Upcoming Conference: SEAchange 2011

SEAchange 2011, From Exxon Valdez to Deepwater Horizon: Telling Tales of Environmental Disaster, Justice, and Recovery is a conference taking place all day Saturday, April 2, 2011 at the UW Allen Library.

The conference will examine the different narrative responses to these two epic environmental disasters and how they reflect "the powerful ties between storytelling, our environment, and social justice." Speakers include UW Law Professor Bill Rodgers.

SEAchange 2011 is sponsored by several UW departments. This free event is limited to the first 200 people who register.

2010 Report from the Internet Crime Complaint Center

The 2010 Internet Crime Report notes that non-delivery of payments or merchandise, scams impersonating the FBI, and identity theft were the most reported complaints to the IC3 last year.

The 2010 Internet Crime Report demonstrates how pervasive online crime has become, affecting people in all demographic groups. The report provides specific details about various crimes, their victims and the perpetrators. It also shows how IC3 continually adapts its methods to meet the needs of the public and law enforcement.

Complaints from the US lead all nations and Washington State was 7th among states with citizens reporting problems.

The report also summarizes complaints about a counterfeit check scheme targeting US law firms.

In a new twist, the fraudulent client seeking legal representation is an ex-wife “on assignment” in an Asian country, and she claims to be pursuing a collection of divorce settlement monies from her ex-husband in the U.S. The law firm agrees to represent the ex-wife, sends an e-mail to the ex-husband, and receives a “certified” check for the settlement via delivery service. The ex-wife instructs the firm to wire the funds, less the retainer fee, to an overseas bank account. When the scam is executed successfully, the law firm wires the money before discovering the check is counterfeit.

The IC3 was established in 2000 (then called the Internet Fraud Complaint Center. It now receives more than 25,000 complaints a month.

Mobile Technology for Law Students and Legal Professionals

Law students and legal professionals may find many of the smart phone mobile applications available today often increase productivity and efficiency. For example, ever wish you could have a scanner in your pocket? Now you can with apps such as Genius Scan.

With all the choices available, there are resources to learn more.


The Law Library at the UCLA School of Law has compiled a comprehensive guide, Mobile Applications for Law Students and Lawyers, that includes apps for categories such as legal research, news, and study tools.


The iPhone J.D. blog, Lawyers using iPhones, reviews many mobile applications and devices with lawyers in mind.

Student Evaluation of Instruction

At the end of each course, students are asked to evaluate the instruction. Was the course intellectually stimulating and challenging? Was the professor available for questions? Was the workload appropriate to the credit earned for the course? Before you sign up for next quarter's courses, would you be interested in the results of those evaluations?

Student answers are summarized each quarter by course and instructor and are available to you in the library. The Survey of Student Opinion, KF292 .W3 F3s, is kept in the library's Special Collections. This is a closed collection, but you can check out a binder(s) by stopping at the Circulation Desk and asking the person on duty there to retrieve a binder(s) for you. There is a "current" binder for 2010 and 2011. The next most recent book is 2008-2009.

Civil Liberties Day of Remembrance Feb. 19

Tomorrow is Civil Liberties Day of Remembrance (RCW § 1.16.050):

The legislature recognizes that on February 19, 1942, the President of the United States issued Executive Order 9066 which authorized military rule over civilian law and lives; that Executive Order 9066 led to the World War II evacuation and internment of more than one hundred twenty thousand Japanese Americans, most of whom were United States citizens by birth; that Japanese Americans lost their homes and livelihoods and suffered physical and psychological damage; and that, despite widespread hostility and discrimination, Japanese Americans served with distinction in the United States military effort as members of the Military Intelligence Service and in the segregated 100th Infantry Battalion and the 442nd Regimental Combat Team. The legislature further recognizes that in the name of “military necessity,” Japanese Americans were deprived of their fundamental constitutional rights and civil liberties; and that the Japanese American experience during World War II tragically illuminates the fragile nature of our most cherished national beliefs and values.

