative writing from encyclopedias to democracy.

“The idea was to take something that’s inherently dry and intellectual” like law reform, explains Superintendent Hamish McCardle, who is in charge of the review, “and transfer it to something that’s cool and innovative” — like Web 2.0."  [RJ]

A Brief Overview of Attorney Directories and a 50 State Survey of Online State Bar Directories

Locating Lawyers (including Corporate Counsel): A Brief Overview of Attorney Directories and a 50 State Survey of Online State Bar Directories is another excellent resource from LLRX: "Obtaining background information on attorneys is a common question asked of law librarians. Yet as routine as it may sound it isn’t always as simple as going to Martindale Hubbell. While Martindale has long been a primary reference point for finding attorneys, some firms are opting-out of the directory and choosing other sources like the Chambers guide and Best Lawyers in America."  [RJ]

New Reports on Global Climate Change

From the Pew Center on Global Climate Change:

Towards an Integrated Multi-Track Climate Framework

From the press release: 

"The Pew Center on Global Climate Change today released a new report outlining options for negotiating a post-2012 climate change agreement and recommending an integrated multi-track approach in which different commitment types are agreed in a single package.

The report builds on the recommendations of the Pew Center’s Climate Dialogue at Pocantico, which brought together 25 senior policymakers and stakeholders from 15 countries.  The group’s consensus report recommends engaging all major economies in the post-2012 climate effort through a flexible framework allowing countries to take on different types of commitments

Regional Impacts of Climate Change: Four Case Studies in the United States

From the press release:

"As the nations of the world gather this week in Bali, Indonesia, to work on a global agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, the Pew Center on Global Climate Change today released a new report examining key impacts of climate change that are likely to affect different areas of the United States. The report, “Regional Impacts of Climate Change: Four Case Studies in the United States,” assesses particular climate vulnerabilities in the Midwest, West, Gulf Coast, and Chesapeake Bay regions.

The report provides useful information about particular impacts in different regions of the United States, as well as a more general perspective on the types of challenges decision-makers will face in developing workable responses to varied climate impacts. Each study also considers non-climatic factors, such as development and management practices that are likely to exacerbate our vulnerability to climate change."

[RJ]

Reducing U.S. Greenhouse Gas Emissions: How Much at What Cost?

From the Executive Summary of this McKinsey & Company report: "Consensus is growing among scientists, policy makers, and business leaders that concerted action will be needed to address rising greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the United States. The discussion is now turning to the practical challenges of where and how emissions reductions can best be achieved, at what costs, and over what periods of time.

The United States could reduce GHG emissions in 2030 by 3.0 to 4.5 gigatons of CO2e using tested approaches and high-potential emerging technologies. These reductions would involve pursuing a wide array of abatement options with marginal costs less than $50 per ton, with the average net cost to the economy being far lower if the nation can capture sizable gains from energy efficiency. Achieving these reductions at the lowest cost to the economy, however, will require strong, coordinated, economy-wide action that begins in the near future." 

Download the full report (pdf). [RJ]

"The Girl in the Photo" Enters...

"the elusive world of paralegaldom." Stina McClintock has left King County Law Library (Seattle) to become a paralegal! In an email to me she wrote in her usual tongue-in-cheek fashion:

"God help me and what I am about to encounter. I guess I will now be the person on the other side of the [reference] desk, asking for help and then trying to cobble something workable from the resources provided."

The law library community learned about Stina when she was featured in the above AALL award winning photo. Catching my attention (judicial notice duly taken by my long-suffering wife, Lynette), Stina agreed to join this blog where she chronicled her life and times as a law library support staffer and her love of beer (drinking, brewing and judging brew contests), stiletto heels, and Noah Wyle in her A View from the Stacks column.

What is paralegadom's gain surely is the law library community's loss but rumors are circulating that Stina will be doing guest spots for King County Law Library podcasts as the beer critic so all is not lost. Hopefully she will drop us a line once in awhile too. Middle-age men like to receive emails from a half-their-age razor-sharp blond who likes loves to wear stiletto pumps to work. (Oy, I hear the mouse clicks of sexist remark emails heading for my mailbox...but there won't be one from Stina folks, she has a sense of humor.)

