Genetics and the Law

Huntington's Disease Awareness Month is a good opportunity to discuss law and genetics.

Inheritance patterns for autosomal dominant condition.
National Library of Medicine, Home Genetics Reference.

Huntington's Disease (HD), which strikes the brain, has long been known to be passed from parent to child. A child who has one parent with HD has a 50% chance of having the gene, and hence of developing the disease. (Just as with flipping a coin, the results do not always come out 50-50. A parent with HD who has four children could pass it on to all of them, none of them, or anything in between. Each child has a 50% chance of having the gene.)

Although the symptoms usually appear in people between 30 and 50, sometimes they come much earlier, even in toddlers.

According to the Huntington's Disease Society of America:

HD slowly diminishes the affected individual's ability to walk, talk and reason. Eventually, the person with HD becomes totally dependent upon others for his or her care. Huntington's Disease profoundly affects the lives of entire families—emotionally, socially and economically.

A test for the Huntington's gene was developed in 1993.

Here are just a few of the legal issues that could arise:

• If someone is tested, will the results be kept private?
• If a parent tests positive, should the children be informed? Does it make a difference if the children are adults?
• Who should counsel patients who are tested?
• Should an employer be able to refuse to hire someone with HD, even if the symptoms may not manifest for decades?
• Should an insurance company base its decisions on a customer's HD status?
• Could a person with HD-related dementia be incompetent to be executed? (See Roach v. Aiken, 474 U.S. 1039 (1986) (Marshall, J., dissenting from denial of certiorari).

The law has been responding to developments in genetics. For instance:

• In Washington, "health care information" that is protected from disclosure is defined to include genetic information. RCW 70.02.010(7) (the language about genetic information was   added in 2002).
• In 2008, the National Conference of State Legislatures noted "Washington is the only state that explicitly treats genetic information the same as other health information by including genetic information in the definition of health care information under the state health privacy law." 
• Researchers take note: you could search for "gene" or "genetic" and never find that definition, because the drafters used "patient's deoxyribonucleic acid and identified sequence of chemical base pairs" instead of "genetic information." 
• Genetic counselors are licensed by the state. See RCW 18.290; WAC 246-825. National credentialing bodies are the American Board of Genetic Counselors and the American Board of Medical Genetics.
• In Washington, employers may not require applicants or employees to submit to genetic screening. RCW 49.44.180  (added in 2004).
• Federal law barred discrimination by employers and insurers. Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act of 2008 (GINA) Pub. L. 110-233, 122 Stat. 881. 
• An article about this statute opens with a hypothetical about a family at risk for—you guessed it—Huntington's Disease. William J. McDevitt, I Dream of GINA: Understanding the Employment Provisions of the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act of 2008, 54 Villanova L. Rev. 91 (2009), HeinOnline.
• Bills in Congress are aimed at improving access to Medicare and Medicaid for people with HD. Huntington's Disease Parity Act of 2011, H.R. 718, S. 648. (There hasn't been movement on the bills since February 2011.)

If you would like to learn and think more about law and genetics, you could take LAW H520, Genetics and the Law or LAW H504, Legal, Ethical & Social Issues In Public Health Genetics. These two classes are taught (depending on the year) by Prof. Pat Kuszler and Prof. Anna Mastroianni, who are also part of the faculty in the UW's Institute for Public Health Genetics.

Kuszler and Mastroianni (UW Law), DNA diagram (National Library of Medicine, Genetics Home Reference)

For more links and tips on research, see our Genetics & the Law guide. 

Writing for and Publishing in Law Reviews

Do you want to write an article for a law journal? Or do you have a seminar paper that you'd like to get published?

Take a look at our series, Writing for & Publishing in Law Reviews:

• General Information
• Finding and Developing Topics
• Preemption Checking
• Submitting Manuscripts (includes tips on abstracts)
• Where to Publish (includes information on law review rankings)

These guides link to others that can be helpful to authors:

• Bluebook 101
• Cite-Checking & Library Research (for editors and staff)
• Legal & General Writing Resources series
• General
• Legal
• Legal Citations
• Legal Dictionaries
• Research and Writing Strategy for a Seminar Paper (PPT)
• Word Tips to Make Your Life Easier

Deposition Etiquette 101: Donuts, Angry Birds and Genitals

Two attorneys from personal injury law firm Morgan & Morgan behaved so poorly during depositions that a judge disqualified both attorneys as well as the entire firm from representing plaintiffs in a class action suit.

