Index to Foreign Legal Periodicals on HeinOnline

The Index to Foreign Legal Periodicals is now on HeinOnline!

IFLP indexes hundreds of journals from around the world, as well as chapters in collections of papers by different authors. You can use it to find scholarship about foreign and international law that you'll never find if you stick to just LexisNexis and Westlaw.

HeinOnline's interface for IFLP is straightforward and easy to use. You can search by keywords, author, title, subject, date, and so on:

IFLP search screen

For instance, if you search for winn j in the author field, you'll find articles that Prof. Jane K. Winn wrote in Studies in Transnational Economic Law (a Dutch journal) as well as articles in U.S. journals about international law, such as the Texas International Law Journal and International Lawyer.

Articles by Jane Winn

You can browse subjects to find one that the indexers would have used for your issue. For instance, if you try "Forced labor," you'll find the index uses "Slavery, forced labor, etc." And if you look up "slavery," you'll see the related concepts of related topics of "Crimes against humanity" and "Labor law" if you want to look more broadly.

Subject list

Click on "Slavery, forced labor, etc." and you get a list of all the articles indexed with that term since 1985, for example:

Entries under Slavery

When an article is available on HeinOnline, there's a convenient link. If the journal is not on HeinOnline, check the law library catalog to see whether we have it; if not, you can request the article through interlibrary loan.

Articles may be in English or in another language. Sometimes, they are in one language with a summary in another language. You can use the facets on the left of the screen to refine your search in different ways – e.g., by language or date, or jurisdiction.

Facets for refining search

Only 1985-date is set up as a database with different fields. But Hein has digitized all of IFLP, starting with volume 1 in 1960.

You can choose the print edition —

— and then use it as if you were thumbing through the books. Only you won't be carrying volumes to your table and you don't even have to be in the library to do it. And when you find a page with lots of good citations, you can just save it to your laptop instead of copying the citations one by one. What's not to like about convenience like that?

One or more of the articles you find in IFLP could make all the difference in your research paper or Jessup memorial!

Justice Frankfurter and Judge Wapner

Did you know that Justice Felix Frankfurter and Judge Joseph Wapner share a birthday? It's today, Nov. 15.

Matthew Mantel, a librarian at the University of Houston, discusses these two jurists' careers here (This Week in Legal History -- Judges, Nota Bene, Nov. 15, 2011).

Felix Frankfurter (l.) and Joseph Wapner (r.)

Photo credits: Felix Frankfurter from Library of Congress. Joseph Wapner from Los Angeles Times Hollywood Star Walk guide.

Library Hours for Veterans Day

The campus observes Veterans Day, Nov. 11, as a holiday.

The Law Library will be open from 8am until 5pm that day. The Reference Office will be open from 1 - 4 pm.

Regular hours resume on Nov. 12.

An Anthology of Disability Literature

Christy Thompson Ibrahim, a part-time faculty member who has taught Disability Law since 2000, has just published An Anthology of Disability Literature.
According to the publisher's description:

This striking anthology includes works by Leo Tolstoy, Sylvia Plath, Edgar Allan Poe, John Hockenberry, Michael J. Fox, Charlotte Bronte, Harriet McBryde Johnson, Franz Kafka, Annie Dillard, Temple Grandin, Cris Matthews, Georgina Kleege, H.G. Wells, Rachel Simon, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Jhumpa Lahiri, Helen Keller, Ursula Le Guin, Alexander McCall Smith, and others. The selections, both fiction and non-fiction, ranging from classics to modern favorites, contemplate a variety of disabilities — physical impairments, mental illness, and intellectual disabilities — and provide viewpoints from self-advocates, family, and friends. Expressing optimism, anger, love, hope, angst, drama, and realism, the readings and accompanying discussion questions provoke reflection about tolerance, community living, family dynamics, and disability rights.

Disability History Awareness Month ended on October 31, but the importance of disability studies did not!

W Day! -- Trademark Searching

Tomorrow, Nov. 4, is "W Day," when the University of Washington celebrates its 150th anniversary.

Recently I was wearing something with a W and the little TM, and a friend asked, incredulously, "Can they really trademark the letter W?"

Yes, indeed they can. And looking into the trademark created a good occasion to explore the trademarks resources on the United States Patent and Trademark Office website, particularly the Trademark Electronic Search System (TESS). (I am NOT expert in trademark searching, but I was able to mess around and find some things.)

There are a lot of codes involved in trademark searching. For instance, Goods and Services (the [GS] field) are assigned codes, such as 015 for Musical Instruments (goods) and 037 for Construction and Repair (services). The UW provides a service coded broadly as 041, Education and Entertainment. There are also fields for data like the trademark owner's name [ON]. You use the Word Mark [WM] field to look for marks that are letters, punctuation, and words—like, say, W.

Searching for "university of washington" as the owner, and W in the Word Mark field, I found the trademark (serial number 77091314, filed Jan. 5, 2007; registration number 3377279, registered Feb. 5, 2008):

The UW's trademarked W.

I also found trademarked Ws with Huskies, one filed in 1992 and one in 1994.

