Law Librarian Blog

A New Era of Responsibility: Renewing America's Promise

A New Era of Responsibility: Renewing America's Promise (FY10 Budget Overview Document) is now available from the U.S. Government Printing Office. This document provides a description of the Obama Administration's fiscal policies and major budgetary initiatives. This document is an overview of the full Fiscal Year 2010 Budget, expected to be released this spring.

The authentic online version is available through a direct link on the Latest Resources panel on GPO's Federal Digital System (FDsys) at:  http://www.fdsys.gov.

Copies of "A New Era of Responsibility: Renewing America's Promise" are available for purchase from the U.S. Government Bookstore at: http://bookstore.gpo.gov/collections/new-era.jsp.

The Economic Crisis and the Fiscal Crisis: 2009 and Beyond

New research report from the Urban Institute:

"With the economy mired in the deepest recession in decades a drop in economic activity that has been compounded by continuing mortgage defaults, a historic decline in housing prices, falling equity values, illiquid credit markets, declining consumer confidence, and enormous and rapid job losses attention has shifted away from problems of fiscal balance. However, the most recent Congressional Budget Office baseline projection (2009a) reports a fiscal year 2009 deficit of $1,186 billion, or 8.3 percent of GDP, under the assumption that no new tax or spending policies are implemented. Including the recently enacted $787 billion stimulus package raises the 2009 deficit by roughly $185 billion (CBO 2009b). Either the baseline projection or the baseline-plus-stimulus would represent the largest deficit in dollar terms and as a share of the economy since World War II, as well as a stunning shift from the budget surpluses of a decade ago.

This paper discusses the impact of recent tumultuous economic events and policy interventions on the Federal fiscal picture for the immediate future and for the longer run. Because these events and policies are still unfolding rapidly, the paper will be updated over the next few weeks and months."  [RJ]

All-Time Top Ten Ig Nobel Awards

The Ig Nobels at the Annals of Improbable Research have looked back at 18 years of the prizes to bring you their 10 favorite Ig Nobels of all time. [JH]

LII Launches VoxPopuLII Blog

LII has just launched its inaugural post on VoxPopuLII.  The purpose of VoxPopuLII is to essentially cross-pollinate good ideas, create connections, and encourage dialogue.  Tom Bruce notes that there are a lot of people working on a wide variety of projects in law,technology, information, public access to legal publications, etc.  But much of this work is silo-ed, isolated by jurisdictional, institutional, or doctrinal boundaries.  VoxPopuLII attempts to build bridges and strengthen our world legal information infrastructure by introducing readers to new voices.  Posts will occur twice a month. 

In the first post, Kerry Anderson, Deputy Director and Head of IT for the Southern African Legal Information Institute (SAFLII), writes about the nature of LIIs, publishing practices in different African jurisdictions, copyright complications, and free legal information.  Be sure to check it out.  Comments are encouraged. [JJ]

Friday Fun: Wait Two Seconds, Wait Two Seconds (Before You Swipe Your Card)

Some examples of law library etiquette from the 2008 NYU Law Revue (or another example of what happens after the staff leaves). [JH]

Datasets: Displaying, Preserving, and Citing to Them with Dataverse

The IQSS Dataverse Network is a free software platform for the displaying, citing, and archiving of social science research data.  Dataverse was developed at the Institute for Quantitative Social Science at Harvard University.  One may store data on the IQSS server, or download the free Dataverse software, licensed under the GNU Affero General Public License, to set up a local archive.  Dataverse’s features include the ability to customize the public interface to appear as though it is on the data provider’s own Web page, and the use of persistent URLs and universal numerical fingerprints, to enable citation and verification of data by other scholars.  Dataverse may be useful for scholars engaged in empirical research; law libraries seeking to archive, publicize, or increase access to their faculty members’ datasets; or for legal journals seeking to distribute the data on which published articles are based.  Professor Carolyn Shapiro’s recent blog post and and Professor Gary King, the principal investigator for Dataverse, has a blog post on this. [Robert Richards]

Memos from the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel Indicate Major Legal Errors

Several legal memorandums issued by the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel point a number of major legal errors committed by Bush administration lawyers during the formulation of its early counterterrorism policies. 