According to Judge Cecilia Altonaga's Order, the attorneys, Richard Celler and Stacey Schulman chose Dunkin' Donuts for the site of depositions. Celler would attend in t-shirts and shorts and would show Schulman pictures of male genitalia that he had drawn during the deposition. Celler and Schulman laughed at the drawings and said they described opposing counsel, Jason Coupal. During the deposition, Celler played Angry Birds and bragged about beating someone in Minnesota at the game. Coupal complained to the court and the judge issued a disqualification ruling. More details of the attorneys' egregious but hilarious misconduct can be found here and here.

 If you thought that playing Angry Birds or drawing pictures of male genitalia were appropriate ways to gain a "psychological advantage" over your opposition, you many want to check out some of the library's resources on depositions:
The Effective Deposition: Techniques and Strategies that Work by David M. Malone, Peter T. Hoffman and Anthony J. Bocchino. KF8900 .M34 2007 at the Reference Area.
Depositions in a Nutshell by Albert J. Moore. KF8900 .D485 2011 at the Reference Area.

If you are just interested in holding your depositions in a donut shop, you'll be interested to know that National Donut Day is rapidly approaching. You may be able to celebrate by visiting the new Top Pot Doughnuts opening in Ballard which is expected to coincide with the holiday on June 1st!

Vote for Best Legal Fiction of the Year

Voting for the finalists in the second  Harper Lee Prize for Legal Fiction is now open at the ABA Journal website.

The finalists are:

• Michael Connelly, The Fifth Witness
• Robert Dugoni, Murder One
• David Ellis, Breach of Trust 

Sponsored by the ABA Journal and the University of Alabama Law School, the Prize "is given annually to a book-length work of fiction published in the preceding year that best exemplifies the role of lawyers in society. In September 2011, John Grisham received the inaugural Harper Lee Prize for Legal Fiction for The Confession."

Breach of Trust and The Fifth Witness are available at the Odegaard Library in the Good Reads collection. All three titles are available at various Seattle Public Library branches.

Library Hours for Memorial Day

The Library will be open from 8am - 5pm on Memorial Day, Monday, May 28th. The Reference Office will be open from 1 - 4pm.

The Library will be open on its regular schedule over the rest of the Memorial Day weekend.

“I didn’t do it, but I know who did.”

A mug shot comparison of Carlos Hernandez and Carlos DeLuna.

Last week you may have read a news story, editorial, or blog post about Carlos DeLuna, a man who was executed in Texas in 1989, despite strong evidence that he was innocent. Professor James Liebman and a team of students from Columbia Law School published a wonderful interactive website and full, book-length issue of the Columbia Human Rights Law Review, exploring the case of the execution of Carlos DeLuna for the murder most likely committed by a man named Carlos Hernandez.

The book and website are wonderful examples of incredibly thorough investigation and research. The website allows for readers to explore crime-scene photos, law enforcement and court records, newspaper and TV coverage, police audiotape of the manhunt ending in DeLuna’s arrest, videotaped interviews, and an interactive map.

The website includes copies of the opinions involved in the case, under Primary Sources, but you can also access them on Westlaw, Lexis, or through free sites using Google:

DeLuna v. State, 711 S.W.2d 44 (Tex. Crim. App. 1986)
DeLuna v. Lynaugh, 890 F.2d 720 (5th Cir. 1989)
DeLuna v. Lynaugh, 873 F.2d 757 (5th Cir. 1989)
DeLuna v. Lynaugh, 493 U.S. 900, 110 S. Ct. 259 (1989) (cert denied).

If you are looking for a reminder, during this rough time of finals, of why you may have decided to go into law in the first place, check Los Tocayos Carlos out!

How Do Seattle Women Fare?

Pretty well, according to a new report: Women's Well-Being: Ranking America's Top 25 Metro Areas.