Good luck Stina! Even Lynette is going to miss you. [JH]

LISNews Picks Law Librarian Blog as One of the Ten Blogs to Read in 2008

About our selection as one of the ten blogs to read in 2008 by LISNews, Blake Carver explains

We had a hard time picking a law librarian blog. Our "final cut" list included three choices, and each seemed worthy to be our single final choice. In the end Law Librarian Blog edged out the others for several reasons. For me the biggest reason was collaboration; Law Librarian Blog has 2 editors, and several contributors. They cover a wide range of topics in the law library niche, and point the way to good tools and resources.

There are many, many fine law librarian/law libraries blogs in our crowded corner of the blogosphere. Ron Jones, our great team of contributing editors and I are honored to be selected.

Here's the LISNews Ten Blogs to Read in 2008. Check out the announcement for details about each one.

• The Annoyed Librarian
• David Rothman
• iLibrarian
• Judge a Book by its Cover
• Law Librarian Blog
• Library Stuff
• Marylaine Block
• Off The Mark
• ResearchBuzz
• Stephen's Lighthouse

By the way, check out LISten, LISNews' trial run of podcasts. [JH]

Professional Reading: Rosin's Unpacking the Bar: Of Cut Scores, Competence and Crucibles

Check out Gary Rosin's Unpacking the Bar: Of Cut Scores, Competence and Crucibles (SSRN). Here's the abstract for this very interesting study: 

Bar passage rates of first-takers vary widely among both the states and the law schools. State grading practices also vary widely, particularly as to minimum passing scores (“cut scores”) and whether they scale state exam components to the MultiState Bar Exam (“MBE”). The broad ranges of Bar passage rates and of state grading practices call into question the stewardship of the states over admission to the practice of law. This study uses generalized linear modeling, with a logit link function, to isolate the effect on the Bar passage rates of ABA-approved law schools of three factors: (i) the LSAT scores of entering classes, (ii) state cut scores; and (iii) scaling to the MBE. LSAT scores of a law school's entering classes were the most significant factor in determining a law school's Bar passage rate. But differences in state cut scores, and in MBE scaling, are associated with large differences in the Bar passage rates of law schools with equivalent LSAT scores. This suggests that the states need to work together with a view to reaching a national consensus as to the elements of minimum competence, and how best to measure them.

[JH]

Six Techniques to Get More from the Web than Google Will Tell You

Interesting article from CIO.com:

"The Internet has changed research dramatically. Now, it’s hard to resist defaulting to search engines, especially Google, as its capabilities grow. But you miss opportunities to get valuable insights into IT topics if you rely only on search engines.

Professional librarians and researchers will tell you that the Web has many unexplored opportunities for finding more information on business topics. Pursue these six techniques to improve your research results:

1. Use Search Engines and Wikipedia to Find Quality Research Sources
2. Search Blogs for Specialized Experts Who Sift Through the Web for You
3. Study Business School Websites
4. Find Statistical Data on Government Sources
5. Research Trade Groups and Online Publications for Current Topics, Best Practices
6. Visit the Library for More Research Sources and Online Data"

[RJ]

The 2008 Statistical Abstract

From the U.S. Census Bureau:

"The Statistical Abstract of the United States is the standard summary of statistics on the social, political, and economic organization of the United States. It is also designed to serve as a guide to other statistical publications and sources. The latter function is served by the introductory text to each section, the source note appearing below each table, and Appendix I, which comprises the Guide to Sources of Statistics, the Guide to State Statistical Abstracts, and the Guide to Foreign Statistical Abstracts."

For earlier editions, click here.  [RJ]

In Congress, Key Debates Lie Ahead on Tuition Costs, Accreditation, and Piracy

From the Chronicle: "Members of Congress will tangle with some thorny issues when they return this month from their winter recess and resume work on the Higher Education Act, the major law that governs federal student aid."  (sub. req.)  [RJ]

Professional Reading: Originalism is Bunk

"This [paper] is important, and every originalist will have to reply (though some of them will have to surrender, at least if they know what's good for them!)." -- Brian Leiter, Brian Leiter's Law School Reports.