The legislature declares that an annual day of recognition be observed in remembrance of Japanese Americans interned during World War II as a reminder that, regardless of the provocation, individual rights and freedoms must never be denied.

Laws of 2003, ch. 68 § 1. An image of President Roosevelt's executive order and a historical essay about it are here (part of the collection Our Documents: 100 Milestone Documents from the National Archives). Also from the National Archives set of prepared searches on different aspect of Japanese American Experiences during World War II. In 1941, Japanese American students were the largest minority in the UW -- 440 were listed in the student directory. You've probably heard of Gordon Hirabayashi, the UW student who defied the curfew and then the relocation order imposed on Japanese Americans. (Hirabayashi v. United States, 320 U.S. 81 (1943), and Korematsu v. United States, 323 U.S. 214 (1944), upheld the military curfew and exclusion orders.) For more about Hirabayashi and his classmates (and a little about a Japanese American professor who was also evacuated), see:

• Theresa Mudrock, Interrupted Lives: Japanese American Students at the University of Washington, 1941-1942 (UW Libraries web exhibit)
• Tom Griffin, The Stolen Years: Part One, Columns, Dec. 2005
• Tom Griffin, The Stolen Years: Part Two, Columns, March 2006

Historylink has many entries on the Japanese American relocation, including:

• World War II Japanese American Internment -- Seattle/King County
• Hirabayashi, Gordon B.
• First Day of Remembrance (of World War II incarceration of Japanese Americans) is held at the Puyallup Fairgrounds on November 25, 1978.

Japanese American families from the Puget Sound area were sent to "Camp Harmony" -- the Puyallup Fairgrounds -- for four months before being sent to camps further inland. See the University Libraries Camp Harmony Exhibit. Seattle Civil Rights & Labor History Project includes this web essay: After Internment: Seattle’s Debate Over Japanese Americans' Right to Return Home. The Densho Project is a rich source of first-hand accounts of the Japanese American incarceration during World War II. For law library books on the Japanese American evacuation and relocation, see this WorldCat list. Interested in a documentary film? Check out Of Civil Wrongs and Rights: The Fred Korematsu Story, D769.8A6 O33 2006 at Classified Stacks. You read a little about the film here. Here is a 3 1/2-minute trailer:

Of Civil Wrongs and Rights - trailer from Asian Law Caucus on Vimeo.

Photo: Japanese Americans registering before evacuation, San Francisco, April 25, 1942. Photo by Dorothea Lange. From Dept. of the Interior, War Relocation Authority. National Archives ARC Identifier 536462.

Race and the Criminal Justice System

People of color are over-represented at every stage of the criminal justice system, from arrest through sentencing and incarceration.

Paula Ditton Henzel, Disproportionality and Disparity in Adult Felony Sentencing 2003 (Wash. State Sentencing Guidelines Comm'n, [2003]).

What are the causes, effects, and possible cures for this serious disproportionality?

A state-wide Task Force on Race and the Criminal Justice System has been meeting for the last few months and will meet with the Washington Supreme Court March 2.

The Law Library has prepared a guide, linking to Washington State studies and other materials. See Race in the Criminal Justice System.

Next Thursday, the UW Minority Law Students Association presents a panel, Racial Disparity & The Criminal Justice System, 3:30-5:

Welcome by Dean Kellye Testy
Panelists:
• The Honorable Veronica Alicea-Galvan, Des Moines, Washington Municipal Court
• Professor Katherine Beckett, UW Department of Sociology and UW Law, Societies & Justice Program
• Officer Jeff Geoghagan, Seattle PD SWAT
• Professor Alexes Harris, UW Department of Sociology
• Anita Khandelwal, The Defender Association
• Mark Larson, Chief Criminal Deputy of the King County Prosecuting Attorney's Office

Moderated by Professor Mary D. Fan

Seattle University School of Law is also having speakers on this and related topics as part of its Diversity Week 2011. Thursday afternoon has a CLE, Advocacy Strategies for Protecting Civil Rights (3:30-5:30), followed by a reception (5:30-7:30):

The reception following the CLE will provide a forum to discuss how lawyers, law students and community members can address racial bias in the criminal justice system. The discussion will be facilitated by the Co-Chairs of the Task Force on Race and the Criminal Justice System, Professor Robert Chang, director of the Fred T. Korematsu Center for Law and Equality, and Judge Steven González, chair of the WA Access to Justice Board.