Seattle women rank:

• 6th in overall human development
• 6th in educational attainment
• 10th in life expectancy

"The study uses the American Human Development Index, a summary measure the combines official government data in three essential areas: a long and healthy life, access to knowledge, and a decent standard of living. The Index is a tool for measuring progress in well-being and access to opportunity over time, telling us where America is succeeding in creating opportunity as well as where we need to focus resources to create it." [1]

Google Guide – a Research Cheat Sheet

Have you ever experienced the feeling of frustration when your Google search turns up far too many irrelevant results? Fortunately, a great cheat sheet exists that will help you narrow your results and increase the precision of your Google queries.

“Google Guide” features an easily navigable, two-page summary of the many ways you can restrict your search terms.  Also available in a printable PDF form, the cheat sheet was created by non-Google employees Nancy Blachman and Jerry Peek, who keep it updated regularly (last update: February 27, 2012).

For example, look at the helpful list of restrictions available for query words below:

In one instance, by using the “allintext:” restriction, I was able to limit my original search results from 2,620 to 75 (example search terms: allintext: “lawson v. fidelity” whistleblower sarbanes-oxley “section 806”)!

The “Google Guide” cheat sheet also provides quick and easy tips for specialized information queries, alternative query types and other forms of search restriction. Start using it today and open a whole new world of possibility for Google searches!

Names, Popular and Not So Popular

The Social Security Administration has released its list of the most popular baby names in the last year, with Sophia and Jacob at the top. Reality TV, religion give birth to top baby names, Seattle Times, May 14, 2012.

Why stop with the most recent year? The curious can visit the Social Security Administration's Popular Baby Names site and find out how a name has ranked going back to 1922. (The first Social Security card was issued in November 1936.)

My own name, Mary, was #1 the year I was born. It was in the top 5 from 1922 through 1967, but has now toppled to #112.

A commercial site, the Baby Name Wizard, presents name data with beautiful graphs and maps. In NameVoyager you can see Mary's sharp decline over time. Using the map feature, you can see that Cesar is popular in California and the Southwest, while Charles is most popular in the Southeast (and has declined in popularity since the 1960s).

Most of the Supreme Court Justices have names in the mainstream. Chief Justice John Roberts was born in 1955, when John was the 5th most common boy's name. Samuel was #62 in 1950, when Samuel Alito was born. Stephen Breyer (1938) got the 74th most popular boy's name his year. (Steven was #184.)

Antonin Scalia is the outlier, with his first name never appearing in the top 1,000. But Anthony, which is close, was #48 the year he and his colleague Anthony Kennedy were born (1936). (By the way, the "A" in Samuel A. Alito is for Anthony.)

Clarence was #87 in 1948, when Justice Clarence Thomas was born. NameMapper doesn't go back that far, but in 1960, Clarence was popular in the Southeast, in the states surrounding Justice Thomas's home state of Georgia.

Map: popularity of Clarence in 1960

Now for the women on the Court. There were a lot of Ruths early in the twentieth century and it was still popular in 1933, when Ruth Bader Ginsburg was born. Sonia Sotomayor (born in 1954) was named while Sonia was on the way up, although its popularity has since declined. And Elena Kagan, in 1960, was early in climb of Elena, which is still on the way up.   

Popularity of Ruth, Sonia, and Elena (babies per million)

In addition to idle amusement, this exercise can offer a lesson in working with statistics and graphs.

Unless you look carefully, you might not notice that the graphs don't have the same scale. (I added the numbers in the large font.) Ruth hit its peak at over 10,000 per million babies. (That was in the 1910s, when it was #5 for girls.) Sonia's peak was about 452 per million. And, although Elena is definitely on the rise, it's still just 488 per million. If you added all the Sonias in their peak year to all the Elenas in their peak year, you would still have to multiply by ten to get close to the peak rate of naming baby girls Ruth.


So looking at ranking (what names are the most popular) is not the same as looking at prevalence (how many babies per million will have that name). Keep that in mind when you read statements about "the most dangerous city" or the "most effective drug."



For more on working intelligently with statistics, see Joel Best, Stat-Spotting: A Field Guide to Identifying Dubious Data, HM535 .B477 2008 at Good Reads. Catalog record. Publisher's page (includes sample chapter).