Mitchell N. Berman's (Texas) Originalism is Bunk is available from SSRN. Here's the abstract:

Critical analysis of originalism should start by confronting a modest puzzle: Most commentators suppose that originalism is deeply controversial, while others complain that it means too many things to mean anything at all. Is one of these views false? If not, how can we square the term's ambiguity with the sense that it captures a subject of genuine debate? Perhaps self-professed originalists champion a version of originalism that their critics don't reject, while the critics challenge a version that proponents don't maintain.

Contemporary originalists disagree over many things: Over which feature of the Constitution's original character demands fidelity (framers' intent, ratifiers' understanding, or public meaning); over why such fidelity is required, and over whether this interpretive obligation binds only judges or citizens, legislators, and executive officials too. But on one dimension of potential variability - the dimension of strength - originalists are mostly united: They believe that those who should follow some aspect of a provision's original character must give that original aspect priority over all other considerations. That is, when the original meaning (or intent, etc.) is satisfactorily discernible, the interpreter must follow it. This is the thesis that self-professed originalists maintain and that their critics (the non-originalists) deny.

Non-originalists have challenged this thesis on varied wholesale grounds, including: that the target of the originalist search is undiscoverable or nonexistent; that originalism is self-refuting because the framers intended that the Constitution not be interpreted in an originalist vein; and that originalism yields bad outcomes. This Article proceeds differently. Instead of mounting a global objection - one purporting to hold true regardless of the particular arguments on which proponents of originalism rely - I endeavor to catalogue and critically assess the varied arguments proffered in originalism's defense.

Those arguments are of two broad types: hard and soft. Originalism is hard when grounded on reasons that purport to render it (in some sense) necessarily true; it is soft when predicated on contingent and contestable weighings of its costs and benefits relative to other interpretive approaches. That is, hard arguments seek to show that originalism follows logically or conceptually from premises the interlocutor can be expected already to accept; soft arguments aim to persuade others to revise their judgments of value or their empirical or predictive assessments. The most common hard arguments contend that originalism is entailed either by intentionalism or by binding constitutionalism. Soft arguments claim that originalist interpretation best serves diverse values like democracy, the rule of law, and substantive goodness. I seek to show that the hard arguments for originalism are false and that the soft arguments are implausible.

The upshot is not that constitutional interpretation should disregard framers' intentions, ratifiers' understandings, or original public meanings. Of course we should care about these things. But originalism is a demanding thesis. We can take the original character of the Constitution seriously without treating it as dispositive. That original intents and meanings matter is not enough to render originalism true.

[JH]

Steven Davidoff: From Law Professor Blogs Network to New York Times

One of the joys of creating and developing the Law Professor Blogs Network with Paul Caron (Cincinnati) is providing younger law profs with a vehicle to promote their "scholarship in action." Here's an example of what can happen.

Steven M. Davidoff (Wayne State), who launched M&A Law Prof Blog as part of our Network in April 2007, has accepted a blogging gig with the New York Times DealBook as the Deal Professor.  The New York Times offered Steven the DealBook gig after following his blogging on M&A Law Prof Blog. Read more about it: Steven's farewell post on M&A Law Prof Blog.

About this development Paul Caron writes (and I wholeheartedly agree):" [W]e feel like proud parents, sad that he is leaving the network nest but proud of the wonderful opportunity he has to attract a wider audience at the NY Times."

Congratulations and good luck, Steven.

Help Wanted! If you know a law prof who might be interested in taking over the editorship of our M&A Law Prof Blog, please contact me. [JH]

Searching the Web Using Text Mining SE

Interesting article from Pandia Search Engine News:

"What if you could get a search engine to summarize all the information found for you? Take a look at the iResearch Reporter!

When you search the Web using a traditional search engine like Google, it will present the results as a list of web pages that should (but may not) contain the search engine you are looking for.