Here are the memoranda (issued on March 2nd, 2009):

• Memorandum Regarding Status of Certain OLC Opinions Issued in the Aftermath of the Terrorist Attacks of September 11, 2001 (01-15-2009)
• Memorandum Regarding Constitutionality of Amending Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to Change the "Purpose" Standard for Searches (09-25-2001)
• Memorandum Regarding Authority for Use of Military Force to Combat Terrorist Activities within the United States (10-23-2001)
• Memorandum Regarding Authority of the President to Suspend Certain Provisions of the ABM Treaty (11-15-2001)
• Memorandum Regarding the President's Power as Commander in Chief to Transfer Captured Terrorists to the Control and Custody of Foreign Nations (03-13-2002)
• Memorandum Regarding Swift Justice Authorization Act (04-08-2002)
• Memorandum Regarding Determination of Enemy Belligerency and Military Detention (06-08-2002)
• Memorandum Regarding Applicability of 18 U.S.C. § 4001(a) to Military Detention of United States Citizens (06-27-2002)
• Memorandum Regarding October 23, 2001 OLC Opinion Addressing the Domestic Use of Military Force to Combat Terrorist Activities (10-06-2008)

See also LLB's earlier post. [RJ]

Metadata Not a Public Record Under Arizona's Public Records Act

David Hricik (Mercer) reposts on an Arizona public employment case where the plaintiff was denied his request for metadata associated with his employment records. The plaintiff believed his records had been altered after creation or had been "back dated." When his request was denied, he sued. In Lake v. City of Phoenix, ___ P.2d __ (Ariz. App. 2009), the court held that metadata is not a public record under Arizona's Public Records Act.

Hricik writes "this is a fascinating case, since obviously when the legislature wrote the statute metadata didn't exist." See his analysis of the court's decision on Statutory Construction Blog. [JH]

Web Design Matters: Ten Essentials for Any Library site

Thinking about redesigning the library website.  Check out Brian Mathews article in Library Journal entitled "Web Design Matters: Ten essentials for any library site".  Mathews focuses on "elements that will update your web site's appearance, improve its functionality, and make a lasting positive impression on your patrons."  He give ten places to start with excellent examples.  Check it out!  [RJ]

Who is the most important thinker in American law of the 20th-Century?

Check out Brian Leiter's (Chicago) poll. [JH]

Office of Legal Counsel Memoranda Released

Nine memoranda on federal executive power, written by the Office of Legal Counsel during the Bush Administration and not previously disseminated, were released by the U.S. Justice Department on March 2. Here's the The Justice Department press release respecting the memoranda, New York Times article and Washington Post article.

Seven of the memoranda, dated between September 2001 and June 2002, concern the federal executive power and national security or military affairs in the wake of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.  One memorandum dated October 6, 2008, characterizes as "either incorrect or highly questionable" arguments in an October 2001 OLC memorandum that neither civil liberties protected by the Bill of Rights nor the Posse Comitatus Act would apply in the event of domestic military action to combat terrorism.  Another memorandum dated January 15, 2009 criticizes particular arguments in several OLC memoranda on executive power issued from 2001 through 2003. [Robert Richards]

Scraping Legislative Data at the State Level

The Sunlight Labs, creator of OpenCongress, has announced its next major goal, creating custom scrapers and obtaining data files for legislation, legislators and votes in each of the fifty states with help from volunteers. Check out the call for help databasing state legislation and The Fifty States Project wiki. [JH]

The Myth of the Generalist Judge

Do judges really practice the generalist ideal? According to Edward K. Cheng (Brooklyn Law School), the answer is not really. Cheng's very interesting article, The Myth of the Generalist Judge, 61 Stanford Law Review 519 (Dec. 2008), [SSRN}, empirically tests this question by examining opinion assignments in the federal courts of appeals from 1995-2005. It reveals that opinion specialization is a regular part of circuit court practice, and that a significant number of judges indeed specialize in specific subject areas.