Graphics from searches on babynamewizard.com.

No Time to Read? Try Audiobooks

If you have found your recreational reading has dropped off a cliff since you started law school, why not try listening to an audiobook on your mp3 player? Many audiobooks can be downloaded for free from the Seattle Public Library (SPL). All you need to do is get a library card from SPL and download the free software, accessible via the SPL home page.

On the SPL home page, click on the link for E-books & Downloads. Then click on the link for OverDrive digital media on the right side of the screen. From there you can search for a great summer read...I mean, listen.

Not sure what to listen to first? Try looking for one of the books from Gallagher Law Library's Good Reads collection. Good Reads are interesting, compelling books, and include engaging legal fiction.

For example, OverDrive has John Grisham's The Appeal, The Chamber, and The Client---all books found in the Gallagher Good Reads collection.

Or if you're more interested in the classics, you can download and listen to Charles Dickens' Bleak House.

OverDrive also has mystery and police procedural series from dozens of writers. Try searching for Agatha Christie (with detectives Hercule Poirot and Jane Marple), Michael Connelly (with police officer Harry Bosch and defense attorney Mickey Haller), Donna Leon (with Commissario Guido Brunetti) and Elizabeth George (with Inspector Thomas Lynley).

With all of these free and engaging books at your fingertips, why not give one a try the next time you're bemoaning the literary life you once had?

Photo credits: Amazon.com

1,000 Documentaries Online!

The University Libraries now subscribes to Filmakers Library Online, a collection of just over 1,000 documentaries on race and gender studies, human rights, international relations, criminal justice, the environment, bioethics, health, and more. You can stream these films on your computers or mobile devices (I have one running on my iPad right now, in fact).

 

The collection is UW restricted. If you aren't using a campus computer, you need to use the "off-campus access" link on a library website before you get to the films.

 

Filmakers Library Online has browse lists (by title, director, topic, place). Note: don’t assume that all law-related films are listed under “Law.” For instance, I found many under “Race and culture.”

US-Mexico border, image from The Minutemen

You can also search for words—and the search includes words in the transcript. Searches for “court,” “constitution,” “law,” etc. get lots of hits.

Here are just a few of the law-related films:

• Adam Abdul Hakeem: One Who Survived (1993) (first person to be found innocent by reason of self-defense in a police shooting case)
• Original Intent: The Battle for America (2008)
• The Minutemen: Vigilantes at The Border (2011)
• Race to Execution (2007)
• Rip Off! Banks Exploiting Consumers (2009)
• River People: Behind the Case of David Sohappy (1991) (Indian fishing rights on Columbia River) 

Managing Stress

May is Mental Health Month, a perfect time to revisit some tips on how to effectively manage stress.

Earlier this year, the American Psychological Association (APA) released its latest report* on Stress In America. The report discusses stress by region, and includes survey results on Stress in Seattle. 


Among the Seattle residents queried: 

• The top three reasons for stress are work (73%), money (70%), and the economy (66%)
• 58% manage stress by listening to music
• 64% exercise a few times a week, up from 53% in 2010

Five Tips to Help Manage Stress (from the APA) and the Coping with Stress Checklist (from Mental Health America) both offer helpful recommendations. 

A great way to manage stress is to read for pleasure! Gallagher Law Library's Good Reads collection and the Gallagher guide, Suggested Reading List for Prospective & Current Law Students are always good places to start.

Exercise (and reading about it) is a stress buster! On my list: McDougall's Born to Run

When you are feeling overwhelmed by life's demands and stressful events, there is help available:

• Counseling Resources for Students
• Counseling Resources for Faculty & Staff at UW CareLink
• Counseling Resources for Washington Lawyers through WSBA’s Lawyers Assistance Program

*Read the full report here. American Psychological Association, Stress in America: Our Health at Risk (Jan. 11, 2012), http://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/stress/2011/final-2011.pdf (last visited May 10, 2012).

US vs. EU; Boeing vs. Airbus

Perhaps you've seen headlines about the World Trade Organization and Boeing but not sifted through the details. Now an expert on the WTO summarizes the issues: Simon Lester, The Airbus—Boeing Subsidy Dispute: With Both Parties in Violation, Is There an End in Sight?, ASIL Insights, May 9, 2012. Note the links in the sidebar to the WTO decisions.