If you're inspired by the UW panel, you can hop up Capitol Hill for the reception at SU.

New Faculty Publication: Peter Nicolas on the Right to Confront Hidden Declarants

Peter Nicolas, But What If the Court Reporter Is Lying? The Right to Confront Hidden Declarants Found in Transcripts of Former Testimony, 2010 BYU L. Rev. 1149-93 (2010), available at http://ssrn.com/abstract=1552289.

Professor Nicolas's latest article explores the admissibility of former testimony as an exception to the hearsay rule, examined through the lens of U.S. Supreme Court decisions Crawford v. Washington and Melendez-Diaz v. Massachusetts.

He addresses the hidden declarant issue and its testimonial nature. He reviews the historical foundation of this topic in England and the U.S. and proposes practical solutions consistent with the Confrontation Clause.

Not only do transcripts of former testimony present an interesting layered hearsay problem that has all the makings of a classic law school hypothetical, but, after Crawford and Melendez-Diaz, it is clear that they present a serious Confrontation Clause problem as well.

Weird Westlaw Problems . . . and Solutions!

Sometimes things don't work like they should, or like you would like them to work.

Sometimes these things include features on Westlaw and Internet Explorer.

PROBLEM: PDF images fail to open.

SOLUTION: Add *.westlaw.com to your trusted sites list.
From the browser's command line at the top of your screen), click on Tools > Popup Blocker > Popup Blocker Settings


In the box under Address of website to allow type: *.westlaw.com. Then click Add then Close.

Another work-around for the failure of PDFs to open uses keystrokes. Before you click on a PDF link, hold down both the Ctrl and Alt keys from the time you click on the link all the way until you click on Save.

PROBLEM: When using Copy /w Ref, multiple popup messages ask if you want to allow the function.
SOLUTION: Again for IE, here are the steps to take to eliminate the problem:

1. Click on Tools
2. Internet Options
3. Click on the Security Tab
4. Select Trusted Sites (assuming you've added westlaw.com as a trusted site already)
5. Click on Custom Level
6. Scroll down to the Scripting section (a little more than 3/4 of the way down the list)
7. Under Allow Programmatic clipboard access, select enable and click on OK
8. Click OK
9. Click OK

Do this and you will never see those pesky popups again!

I just learned of a little collection of these technical workarounds at the lawschool.westlaw.com site. At the very bottom of the page, click on Help.

This link takes you to a searchable knowledgebase of technical (and research) questions and answers, for different browsers and operating systems.

Thanks to Westlaw rep Zach Gose for these and other Westlaw tips!

New Faculty Publication: Ron Collins on Free Expression in America

Ronald K.L. Collins & Sam Chaltain, We Must Not Be Afraid to Be Free: Stories of Free Expression in America (Oxford University Press 2011).

Prof. Collins, the School of Law's Harold S. Shefelman Scholar, has co-authored this collection of 10 First Amendment stories, "filtered through the lenses of freedom and fear."

The stories involve cases of anarchists, Communists, cross- and flag-burning, defamation, and national security. Anastaplo, Ellsberg, Meiklejohn, and Mary Beth Tinker. Instead of standard academic text, readers will enjoy compelling narratives about the people in these cases, their causes and personalities, and the Supreme Court Justices who decided their cases.

By telling the history of some of the people who have helped shape our law of freedom of expression -- the litigants, lawyers, lawmakers, and judges -- we hop to retell more than a few remarkable chapters in our nation's struggle for freedom of speech, press, petition, and assembly. At times, the struggles were honorable; at other times, they were shameful. But the common thread in our stories is the people who wove their way into the quilt of our nation's constitutional history.