Cheng proceeds by assessing the desirability of opinion specialization. Far from being a mere loophole in court operating procedures, opinion specialization turns out to be an important feature of judicial practice that could increase judicial expertise without incurring many of the costs commonly associated with specialized courts. [JH]

Cornell Law Library's InSITE Website Reviews

Reviews published in the February 23, 2009 issue of InSITE:

• Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln
• Researching Forced Migration: a Guide to Reference and Information Sources
• Rule of Law in Armed Conflicts Project: RULAC  [RJ]

Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln
http://quod.lib.umich.edu/l/lincoln/

The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln is an eight-volume set first published in 1953.  The set contains correspondence, speeches, and other of Lincoln’s writings, and these were transcribed and annotated over a number of years.  The Abraham Lincoln Association is now making the set available electronically.  The contents, which are available as text files, can be searched or browsed.  Simple Boolean and proximity searching are supported and these searches may be done specifically on texts by Lincoln, editorial notes, endorsements, letters, speeches, proclamations, and memoranda.  Field restrictions include author, citation, and title.  The Word Index allows users to browse words of interest or significance, determine the number of occurrences, and directly access the relevant documents.  Browsing the collection is an enjoyable way to peruse the many and varied materials available, including debates with Stephen Douglas, letters to various historical figures, and a first draft of the Gettysburg Address. [MM]

Researching Forced Migration: a Guide to Reference and Information Sources http://forcedmigrationguide.pbwiki.com/

Forced migration is a largely undefined academic field of study that is rapidly producing significant quantities of literature in need of organization.  Designed and maintained by Elisa Mason, the Forced Migration Guide does an excellent job of sorting, arranging and providing access to extensive materials pertaining to refugees and displaced persons throughout the world.  The Guide is funded through a Carnegie-Whitney grant from the American Library Association and is directed at a wide range of individuals seeking reliable and extensive sources of information for reference and research purposes.  Drawing on her experience as an independent information specialist with a background that includes working for both the UN High Commissioner for Refugees in Washington, DC and Geneva and for the Refugee Studies Centre in Oxford, she highlights multiple types of materials for her readers, including online sources, books, journal articles and other print materials, thereby providing multiple options for retrieving full-text sources.  The guide is organized in two major parts.  The first part provides a starting point for those seeking an understanding of forced migration, including an introduction to the various aspects of the concept of forced migration.  The second part provides a helpful research structure by discussing research concepts and principles, identifying starting points, and discussing ways to expand and support one’s research.  A well-functioning search feature is also available on the site.  In selecting which materials to include in her guide, Ms. Mason uses the following definition of forced migration from the International Association for the Study of Forced Migration (IASFM):  “‘Forced migration’ is a general term that refers to the movements of refugees and internally displaced people (those displaced by conflicts) as well as people displaced by natural or environmental disasters, chemical or nuclear disasters, famine, or development projects.”  With credit to the Refugee Studies Centre, she further clarifies that “those who study this phenomenon tend to focus on ‘the causes and consequences of forced migration with an emphasis on understanding the experiences of those affected’ … the ‘affected’ can include refugees, asylum-seekers, conflict-displaced, development-displaced, and disaster-displaced persons; and trafficked people.”  Her guide does not attempt to delineate academic boundaries within which resources must fall, but rather, on a selected basis, allows for natural overlap with other fields of study that impact or are impacted by forced migration.  A small sampling of the types of resources that are identified in the guide include bibliographies, books, journal databases, encyclopedias, and people.  Only two significant criteria limit her selection of individual titles: date (titles extend from 1990 to the present) and language (English is the only language, although other language versions are noted in the annotations when available, and she also provides a language index to facilitate retrieval of non-English resources).  The guide is well maintained through new additions and monthly checks to verify the functioning of URLs.  Researchers may also create an account to participate in the wiki and contribute comments.  [AE]