My extra-brief summary: The U.S. says the E.U. isn't playing fair because it subsidizes Airbus; the E.U. replies that the U.S. isn't playing fair because it subsidizes Boeing.

This case illustrates one way international law can affect even local practitioners: some of the subsidies under dispute are tax breaks from Washington State and the City of Everett.

Graphic by mw.

New CRS Report on Same-Sex Marriage

Just released:
Same-Sex Marriages: Legal Issues, by Alison M. Smith, Congressional Research Service RL31994, (May 9, 2012)

This report discusses DOMA and legal challenges to it. It reviews legal principles applied to determine the validity of a marriage contracted in another state and surveys the various approaches employed by states to enable or to prevent same-sex marriage. The report also examines House and Senate resolutions introduced in previous Congresses proposing a constitutional amendment and limiting federal courts’ jurisdiction to hear or determine any question pertaining to the interpretation of DOMA.

PDF available here.

Sex, Race, Violence, and Courtroom Drama

In Honor Killing, historian David E. Stannard tells the story of two trials and the national uproar around them. The setting is Honolulu in the 1920s and early 1930s, a place with many divergent groups: Hawaiian, Chinese, Portuguese, and Japanese plantation and cannery laborers, wealthy white business owners, the U.S. Navy, and tourists from the U.S. mainland.

Thalia Massie, a young white woman from "society" who is married to a Navy officer, is found alone on a road in the night with her face beaten. She says that she was taken into a car by five Hawaiian men and raped in the woods.

The police quickly apprehend five men (Hawaiian, Chinese American, and Japanese American) who who are prosecuted for the crime, despite scanty evidence against them. With lively descriptions of the courtroom scenes, Stannard offers plenty of detail but keeps the story moving. When the trial ends with a hung jury, the white press, the leaders of  major companies, and the naval command are outraged.

Before long, one of the freed young men is kidnapped and murdered by Thalia Massie's husband, her mother, and two sailors. The incident receives tremendous attention in Hawaii and  on the mainland, where much of the press (including the Hearst chain of newspapers) applauds the killing, since it was in defense of  a woman's honor. It's not clear whether the grand jury will indict but the killers are charged.

And who is brought in to defend them? Clarence Darrow, who is 75 and, because his investments fared badly in the Depression, glad to get the retainer. Although much of  his career he had fought for blacks and labor against the white power elite, this time he  was  on the side of the navy brass and wealthy whites and against the working-class people of color. And so we have a second courtroom drama, again told with detail and strong pacing.

The final chapter  looks at the years  following these events, making the argument that "the Massie affair" marked a turning point in race relations on the islands. After this, people of color—Hawaiians, Japanese, Chinese, and Portuguese—often united instead of working against each other (as the plantation owners had engineered it).

Engaging American history and legal history—and available in the Law Library (KF224.F685 S73 2006 at Good Reads). Catalog record. Publisher's page.

 (The book was published with two subtitles:Honor Killing: How the Infamous "Massie Affair" Transformed Hawai'i (2005) is available in Suzzallo/Allen Library. Catalog record. Honor Killing : Race, Rape, and Clarence Darrow's Spectacular Last Case, published in 2006, is the edition here. If you like to read on your Kindle, Nook, or iPad, it's also available as an e-book from Seattle Public Library.)

For multimedia, check out the website for the PBS documentary, The Massie Affair. It includes text, photos, and video interviews.

Cinco de Mayo: 150th Anniversary of the Battle of Puebla

Battle of Puebla

Contrary to what many people believe, Cinco de Mayo is not Mexico's Independence Day. (That holiday is September 16.) Rather, it commemorates the unlikely victory of the Mexican militia over French forces at the Battle of Puebla on May 5, 1862. This year is the 150th anniversary of the battle. With the exception of the town of Puebla, typically, the holiday is not celebrated in most areas of Mexico. However, students in Nogales, Mexico recently conducted a reenactment of the battle to commemorate this significant anniversary. Increasingly, Americans celebrate the holiday, but most revelers are unaware of the history behind the festivities.