But what if you could get the results presented as a text summary of the content found on those pages? This is what text mining is about."  [RJ]

Criminal Justice Statistics Now Online

Two new publications:

Bureau of Justice Statistics Capital Punishment, 2006 - Statistical Table. From the abstract: "Presents characteristics of persons under sentence of death on December 31, 2006, and of persons executed in 2006 from the NPS-8 data collection. Tables present state-by-state information on the movement of prisoners into and out of death sentence status during 2006, status of capital statutes, and methods of execution. Numerical tables also summarize data on offenders' gender, race, Hispanic origin, age at time of arrest for capital offense, legal status at time of capital offense, and time between imposition of death sentence and execution."  [RJ]

BJS Sourcebook on Criminal Justice Statistics, 31st ed.

The 31st edition of the Bureau of Justice Statistics' Sourcebook on Criminal Justice Statistics is now available online. The Sourcebook brings together data from more than 100 sources about many aspects of criminal justice in the United States. These data are displayed in over 1,000 tables and organized into six topical sections:

Section 1 - Characteristics of the criminal justice systems
Section 2 - Public attitudes toward crime and criminal justice-related topics
Section 3 - Nature and distribution of known offenses
Section 4 - Characteristics and distribution of persons arrested
Section 5 - Judicial processing of defendants
Section 6 - Persons under correctional supervision

Sourcebook 2003 Home | Table of Contents | Tables List  | Topical Index | What's New at Sourcebook Online

Ordering Information:

To order a copy of the final print edition, Sourcebook 2003, contact the National Criminal Justice Reference Service (NCJRS). It is available for postage and handling charges of $9 for U.S. buyers and $39 for buyers in Canada and other countries. Reference NCJ 208756 when ordering. Past print and CD-ROM editions of Sourcebook also are available from NCJRS.

Order online from the NCJRS Online Ordering System. Telephone orders can be placed by calling NCJRS' toll free number at 1-800-851-3420. Credit card orders can be sent via FAX to NCJRS at 410-792-4358. Orders by surface mail can be sent with a credit card number, or check or money order made out to NCJRS. The address is: National Criminal Justice Reference Service, P.O. Box 6000, Rockville, MD 20849-6000

CRS Report: How Crime in the United States Is Measured (Jan. 3, 2008) (pdf)

From the Summary: Crime data collected through the Uniform Crime Reports (UCR), the National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS), and the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) are used by Congress to inform policy decisions and allocate federal criminal justice funding to states. As such, it is important to understand how each program collects and reports crime data, and the limitations associated with the data.

This report reviews (1) the history of the UCR, the NIBRS, and the NCVS; (2) the methods each program uses to collect crime data; and (3) the limitations of the data collected by each program. The report then compares the similarities and differences of UCR and NCVS data. It concludes by reviewing issues related to the NIBRS and the NCVS.

[JH]

E-Government 2.0: Improving Innovation, Collaboration, and Access

Hearing, U.S. Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs:  [Webcast]

Member Statements

• Senator Joseph I. Lieberman
• Senator Susan M. Collins

Witnesses Testimony 

• Karen S. Evans, Administrator, Office of Electronic Government and Information Technology, Office of Management and Budget 
• John Lewis Needham, Manager, Public Sector Content Partnerships, Google, Inc. 
• Ari Schwartz, Deputy Director, Center for Democracy and Technology 
• Jimmy Wales, Founder, Wikipedia 

[RJ]

Opening: Reference Librarian, Duke Law Library

The Duke Law Library is seeking an experienced reference librarian to join our team of skilled law-trained professionals working in a research-oriented, technologically innovative environment. In addition to teaching legal research and other reference responsibilities, the position will coordinate the Library's Faculty Research Assistants Program and participate in special projects, including an exciting new initiative in empirical legal research, in support of faculty teaching and scholarship.

Responsibilities:

Reference Librarians at Duke work as a team of skilled and experienced law-trained professionals to:

• provide extensive reference and research services to a sophisticated and research-oriented faculty and student body;
• work actively with assigned faculty to monitor research interests and support teaching and scholarship;
• train and work with student research assistants and student journal editors;
• teach first year legal research within an integrated legal research and writing course, and conduct research workshops, advanced research classes and instruction in other forums;
• author research guides and other instructional and promotional materials in print and electronic formats;
• participate in developing the library's web presence; and
• participate in collection development.