Rule of Law in Armed Conflicts Project: RULAC
http://www.adh-geneva.ch/RULAC/

The Rule of Law in Armed Conflicts Project(RULAC) is an emergent website designed to "support the application and implementation of international law in armed conflict.”  Its ultimate goal is to build a database that includes reports on the legal norms of every state and disputed territory in the world, together with an overview of the extent to which those norms are paid deference by relevant parties.  An initiative of the Geneva Academy of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights, the RULAC Project seeks to maintain an independent and apolitical position and explicitly disclaims any implications or apparent expressions of opinion regarding the legal status of the various states and territories contained in its database. Current selection of states includes those that are able to formally adhere to United Nations treaties; as of September, 2008, there were a total of 195.  In furtherance of its goal, RULAC’s home page features an extensive drop-down menu of databases organized by state or territory.  There, detailed reports are provided regarding the rule of law in armed conflict for each state or territory, together with a list of relevant legal developments in that country that have occurred in the past two years, with links to PDF versions of judicial decisions, legislation, ratified treaties, and other documents.  A static column located on the left side of the home page provides links to summaries of the applicable categories of law including international humanitarian law, international human rights law, international criminal law, and international refugee law.  Throughout the text of those summaries, several terms and phrases have been hyperlinked to PDF copies of the laws and to other relevant websites.  At the end of each summary appear supporting footnotes and a list of materials for further reading, some of which are again directly linked to PDFs.  Also provided in the column are links to “Key Issues” identified by RULAC, including qualification of armed conflicts, and interaction between humanitarian law and human rights in armed conflicts.  Each issue is thoroughly examined with definitions of relevant terms, objective synopses of the current state of the law, extensive footnotes, and links to PDF copies of the relevant documents when possible.  Readers will want to watch for summaries of the following additional issues coming soon to the website:  application of international law to non-state actors, application of humanitarian and human rights law to international organizations, and derogation from human rights treaties in situations of emergency.  An additional link entitled “Key Documents” provides a separate list of links to PDF documents, a sampling of which include “List of Customary Rules of International Humanitarian Law,” “UN Security Council Resolution on Rape as a Weapon of War,” “Key Terms Relating to Treaty Adherence,” and “Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions of 1949.”  A Legal Development Archive is in the process of being developed, and we look forward to this new feature being added to the site.  A well-functioning Google search box is available for those seeking quick access to documents on a particular subject, and for those seeking additional outside information, the site features an extensive list of well-functioning links to other relevant websites such as the UN Security Council, the International Court of Justice, and NATO, among many others.  A disclaimer makes note that the links are for informational purposes only and do not represent endorsements on the part of RULAC or the Geneva Academy of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights.  The website and its contents are available for free. [AE]

InSITE contributors: A. Emerson, 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 the channels below, in addition to this mailing list:

1. Searchable database or by browsing current and archived issues on the web: InSITE home page (http://library2.lawschool.cornell.edu/insiteasp/)
2. RSS feed (http://www.lawschool.cornell.edu/lawlibrary/insiteasp/public/rss.asp)
3. Print format for the Cornell Law School community.