Biblioteca Palafoxiana

In case you have the opportunity to visit Puebla, here are some travel tips. The town is known for the battle against the French and its architecture. A lesser known fact is that Puebla is the home of the Biblioteca Palafoxiana, the first library in colonial Mexico.

You can learn more about Mexican history through materials available at Gallagher Law Library. If you are interested in Mexican legal history, check out An Introduction to the History of Mexican Law. For an enlightening take on the immigration debate, take a look at Immigration Law and the U.S.-Mexico Border : ¿Sí Se Puede?.

photo credits: Cinco de Mayo Chicago, book-worship.blogspot.com

The Story of Lawrence v. Texas

In what was seen as a great victory for gay rights the Supreme Court struck down sodomy laws in Lawrence v. Texas, 539 U.S. 558 (2003), LII link, overruling a case decided less than two decades earlier, Bowers v. Hardwick, 478 U.S. 186 (1986), LII link.

Professor Peter Nicolas  reviews (in the Washington Independent Review of Books) Flagrant Conduct, a new book about the case. He concludes:

Carpenter’s book is exhaustively researched, extraordinarily well written and difficult to put down. With Flagrant Conduct, he has injected a good dose of the real world into one of the most important legal cases in the fight for gay and lesbian equality. Moreover, he has revealed the often hidden costs of the “perfect” test case and, in doing so, has shed needed light on both the benefits and the burdens of impact litigation.

Dale Carpenter, Flagrant Conduct: The Story of Lawrence v. Texas: How a Bedroom Arrest Decriminalized Gay Americans (2012). Catalog record (Gallagher's copy is on order).  Publisher's page.

U.S. Supreme Court & 9th Circuit Court Updates

Ever wondered how you could find brief and insightful updates on the Supreme Court’s activities?

The Tarlton Law Library at the University of Texas provides a frequent series of useful updates on a handy blog, Supreme Court Updates.

You can also subscribe to their RSS feed and have the updates sent directly to you.
Tarlton’s blog includes a list of the decisions issued and a brief summary courtesy of SCOTUSBlog that lists the case name, holding, opinion authors and composition of the decision. An example can be found below: Setser v. United States

In a 6-3 opinion written by Justice Scalia, the Court held that the Court held that a federal district court has the discretion to order a federal criminal sentence to run after a state criminal sentence that is anticipated but has not yet been imposed. The opinion of the Court was joined by Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Thomas, Alito, Sotomayor, and Kagan. Justice Breyer filed a dissenting opinion, joined by Justices Kennedy and Ginsburg.

You can  also  find useful updates on the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals from the Willamette University College of Law’s website. Willamette’s summaries are considerably more detailed than the Supreme Court Updates, and they also include a link to the full text of opinions. Here is an example:

Wentzell v. Neven
9th Circuit Court of Appeals Updates
Date Filed: 04/02/12
Case #: 10-16605
Circuit Judge Tashima for the Court; Circuit Judge Silverman and Senior District Judge Garbis
Full Text Opinion: http://www.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2012/04/02/10-16605.pdf
Habeas Corpus: Under § 2244(b) of the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, when a defendant files two petitions for writ of habeas corpus, the latter petition is not “second or successive” where an amended judgment intervenes between the filing of the two habeas petitions. Nevada state prisoner, Christopher Wentzell, pled guilty to solicitation to commit murder, principal to the crime of attempted murder, and principal to the crime of theft. The district court dismissed Wentzell’s petition for writ of habeas corpus as time-barred under the one-year statute of limitations under the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (“AEDPA”). After both the district court and the Ninth Circuit denied Wentzell’s application for a certificate of appealability, Wentzell filed a state petition for writ of habeas corpus. The Nevada state court granted the petition in part and entered an amended judgment of conviction dismissing the count of solicitation to commit murder and leaving the other counts unchanged. Wentzell then filed a pro se habeas petition, which the district court sua sponte dismissed as beyond the AEDPA statute of limitations period and, alternatively, as a “second or successive” petition filed without leave from the Court of Appeals as required by § 2244(b) of the AEDPA. On appeal, the Ninth Circuit found that the district court erred in its sua sponte dismissal of the petition, because before doing so it failed to provide Wentzell “with adequate notice and an opportunity to respond.” Further, the Court concluded that the habeas petition at issue is not “second or successive” under the AEDPA, because Wentzell’s first habeas petition challenged the original judgment of conviction, not the amended judgment of conviction. In so finding, the Court relied on the Supreme Court’s decision in Magwood v. Patterson and held that “the latter of two petitions is not ‘second or successive’ if there is a ‘new judgment intervening between the two habeas petitions.’” REVERSED and REMANDED..