This book is located in the Classified Stacks at KF4772.C65 2011.

New Faculty Publication: Lou Wolcher on the Meaning of Justice

Louis E. Wolcher, The Meaning of Justice in the World Today, 66 Nat'l Law. Guild Rev. 228-45 (2009).

Based on a lecture he presented in Oct. 2010 at Orcas Island, Prof. Wolcher's article discusses two types of justice -- corrective and distributive -- and the relationship between justice and the law.

Citations to Heidegger, Victor Hugo, Machiavelli, Martin Luther King, Jr., St. Augustine, and T.S. Eliot mingle with stories of justice and injustice:

• the stoning to death of an Afghani couple who eloped, contrary to their families' wishes
• Northern abolitionist judges enforcing the return of fugitive slaves to their masters
• the death of civilian Albanian refugees by bombs dropped by NATO warplanes
• two men who, in different times and places, committed robbery with the intention of being arrested so that they would have food and shelter

The article concludes:

Philosphy and politics know too little about justice, but they nonetheless insist on telling you about it. The real world, on the other hand, knows too much about injustice, and yet it remains sadly tongue-tied and mute. Let injustice be resisted, and the let there always be hope that justice is possible. But may we never believe that justice has finally arrived.

This journal is found in the Compact Stacks, where journals are organized in alphabetical order by title.

New Faculty Publication: Robert Gomulkiewicz's Casebook on Licensing Intellectual Property

Robert W. Gomulkiewicz, Xuan-Thao Nguyen & Danielle M. Conway, Licensing Intellectual Property: Law and Application (2d ed. Aspen Publishers 2011) (Aspen Casebook Series). 700 pages.

The second edition of Prof. Gomulkiewicz's casebook has just been published by Aspen.

Unlike standard casebooks, this one contains an overview "that gives the reader an overall picture of licensing in a particular context." It also provides a collection of Materials that enable the reader "to learn more about license transactions and the laws that make up the body of law that we call licensing law." Included are the text of the Creative Commons license, provisions of the U.S. copyright law, and several cases.

The book is organized into the following chapters:

1. Licensing Transactions and Law (the overview and materials)
2. Common License Provisions
3. Drafting Licenses
4. Trademark Licensing
5. Licensing the Right of Publicity
6. Patent Licensing
7. Trade Secret Licensing
8. Copyright Licensing
9. Software Licensing
10. Information and Database Licensing
11. Multimedia Licensing
12. University Intellectual Property Transfers
13. Intellectual Property and Government Contracts
14. Licensing in the Business Life Cycle: From Financing to Bankruptcy
15. Intellectual Property Licenses and Taxation

Each chapter contains selected cases and other material, problems, and drafting exercises.

For those interested in the practice side of this issue, Prof. Gomulkiewicz and his co-authors have written another book: Intellectual Property, Software, and Information Licensing: Law and Practice (BNA 2006 & 2010 supp.). KF3145.N458 2006 on Course Reserve

End of the Associate?

This week marks a new milestone in computing: Jeopardy! is airing a competition between Watson, an IBM computer, and two of the show’s greatest champions. Learn more about the competition here. After one of three episodes, Watson is tied for the lead despite a couple of odd answers.
Robert C. Weber, general counsel for IBM, suggests that the practice of law may benefit from Watson’s computing power:

Imagine a new kind of legal research system that can gather much of the information you need to do your job — a digital associate, if you will. With the technology underlying Watson, called Deep QA, you could have a vast, self-contained database loaded with all of the internal and external information related to your daily tasks, whether you're preparing for litigation, protecting intellectual property, writing contracts or negotiating an acquisition. Pose a question and, in milliseconds, Deep QA can analyze hundreds of millions of pages of content and mine them for facts and conclusions — in about the time it takes to answer a question on a quiz show.”

