Poem a Day

Is law school too prosaic for you? Do you yearn for a daily dose of poetry? Sign up for Poem-a-Day from the Academy of American Poets.

Remember: April is National Poetry Month.

Legal Haiku

Speaking of haiku, here are several articles with legal haiku:

• Louis Wolcher, Annotated Contracts Haiku, 42 J. Legal Educ. 141-42 (1992), HeinOnline (UW Restricted)


• Douglass G. Boshkoff, Constructive Haiku and the Law of Contracts: Raintree County Memorial Library Occasional Paper No. 3, Ariz. St. L.J. 135-43 (2007), HeinOnline (UW Restricted)


• Federal Jurisdiction Haiku, 32 Stan. L. Rev. 229-32 (1979), HeinOnline (UW Restricted)(highlights of Prof. Kenneth Karst’s 1978 and 1979 Federal Jurisdiction Haiku Festivals)


• Gil Grantmore, Constitutional Law Haiku, 18 Const. Comment. 481-83 (2001), HeinOnline (UW Restricted)


• Nancy B. Rappaport, Decanal Haiku, 37 U. Tol. L. Rev. 131-33 (2005), HeinOnline (UW Restricted)(series of verses on the life of a law school dean).


• Louis J. Sirico, Jr., Supreme Court Haiku, 61 N.Y.U. L. Rev. 1224-30 (1986), HeinOnline (UW Restricted)

Enjoy National Poetry Month!

Tweet a Haiku About Libraries

As part of National Library Week (April 10-16), the American Library Association is holding a "twaiku" contest. What's twaiku? It's haiku on Twitter.

Share your love of libraries with the world by composing a library themed twaiku for National Library Week! You might win a $50 gift certificate to Amazon.

What’s a twaiku, you ask? Simply put, a twaiku is haiku sent via Twitter. Twaiku use the same basic structure of 3 lines with 5-7-5 syllables respectively. Unlike a true haiku, a twaiku can only be 140 characters, or 130 with our #nlwtwaiku tag.

The National Library Week twaiku contest kicks off at the beginning of School Library Month (April), and continues through Wednesday of National Library Week (April 13). All submissions must be tagged #nlwtwaiku.

The staff of atyourlibrary.org will post a selection of the best twaiku here on atyourlibrary.org, where everyone will have the opportunity to vote for their favorite through the end of National Library Week (Saturday, April 16).

The most highly rated twaiku will receive an Amazon gift certificate!

National Library Week meets National Poetry Month meets Web 2.0!

Reading Picks from UW Law Faculty and Staff

To celebrate National Library Week (April 10-16), we asked law school faculty and staff to recommend reading—not just law books, and not just books, for that matter. People could—and did—recommend anything from a cartoon blog to a classic law review article by Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

Take a look at the Reading Recommendations: you'll learn a little more about the professors and staff you see every day. And whether you want thought-provoking works related to law, literary fiction, or something light to give you a break from your studies, you'll find something to pique your interest.

Spanish-English & French-English Law Dictionaries

Two specialized legal dictionaries are now available online on LexisNexis Academic: Dahl's French-English Law Dictionary and Dahl's Spanish-English Law Dictionary.

To access these dictionaries, go to LexisNexis Academic, click on Sources, and then click on Browse Sources. You can then search the Dictionaries folder where you'll also find other useful, but slightly dated, resources:

• Ballentine's Law Dictionary, 3rd ed.
• Bieber's Dictionary of Legal Abbreviations, 5th ed.
• Good Quotes for Speakers, 3,500
• Modern Dictionary for the Legal Profession

Dahl's Law Dictionary: French to English/English to French is also found in the Reference Area at K52.F7 D34 1995. The Reference Area is also home to Butterworth's Spanish/English Legal Dictionary as well as The ABA Spanish Legal Phrasebook.

TrustLaw Connect

TrustLaw Connect, launched in July 2010, is a feature of the Thomson Reuters TrustLaw site which helps non-government organizations (NGOs) and social entrepreneurs find free legal assistance.