Now you have a way to constantly keep abreast of important Supreme Court and 9th Circuit decisions!

State Attorney General Reports & Opinions

A collection of State Attorney General Reports & Opinions is now available on HeinOnline (UW Restricted).

Within this collection you will find State Attorney General Opinions for all 50 states, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands at least back to 1980. The collections for several states -- California, New York, Washington, and Wyoming -- date back to inception. 

The Washington collection currently includes Attorney General Opinions from 1888 through 2010, as well as a selection of reports (annual & biennial) and finding aids (digests & indices). 

Researchers seeking current Washington Attorney General Opinions can consult the web site of the Washington State Office of the Attorney General, which provides formal opinions from 1949 to the present.

To browse the Washington collection on HeinOnline, simply navigate to the State Attorney General Reports & Opinions Library and select Washington under “State Attorney General Opinions.”

The State Attorney General Reports & Opinions collection also includes:

• Official Opinions of the Attorneys General of the United States, volumes 1 – 43 (1791 – 1982).
• Opinions of the Office of Legal Counsel of the United States Department of Justice, volumes 1 – 24 (1977 – 2000).

SU Symposium on Race and Criminal Justice

The Seattle University Law Review has just released a symposium on Racial Bias and the Criminal Justice System. (It's so new that it's online but we haven't received the paper copy yet.)  

• Hon. Steven C. Gonzàlez, Introduction, 35 Seattle U. L. Rev. 615 (2012)
• Task Force On Race and the Criminal Justice System, Preliminary Report on Race and Washington's Criminal Justice System, 35 Seattle U. L. Rev. 623 (2012)
• Mario L. Barnes & Robert S. Chang, Analyzing Stops, Citations, and Searches in Washington and Beyond, 35 Seattle U. L. Rev. 673 (2012)
• Theodore Eisenberg, Talia Fisher, & Issi Rosen-Zvi, Actual Versus Perceived Performance of Judges, 35 Seattle U. L. Rev. 695 (2012)
• Lenese C. Herbert, O.P.P.: How "Occupy's" Race-Based Privilege May Improve Fourth Amendment Jurisprudence for All, 35 Seattle U. L. Rev. 727 (2012)
• Andrea D. Lyon, Race Bias and the Importance of Consciousness for Criminal Defense Attorneys, 35 Seattle U. L. Rev. 755 (2012)
• Clayton Mosher & J. Mitchell Pickerill, Methodological Issues in Biased Policing Research with Applications to the Washington State Patrol, 35 Seattle U. L. Rev. 769 (2012)
• Robert J. Smith & Justin D. Levinson, The Impact of Implicit Racial Bias on the Exercise of Prosecutorial Discretion, 35 Seattle U. L. Rev. 795 (2012)
• Michael Callahan, Note, “If Justice Is Not Equal For All, It Is Not Justice”: Racial Bias, Prosecutorial Misconduct, and the Right to a Fair Trial in State v. Monday, 35 Seattle U. L. Rev. 827 (2012)
• Krista L. Nelson & Jacob J. Stender, Note, “Like Wolves in Sheep’s Clothing”: Combating Racial Bias in Washington State’s Criminal Justice System, 35 Seattle U. L. Rev. 849 (2012)
• Andrea C. Armstrong, Slavery Revisited in Penal Plantation Labor, 35 Seattle U. L. Rev. 869 (2012)

Tomorrow (May 3), the Washington Law Review and UW Law will host a roundtable discussion, Progress in Reducing Racial Disparities in Washington's Criminal Justice System, 4:30-6:30 pm.

For further reading, see our guide, Race in the Criminal Justice System.