Weber doesn’t believe Watson’s technology will replace attorneys, but perhaps the practice of law should brace for a reboot!

Creating Links to Catalog Records

How can you give a friend (or note for yourself) a book's catalog record? Maybe you've noticed that if you just copy and paste the URL that's in your browser you get some gibberish. (Maybe you haven't noticed, but trust me -- these URLs can be messy.)

Here's how you can provide better links.


In the Law Library Only Catalog:

(1) Find the record you want:

(2) Click on the Permanent Link link on the right:

(3) Copy and paste the URL from your browser:



Like this: Banished: The New Social Control in Urban America, http://marian.law.washington.edu/record=b1227880~S0

In WorldCat:

(1) Find the record you want:

(2) Click on the Permalink link in the upper right corner.

(3) Copy and paste the link that's displayed

Like this: The Politics of Injustice, http://uwlaw.worldcat.org/oclc/52423857

-- OR --

(2) Click the email link:

(3) Fill out the form (your name, recipient's name, email address, message).

-- OR --

(2) Click on the Share link in the upper right corner

(3) Choose your favorite social media tool (Facebook, Twitter, etc.).

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Why bother giving the link to the catalog?

It will always give you current information. For instance, Banished is checked out today, but when you or your friend clicks on the catalog link later on -- say, when you're ready to do some unassigned reading over the summer -- you'll see the status.

It will give you complete information. When you're jotting down notes, you might not want to write down the publisher, the year of publication, the authors' full names and so on. Link to the catalog record, and you'll have all that handy whenever you need it.

Why choose WorldCat over the Law Library Only catalog?

It includes other libraries -- a gazillion of them (roughly). If your friend is in New York or Berkeley, he or she can click the record and easily find a local library.

It includes other materials -- for instance journal articles -- so you can link to those citations.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

There are a lot more tricks you can do with catalog records -- e.g., exporting them to a bibliographic management system or creating WorldCat lists. We'll write about those tricks another time.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Does the holiday have you thinking seriously about taking the next step with your significant other? You may want to know more about the legal implications first. Check out some related resources in the Law Library's collection, such as Living Together: A Legal Guide for Unmarried Couples, or A Legal Guide for Gay and Lesbian Couples.

New Title for US Code: Space Law

The Unites States Code has added a new title: Title 51, "National and Commercial Space Programs".

The original 50-title scheme was established in 1926 and, until the introduction of this new title, much of the code regarding NASA was located in Title 15 (Commerce and Trade), Title 42 (Public Health and Welfare), and Title 49 (Transportation).

For more information about this and other new titles in the works, click here.

Google Custom Searches Make Your Research More Efficient

You can make your research more efficient by limiting your searches to sites that a helpful editor has selected for you. Here are several sites with Google Custom Searches.

Cornell Law Library's Legal Research Engine lets you perform a search within any or all of these categories:

• legal research guides (does anyone have a good guide for researching, say, war crimes?)
• the legal Internet -- that is, just sites selected by Cornell's law librarians (compare searches with the same searches in "full" Google)
• academic legal blogs

Intergovernmental Organization Search Engine (from the American Library Association's Government Documents Roundtable) offers a custom Google search of IGOs (what IGOs have pages on the Egyptian constitution?)

Non-governmental Organizations Search (also from the American Library Association's Government Documents Roundtable) searches the websites of NGOs that have consultative status with the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) or are listed by University of Minnesota Human Rights Library, Duke University Libraries' NGO Research Guide, and the World Association of Non-Governmental Organizations (WANGO).

CALI offers a custom search for all law schools (e.g., search for intellectual property ll.m.)

The Gallagher Law Library website has a Google custom search that searches everything on the site plus all the posts in Gallagher Blogs. With one search, you can find legal research guides, PowerPoint presentations, and blog posts. (Try, say, "administrative law" or "john roberts.")

The Law School's website has a custom search box too:

Try out these custom searches -- they can really help!