Requests for legal help for individuals or for private litigation matters will not be considered. Instead the service is intended to provide assistance for other projects serving the public good. Among the examples of appropriate pro bono requests are the following:

• research projects on topics such as human rights, environment, equal rights, or land rights issues
• advice on governance structures
• guidance on expanding operations into another country and legal issues arising in a new environment

TrustLaw Connect is currently operating in 140 countries. A list of members is available here.

Global Entry: a trusted traveler program

Global Entry is a U.S. Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) program that allows pre-approved travelers to speed through arrivals from international destinations by using automated kiosks. Not all U.S. airports have these special kiosks, but the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport does.

All travelers using this program must first apply and receive an interview before the CBP will approve them as trusted, low-risk travelers.

The program is intended for frequent international travelers, but any U.S. citizen, lawful permanent U.S. resident, Dutch citizen or Mexican national is eligible to apply. Other programs, such as the Fast Low Risk Universal Crossing (FLUX) into the Netherlands, are described here.

Volunteer Opportunity - IMPOWR

The ABA Section of International Law has partnered with the Law Library of Congress and Thomson Reuters Foundation’s TrustLaw website to launch a new website called IMPOWR (International Models Project on Women’s Rights). The website will be composed of country pages that cover topics such as: CEDAW status, civic life, healthcare, marriage and family relations, economic and social life, crimes and violence, and access to justice. These topics will be further divided into several subtopics such as current state of the law, law reform efforts and projects, effect of local customs and traditions on implementation and enforcement of law reforms, and the role of local NGOs in obtaining and implementing law reforms.

The project is still in the very early stages and the ABA is seeking volunteers to assist with providing links and other information. Volunteers will be able to choose a jurisdiction or possibly a topic over several jurisdictions, so those with foreign languages skills are especially welcome!

There are several ways to become involved as a volunteer, such as serving as a contributing editor (conducting research for the database) or content reviewer, writing articles for the IMPOWR virtual journal, or helping with outreach.

This would be a great opportunity for law students interested in women's rights and international law to gain research experience and to deepen substantive knowledge of these areas of law while also contributing to a legal research database that will be available for free to the public. To sign up, click here.

Hat tip to Mabel Shaw, Assistant International & Foreign Law Librarian at Georgetown, for bringing this announcement to our attention.

IRS Data Book 2010

Here they are, all the statistics you've wanted to know about the work of the Internal Revenue Service in 2010. Covering the fiscal year October 1, 2009 through September 2010, the Internal Revenue Service Data Book 2010 includes such fascinating information as:

• the total number of tax returns filed (230 million returns, including individual income, corporation income, and employment income tax returns);

• the amount of money collected ($2.3 trillion);

• the activity at the IRS website, IRS.gov (305 million visits); and
  

• the percentage of individual tax returns filed electronically (of the 141 million individual income tax returns processed, almost 70 percent were filed electronically).

There are over 30 tables that provide such details as a breakdown of the returns filed and refunds issued, numbers and types of taxpayer examinations, collections and criminal investigations, and taxpayer assistance.

If you are interested in tax and think you might like to work for the Chief Counsel's office, you will want to check out Tables 26 and 27 on pages 59-60. Here is a description of what Chief Counsel attorneys do, taken from the introduction to those tables:

Attorneys in the Chief Counsel’s Office serve as lawyers for the IRS. They provide guidance to the IRS and to taxpayers on the correct legal interpretation of Federal tax laws, represent the IRS in litigation, and provide all other legal support the IRS needs to carry out its mission.

What Happens to Courts If the Federal Government Shuts Down?

A news item from the courts indicates that the courts will use non-appropriated funds to continue operations--for 2 weeks.

Once that funding is exhausted, however, the federal court system faces serious disruptions. Following their own contingency plans, federal courts would limit operation to essential activities.

Essential activities all relate to the resolution of cases. All other personnel would be suspended and payments to jurors would be deferred.