Tracking BigLaw Layoffs

Law Shucks is "a self-deprecating look at life in and after BigLaw." Of late, its coverage has been focusing on life after BigLaw by compiling attorney and staff layoff data such as the below (click to enlarge):

For more details including charts by law firm, see Layoff Tracker. See also The Lawoff List, from the American Lawyer for additional coverage of law firm layoffs. [JH & RJ]

UConn Law Library Suit Update

In a matter that this blog has followed in the past, here and here, the news came out last week that the Waterbury Superior Court has dismissed the State schools claims for exceeding the applicable statute of limitation. This article from the Hartford Courant provides a pretty good recap of the story to this point. {BB}

ARL Statement of the Global Economic Crisis and Its Effect on Publishing and Library Subscriptions

The Association of Research Libraries has released a statement to scholarly publishers and vendors on the impact the global economic crisis will have on research library budgets and spending. Recommendations include the following:

• ARL calls on publishers to consider carefully decisions to invest in new products, functionality, and marketing efforts. Any new investments need to be strategic and market sensitive. Publishers should base investments on market research that demonstrates demand and takes into account the ongoing economic situation.
• Publishers should go further in reducing the need for outright cancellations by undertaking broad efforts to seek new efficiencies that can result in price reductions in the short as well as long term. As libraries scrutinize their own operations, publishers similarly need to critically examine all of their practices and services to identify ways of reducing expenditures and, with them, prices. One obvious opportunity for reducing operating costs to proportionately lower prices is accelerating shifts to electronic-only publication to reduce overhead of print production and handling.
• ARL reiterates the ICOLC call for price stabilization and advocates real price reductions. Models that stabilize or discount prices for all customers, large and small, are most likely to be attractive in the current economic situation and into the future.
• Libraries serving research organizations are increasingly receptive to models that provide open access to content published by their affiliated authors in addition to traditional subscription access to titles. This kind of model can form a bridge from subscription models to models incorporating author-side payments.
• Responsible publishers and vendors should provide real alternatives to multiyear contracts and a range of options for contract terms, as described in the ICOLC statement.
• Acknowledging the singular budget conditions confronting even the largest libraries, publishers must be open to mid-term renegotiations of contracts.
• The research library community is also concerned that the suddenness and depth of the global economic crisis substantially increases risk for the loss of important scholarly content. Scholarly publishers share with libraries a stewardship responsibility and should accelerate their commitments to third party archiving services as potential for business failure increases.
• Inevitably, libraries will be forced to invoke many contract terms in place for providing ongoing access to previously subscribed content after cancellation. ARL calls on publishers to generously and completely facilitate fulfillment of existing contract terms to provide ongoing access to back issues of cancelled
  subscriptions and to continue to provide these contract terms.
• Finally, ARL encourages publishers to consult widely with research libraries. Small, not-for-profit publishers are of particular concern, and ARL member libraries welcome conversations regarding new publishing models that can reduce the cost and vulnerability of established publications of high value.

[JH]

Westlaw PeopleMap Launched

Recently launched and promoted as "one of the biggest products" being launched in 2009, Westlaw PeopleMap is new background research service based on public records information. See Westblog and the product description. Here's a demo and illustration of PeopleMap's graphical interface. [JH]

Open Access to State Laws

In Towards an Open Source Legal Operating System [SSRN], Katie Fortney analyzes state copyright claims in their laws and access to them. The article urges broader access, analyzes the implications and legal arguments for and against copyright in the law, and considers strategies for access advocacy.

Hat tip to LibraryLaw Blog. [JH]

Top Web 2.0 Security Vulnerabilities Unveiled

The Secure Enterprise 2.0 Forum issued a report revealing the top Web 2.0 security threats for business. The report highlights threats that are specific to Web 2.0 technologies, as well as “older” threats, such as wide-spread content sharing, community participation, and viral distribution of applications, widgets, and content.  “Companies are looking to incorporate popular Web 2.0 tools and services into their business toolbox, whether for marketing, brand awareness, customer service or streamlining business processes. Yet, many organizations are simply unaware of the risks and security challenges inherent in Web 2.0 technologies,” said David Lavenda, Secure Enterprise 2.0 Forum Member and VP Marketing and Product Strategy at WorkLight. “Blocking these technologies is simply not a solution. Today, most companies understand that. Instead, businesses need to look for ways to take advantage of these essentially free tools, while protecting corporate assets, and customer identity and personal information.”  [RJ]