Cocktail-Party Advice

What do you do when your uncle or an old buddy asks you about a legal problem that's come up? Professor Karen Boxx, quoted in an article in De Novo and the Bar News, advises caution. Even what you think of as a casual conversation can create an attorney-client relationship.

Trent M. Latta, Counsel Over Cocktails? What to Do When Friends and Family Ask for Legal Advice, Wash. St. B. News, Feb. 2011, De Novo, Feb. 2011.

More on the Goddess of Justice

After our recent post about images of justice, someone asked whether anyone had challenged courthouses exhibiting statutes of Themis, the goddess of justice, on establishment grounds. He speculated that a challenge would probably fail because Themis is part of our civic religion.

Well, I haven't found a case objecting to a statue of justice (and I agree that it would probably fail), but when I was looking I came across this explanation of a standard of review. It's colorful, but how much does it really help you figure out the standard?

Our standard of review for a challenge to the weight of the evidence is as follows. "A new trial should be granted only where the verdict is so contrary to the evidence as to shock one's sense of justice." When "the figure of Justice totters on her pedestal," or when "the jury's verdict, at the time of its rendition, causes the trial judge to lose his breath, temporarily, and causes him to almost fall from the bench, then it is truly shocking to the judicial conscience."

Commonwealth v. Davidson, 860 A.2d 575, 581 (Pa. Super. 2004)(citations omitted).


Graphic: mw, using Microsoft Paint. My attempt to draw at a judge losing his breath and almost falling from the bench failed. You'll have to imagine it.

What Judges Think of the Quality of Legal Representation

How well do lawyers represent their clients? It's a hard question to answer. One approach would be to ask the judges who observe the lawyers at work, and that's just what Judge Richard A. Posner and Professor Albert H. Yoon have done: What Judges Think of the Quality of Legal Representation, 63 Stan. L. Rev. 317 (2010).

Here's the short version of their findings, from the abstract:

We find that judges perceive significant disparities in the quality of legal representation, both within and across areas of the law. In many instances, the underlying causes of these disparities can be traced to the resources of the litigants. The judges’ responses also suggest that they respond differently than juries to these disparities, and that the effect of these disparities on juries may be more pronounced in civil than in criminal cases.

The civil areas where federal trial judges saw the greatest disparity were civil rights and personal injury/malpractice; the civil areas where state trial judges saw the greatest disparity were family law and personal injury/malpractice. In civil rights and tort cases where there was a disparity between the sides' lawyers, it was generally the defense counsel who was better.

Judges said that intellectual property and commercial litigation cases seldom had a great disparity between the sides' lawyers. These lawyers were rated between "good" and "excellent" -- i.e., at the top of the scale.

About law schools, judges were in general agreement. The most common response in each judge group was that law schools should provide more coursework oriented to instilling practice-oriented skills. The second most popular response was expansion of core curriculum—-that is, courses required of all students—-to ensure a stronger foundation for practice. More than two-thirds of the judges in each group proposed changes in law school curricula, while no more than 10% in any group recommended higher admissions standards. Recommendations to make tuition more affordable drew slightly higher but still modest support (ranging between 5% and 14%).

p. 338 (footnote omitted)

The whole article is worth a look: there are lots of interesting nuggets, and the footnotes cite other intriguing studies about lawyers' effectiveness. (A little more detail is in this post in Trial Ad (and other) Notes.)

Two Memoirs About Representing Capital Defendants

Andrea Lyon and David Dow have a lot in common: they both are lawyers, they both represent indigent defendants in criminal cases, they both teach in law school clinics, and they both have written absorbing memoirs about their work. (To protect client confidentiality, both changed names and details of cases but say they are representing real events honestly.)

There are some differences, too. For instance, Dow (in Texas) never had a governor impose a moratorium on the death penalty, but Lyon did (in Illinois). And I assume Dow's ability to handle homicides was never questioned because of his gender.