The FBI's Vault

The Federal Bureau of Investigation has announced the opening of The Vault, a new electronic reading room with more than 2,000 documents and 25 files not previously available online. Access the contents of The Vault using the A-Z index or the categories list. Some of the A's in the A-Z index are:

• Al Capone


• Aristotle Onassis


• Aryan Nation


• Anna Nicole Smith


• Albert Einstein


• Amelia Earhart

Most of these documents have been scanned into PDF images. The handwritten and typed documents are often hard to read. Many documents have been heavily redacted.

Still, browsing The Vault for information about people in the Popular Culture category might provide some interesting trivia.

Of greater legal interest will be the files under the Supreme Court category, where you can find material about Hugo Black, William Brennan, Fortas, Thurgood Marshall, and the Court generally. The Supreme Court file is large, with 34 parts (each part consists of 100 pages or more).

Time will tell if the contents of the FBI's vault prove more interesting than Al Capone's secret vault.

Guide to Empirical Legal Studies

Empirical legal studies uses social science tools to examine law and legal institutions. These tools can include:

• surveys, e.g.:
• Attorney Satisfaction with the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure: Report to the Judicial Conference Advisory Committee on Civil Rules (Federal Judicial Center March 2010)
• Legal Needs and Civil Justice: A Survey of Americans: Major Findings from the Comprehensive Legal Needs Study (ABA 1994)
• Mary R. Rose, Christopher G. Ellison & Shari Seidman Diamond, Preferences for Juries Over Judges Across Racial and Ethnic Groups (2nd Annual Conference on Empirical Legal Studies, 2007), available at http://ssrn.com/abstract=998050.
• observation and analysis of legal events, e.g.:
• Mary R. Rose, Shari Seidman Diamond & Beth Murphy, Revisiting the Unanimity Requirement: The Behavior of the Non-Unanimous Civil Jury, Northwestern U. L. Rev. (forthcoming), available at http://ssrn.com/abstract=825125
• Rafael I. Pardo & Michelle R. Lacey, Undue Hardship in the Bankruptcy Courts: An Empirical Assessment of the Discharge of Educational Debt, 74 U. Cin. L. Rev. 405 (2005), available at http://ssrn.com/abstract=706761.
• Peter B. Oh, Veil-Piercing, 89 Texas L. Rev. 81 (2010) (dataset of 2,908 cases, 1658-2006), available at http://ssrn.com/abstract=1557972
• simulations, e.g.:
Valerie P. Hans et al., Science in the Jury Box: Jurors' Views and Understanding of Mitochondrial DNA Evidence, Cornell Legal Studies Research Paper No. 07-021, available at http://ssrn.com/abstract=998529 (mock trials)
• economic modeling, e.g.:
• John Armour et al., Shareholder Protection and Stock Market Development: An Empirical Test of the Legal Origins Hypothesis, University of Cambridge, CBR Working Paper ECGI - Law Working Paper No. 108/2008, available at http://ssrn.com/abstract=1094355

How can you learn about this diverse field? What are the leading works, what organizations work in the area, where are there standard datasets to use? A librarian at Fordham has prepared an excellent guide: Alissa Black-Dorward, Empirical Research (posted April 1, 2011). Tabs lead you to

• General Materials
• Statistical Software and Instruction
• Survey Research
• Banking
• Courts, Judges & Lawyers
• Crime and Criminal Justice
• Economics, Business & Finance
• Environment
• Evidence
• Foreign & International
• Health
• Intellectual Property
• Social Science Statistics
• State Statistics

Some of the information in the guide is tailored to Fordham, but you can find the equivalent here. For instance, our library has many of the books cited (although perhaps with different call numbers) and the UW has its own Human Subjects Division for ensuring ethical practices.

Update (May 22, 2011): see also this guide from Georgetown's law library.

Trouble in Dairyland

Have you been following the controversy in Wisconsin over changes to the collective bargaining rights, salaries, and benefits of public employees? The text of the controversial act is available here (PDF).

Several separate lawsuits are currently challenging the law. The first, a procedural challenge based on Wisconsin’s open meetings law was brought by the Dane County District Attorney. Last week the trial court judge in this suit issued a third temporary restraining order to enjoin enforcement of the law. Apparently the third time’s the charm, as Gov. Walker’s Department of Administration has announced they will comply with this order. You can view the complaint and various orders resulting from this case at the Dane County Clerk of Court’s homepage.

Wis. Stat. s. 19.87 (PDF) is the section of the state statutes that applies the open meeting requirement to the legislature. Wis. Stat. s. 19.87(2) allows the legislature’s internal rules to trump the open meetings statute in certain cases. Republican legislators claim Senate Rule 93(2), which applies during special sessions of the legislature, trumps the open meetings statute. Senate Rule 93(2) reads “[a] notice of a committee meeting is not required other than posting on the legislative bulletin board, and a bulletin of committee hearings may not be published.”

Another suit brought by local union chapters alleges that the act was fiscal in nature and therefore required a three-fifths quorum to be considered under the Wisconsin Constitution Article VIII s. 8 (PDF). The bill passed with the 14 Democratic senators in hiding in Illinois, leaving only 19 Republicans senators present when the bill passed, one short of the required three-fifths for fiscal bills.

You can follow the latest developments on this story at wispolitics.com and jsonline.com.

Harvard Law School Library Introduces Therapy Liger

Closely following the Yale Law School Library’s therapy dog program where Yale Law Students can rent a dog for several hours to counter stress, the Harvard Law School Library is announcing a similar program in which Harvard Law Students can borrow Harry the Harvard Law School Library Therapy Liger.

Meet the Harvard Law School Library’s Therapy Liger, Et Seq. (Harvard Law Library blog), April 1, 2011.

Changes in Library Subscriptions Announced

Antitrust Channel

One year ago today, the American Antitrust Institute launched the Antitrust Channel, airing antitrust news and events 24/7. If you haven't already been watching it,

Look for The Antitrust Channel on the cable monopoly in your area. If it is not being offered, call the FCC to complain and send a copy of your complaint to the AAI.

Avvo Announces Plastic Surgery Rewards Card

Avvo.com, the Seattle-based company that offers directory and ratings information about lawyers and doctors, announces its plastic surgery rewards card.

Printing from WestlawNext Now Available

Students, faculty and staff are now able to send documents from WestlawNext to the dedicated Westlaw printers.

If you are a student, please be sure to choose either the Library Alcove or the Room 222 Computer Lab printers.

The printer icon is located in the upper right hand portion of the page when you view a document.

Upcoming CLE: Ethics, Animals & the Law

The Student Animal Legal Defense Fund, Washington Chapter, is presenting a day-long conference, "Ethics, Animals & the Law: interdisciplinary approaches to standards of care," on Friday, April 15, 2011 at the UW School of Law.

The conference is funded by a generous grant from the Animal Legal Defense Fund, but pre-registration is required. For those interested in the 6.25 CLE credits (includes 1.5 Ethics credits), the conference is $25. For all other attendees, the conference is free. See the conference brochure or the UW School of Law CLE page for more information.

Writing a Brief? Better Follow the Rules!

A recent online ABA Journal Weekly Newsletter article reveals some perils involved in writing a brief. The Federal Rules of Appellate Procedure (FRAP) contain some very specific rules about the form of briefs. For instance, Rule 32(a)(4) provides:

(4) Paper Size, Line Spacing, and Margins. The brief must be on 81⁄2 by 11 inch paper. The text must be double-spaced, but quotations more than two lines long may be indented and single-spaced. Headings and footnotes may be single-spaced. Margins must be at least one inch on all four sides. Page numbers may be placed in the margins, but no text may appear there.