Angel of Death Row is Lyon's memoir, taking the reader from her legal education at a school that emphasized clinical experiences to the Cook County public defender's office, where she eventually rose to the position of chief of the Homicide Task Force. After she left public defense, she founded the Illinois Capital Resource Center and later moved to teaching.

Lyon reports the investigations and trials of many cases. "Winning" a case does not always mean the defendant is acquitted -- it can mean that a defendant who is charged with first degree murder is convicted of manslaughter. And when a defendant is convicted of a capital offense, it is a defense victory if the penalty phase of the trial results in a sentence of life imprisonment. Remarkably, in 19 of the 19 capital cases Lyon has tried through the penalty phase, not one of the defendants was sentenced to death.

In Autobiography of an Execution, Dow weaves together several capital cases at once. Unlike Lyon, who was generally the trial attorney, Dow and his associates focused on post-conviction relief, and trial counsel had often put up lackluster defenses at best. For instance, two of his clients were represented by a lawyer who fell asleep during trial. Many of the clients' appellate lawyers failed to raise good potential claims. By the time the cases got to Dow, there were limits to what he could do. And so the book describes flurries of research, motions, petitions -- and several executions.

Both writers convey the toll the work can take on lawyers. The main reason Lyon left the defender's office was that she wanted to spend time with her daughter and not work on cases around the clock. Dow often numbed himself with alcohol, but also found comfort in his family life -- wife, son, and dog.

Angel of Death Row is in Good Reads at KF373.L963 A3 2010. AndreaLyon.com (includes information about the book and much more). WorldCat record.

The Autobiography of an Execution is in the Classified Stacks at KF373.D635 A3 2010. Publisher's page. WorldCat record.

TVW: Washington State Public Affairs Network

Are you tracking any pending state legislation? Are you interested in knowing just what goes on during the Washington Legislative Session but cannot visit Olympia in person?

TVW, the Washington State Public Affairs Network, may be an excellent resource for you since 40% of TVW's programming is legislative coverage.

Just this week I needed to monitor the testimony on House Bill 1479, a bill that affects the printing and distribution of such important Washington documents as the Washington Administrative Code (WAC). The Legislature's website showed me that the House Judiciary Committee had HB 1479 on its Feb. 2 agenda. And while I could not attend the hearing in person, I was able to watch a live webcast (already available in the TVW archives).

The Code Reviser was the only person who testified in support of the bill, and he said some interesting things about our state's online resources. Specifically, he said the online Revised Code of Washington (the RCW) receives 6 MILLION hits per month. Per month? Really? I wondered if I misheard this testimony, so I just listened to that portion of the hearing again. Sure enough, he did say that the online RCW receives 6 million hits per month. This is information I would not know if I hadn't listened to that testimony.

Of course, TVW also broadcasts televised coverage in addition to its webcasts. Just last night, Inside Olympia featured Washington State Supreme Court Chief Justice Barbara Madsen and "the state of the state judiciary." That program is available here.

And those of you with an iPhone? You can watch live and archived coverage via the TVW iPhone App. Instructions are given on the TVW homepage.

New York Law School :: Student Video Contest

New York Law School held a video competition, asking students to create 3-minute videos on how they're living the law school's motto, "Learn law. Take action." The three winners are posted here, and they're pretty cool. Of course, they're all focused on New York Law School, but they capture experiences common to many law schools, combining classroom experiences with externships, clinics, and volunteer activities. What would you put in a video about your law school experience?

Want to learn more about the 112th Congress?

The 112th Congress convened on January 5, 2011. Are you wondering about the length of the Congressional session, the status of bills from the previous Congress, or how often THOMAS is updated?


The Law Librarians of Congress' blog, In Custodia Legis, discusses these frequently asked questions in Tip of the Congressional Iceberg. You also can follow the current activity of the 112th Congress on THOMAS, learn of upcoming activity on Congressional Schedules, Calendars, and browse frequently used terms on the Congressional Glossary.


Ready to test your knowledge of the 112th Congress? Consider taking the New York Times' 112th Congress Pop Quiz.