Rule 32(a)(7) covers the permissible length of a principal brief, limiting its length to 30 pages or 14,000 words (or 1,300 lines of text if using a "monospaced face"). If the attorney decides to use the latter limits, he or she is required to certify that the brief meets the word or line limits. As discussed in the above article, it is this rule about the length of the brief that is at issue in Abner v. Scott Mem'l Hosp., No. 10-2713 (7th Cir. Mar. 9, 2011).

The appellants' lawyer filed the required certification, stating that his brief contained 13,877 words. The appellee's brief, however, pointed out in a footnote that the appellants' brief was really 18,000+ words.

When the appellants' lawyer did not contest that his brief was "oversized," the court issued a show cause order why the brief should not be stricken and/or sanctions applied for filing such a brief without permission. The lawyer responded, admitting the excess and including a (belated) Motion for Leave to Exceed Word Count.

The Seventh Circuit opinion, written by Judge Posner, fairly bristles with displeasure at the lawyer's actions. The decision points out that the court has rejected "many briefs" for failing to comply with the FRAP (for instance, for failing to include the standard of review as required by FRAP28(a)(9)(B)). But in this instance, the attorney also mislead the court with an incorrect certification. Moreover, the brief was "rambling and would have been more effective if compressed...."

The court finds that the explanation provided for the incorrect word count is not convincing and strikes the brief. Judge Posner points out that the court could have gone further, even dismissing the appeal. Several decisions are cited where appeals were dismissed as sanctions for violations of FRAP30, which prescribes the form and content of appendices to briefs. In this particular instance, however, the court does not need to invoke dismissal as a sanction:

The flagrancy of the violation in this case might well justify the dismissal of the appeal: let this be a warning. But in addition it is plain from the briefs that the appeal has no merit. To allow time for the appellants to file a compliant brief and the appellees to file a revised brief in response, and to reschedule oral argument, would merely delay the inevitable.

The motion to file an oversized brief is denied and the judgment of the district court summarily

AFFIRMED

Just remember, when writing briefs, content AND form matter. You have been warned!

Budget Analysis of Health Care Law

A year after the passage of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, there's still a need for studies of its potential impact.

The Congressional Budget Office—a non-partisan office of Congress—prepared a number of analyses during the consideration of the law and earlier proposals. Now we have a handy compilation of these reports: Selected CBO Publicaitions Related to Health Care Legislation 2009-2010:

Responding to many requests, this report compiles a set of those estimates and analyses for easy reference. The report begins with the cost estimate for the final legislation and several analyses related to that legislation. It also includes several cost estimates and analyses of earlier versions of that legislation and alternative proposals that were considered in the House and Senate before final passage. In addition, this report brings together analyses that CBO issued during this period concerning insurance premiums and premium subsidies, the budgetary accounting of proposals, changes to the medical malpractice system, and certain related topics that arose during the Congressional debate. A number of related cost estimates and publications are not included in this volume but are available on CBO’s Web site. In keeping with CBO’s mandate to provide objective, nonpartisan analysis, this report makes no recommendations.

It's available in PDF on the CBO's website, if you want to read it online or download it to your laptop or other device. Or you can check out the library's print copy (RA410.53 .S428 2010 at Classified Stacks), because sometimes it's handier to flip through pages of budget analysis than to navigate through a long document online.

If you want to stay on top of this issue, you can follow the CBO Director's blog. The posts on health are here. The latest entry is Revisions to CBO’s Estimates of the Cost of Last Year’s Major Health Care Legislation, March 23, 2011.

In its ongoing monitoring of developments, CBO has seen no evidence to date that the steps that will be taken to implement the legislation—or the ways in which participants in the health care and health financing systems will respond to the legislation—will yield overall budgetary effects that differ significantly from the ones projected earlier. Therefore, the evolution of the estimates does not reflect any substantial change in the estimation of the overall effects of PPACA and the Reconciliation Act from what was projected in March 2010.

Google Books Settlement—Not

I haven't been following the whole Google Books issue closely, but last week there was a new development.

The basics (up to last week) are: Several years ago Google, cooperating with a handful of big research libraries, started digitizing millions of books. A group of publishers and authors sued. In 2008 the two sides negotiated a settlement that included a way for copyright holders to opt out of the digitization project—i.e., not to have their stuff in Google's huge digital library. And Google would set up a fund to compensate rights holders whose interests were infringed. Google in turn would get to sell access to millions of books that were out of print.

The new developments (told in headlines):

• Judge rejects Google’s deal with authors and publishers to put books online, Wash. Post, March 22, 2011


• Judge Rejects Google Books Settlement, Wall St. J., March 23, 2011


• Editorial, Online books and copyright law, Wash. Post, March 25, 2011


• The Google Settlement Rejection: What Comes Next? With the Google settlement rejected, parties ponder future, Publishers Weekly, March 28, 2011 ("When it was introduced in 2008, the Google Book Settlement was hailed by its creators as historic. Now, it is history.")


• Press release, Praise for Decision to Stop the Google Books Deal, American Antitrust Institute, March 23, 2011


• Siva Vaidhyanathan, Thank You, Judge Chin: Why the Google Books setback is an opportunity to reassert academic values, Chron. of Higher Educ., March 24, 2011


• Julian Sanchez, Google Books, Fair Uses, and “Copyright” as Misnomer, Julian Sanchez blog, March 24, 2011

Judge Denny Chin's opinion in The Authors Guild v. Google, Inc., No. 05 Civ 8136 (S.D.N.Y. March 22, 2011) is available on Justia.

UW Resources on the Life of Geraldine Ferraro

The UW Libraries own three books written by the late Geraldine Ferraro (1935-2011):

• Ferraro, my story, available at Suzzallo/Allen at E840.8.F47 A 34 1985


• Framing a Life: a family memoir, available at Suzzallo/Allen at E840.8.F47 F47 1998; and


• Changing History: women, power, and politics, available at Odegaard and Suzzallo/Allen at E838.5.F472 1993

Articles by and about Ferraro are also available in a number of journals and newspapers. Search by author, subject or keyword(s).
See the Statement by the President on the Passing of Geraldine Ferraro.

How People Find Lawyers

According to an article in the online ABA Journal Law News Now, more people now turn to the Internet rather than the Yellow Pages when searching for an attorney. The article describes a report issued in February of this year by the ABA Standing Committee on the Delivery of Legal Services.

The report is based on the committee-sponsored Harris poll of 1000 individuals reached by land line telephones. Here are a few of the findings from the report:

* People with personal legal matters are far more likely to turn to trusted sources instead of impersonal sources to find a lawyer, yet impersonal sources have a substantial and stable place in providing access to legal services.

* Innovative online models, such as those that enable an exchange of questions and answers with lawyers and those that provide consumer feedback about lawyers are most likely to be used to assist in finding a lawyer for personal legal matters.

* People would not use social media avenues to a substantial degree to assist in finding a lawyer for a personal legal matter, but relatively few lawyers market their services through these avenues at this time.

* When people would proceed on a personal legal matter without a lawyer, they report they are likely to turn to free online services and self-help books, but are not likely to turn to online services that charge costs.

Be sure to take a look at the comments to this article. Several posts strongly agree with the committee's "caution" that the results would be quite different had the poll used cellphone numbers rather than land line telephones. A few posts discuss other methods used to find clients.

New Book: Stones of Hope

Stones of Hope: how African activists reclaim human rights to challenge global poverty is a new book just added to our collection.

Edited by Lucie E. White and Jeremy Perelman, with a foreword by Jeffrey D. Sachs and Lisa E. Sachs, Stones of Hope "engages with the work of remarkable African advocates who have broken out of the conventional boundaries of human rights practice to challenge radical poverty." (Stanford University Press)

Chapters include both case studies and essays.

Stones of Hope, part of the Stanford Studies in Human Rights series, is available in the Classified Stacks at JC599. A36 S76 2011.