Two trademarked Ws with Husky faces.

You might think: well, the Husky is distinctive, but that W is just a W.

Not so fast. Look at all the Ws that our W isn't:

1st row: Winona State Univ. (MN), Waynesburg Univ. (PA), Wright State Univ. (OH), Washburn, Univ. of Wisconsin (on its badger); 2nd row: Western Kentucky Univ. (twice), Washburn (again), Wayne State Univ. (Michigan); 3rd row: Waynesburg Univ. (again), Wichita State Univ. (Kansas), Univ. of Wisconsin (behind and on the badger), the Mississippi Univ. for Women; 4th row: Univ. of Wisconsin (a different style), Wharton (Univ. of Pennsylvania), Webster Univ. (MO), Weber State Univ. (UT), the Univ. of Wisconsin (one last time).

So it's not the letter per se, but the particular shape of the W that's trademarked. 

Note that the 16 Ws in the graphic are all universities' Ws. If you broaden the search, you can find Ws for banks, plumbers, and nearly every other kind of business.

This trademark doesn't have any letters or words on it:

UW Husky trademark, filed in 2000.

To search for similar trademarks, you can't look for letters or words. So TESS also allows you to search by design elements. They can be geometric (triangle, ellipse, etc.) or categories like people, trees, or whatever.  In this case the codes are:

03.01.09 - Coyotes; Hyenas; Jackals; Wolves
03.01.16 - Heads of cats, dogs, wolves, foxes, bears, lions, tigers

I learned (by failure) that you need to leave the periods out when you search, but when I got it right 030116[dc] turned up a wide variety of dog and cat logos, including these: Top Dawg headphones, Bulldog Burgers, Angola LNG Supply Services,Shodogg (Touchstream Technologies), the Centers for Habilitation, New York Dawg Pound, Nutt Butt Bakery, Pupcake Productions, Montana State Univ. (bobcat head), Hooperstown Huskies, NC State (wolf), Jackson Generals (baseball), Charlotte Hounds (lacrosse)

Think of all the different looks our Husky could have had!

For more on trademark searching, see this guide from the UW Engineering Library. For the scoop on how trademarks work at the UW, see University of Washington Trademark and Licensing Policies. And for trademark law, see our guide (note the table of contents in the upper right: you need to click to get to the different sections).

And if you're so inclined, show your purple on Friday. It's even good for discounts at some local businesses!

Hat tip: Meg Butler.

Big News in Federal Sentencing

There's a big new study of federal sentencing AND the federal government has begun reviewing the sentences of people serving time for crack cocaine offenses.

Study

Yesterday the United States Sentencing Commission submitted to Congress a huge (645 pages!) assessing the impact of statutory minimum mandatory sentences. Here are a few excerpts from the press release:

"While there is a spectrum of views on the Commission regarding mandatory minimum penalties, the Commission unanimously believes that certain mandatory minimum penalties apply too broadly, are excessively severe, and are applied inconsistently across the country. The Commission continues to believe that a strong and effective guideline system best serves the purposes of sentencing established by the Sentencing Reform Act of 1984.”
. . .
The Commission also addresses the overcrowding in the federal Bureau of Prisons, which is over-capacity by 37 percent.
. . .
The report was undertaken pursuant to a directive from Congress to examine mandatory minimum penalties, particularly in light of the Supreme Court’s 2005 decision in Booker v. United States, which rendered the federal sentencing guidelines advisory.
. . .

• More than 75 percent of those offenders convicted of an offense carrying a mandatory minimum penalty were convicted of a drug trafficking offense.
• Hispanic offenders accounted for the largest group (38.3%) of offenders convicted of an offense carrying a mandatory minimum penalty, followed by Black offenders (31.5%), White offenders (27.4%), and Other Race offenders (2.7%).
• Almost half (46.7%) of all offenders convicted of an offense carrying a mandatory minimum penalty were relieved from the application of such penalty at sentencing for assisting the government, qualifying for "safety valve" relief, or both.
• Black offenders received relief from a mandatory minimum penalty least often (in 34.9% of their cases), compared to White (46.5%), Hispanic (55.7%) and Other Race (58.9%) offenders. In particular, Black offenders qualified for relief under the safety valve at the lowest rate of any other racial group (11.1%), compared to White (26.7%), Hispanic (42.8%) and Other Race (36.6%), either because of their criminal history or the involvement of a dangerous weapon in connection with the offense.
• Receiving relief from a mandatory minimum penalty made a significant difference in the sentence ultimately imposed. . . .

The report is here. The executive summary is here.

Crack Sentences

Crack Cocaine Case Review May Free Inmates, All Things Considered, NPR, Nov. 1, 2011.

Across the country on Tuesday, federal judges began reviewing the prison sentences of thousands of men and women jailed on crack cocaine charges. Many inmates could be released or see their sentences sharply reduced.

Congress voted last year to ease federal sentencing guidelines for crack cocaine. But a decision this summer to revisit old drug cases has sparked new controversy.

New Faculty Publication: Bill Rodgers on Climate Change

Professor Rodgers, the School of Law’s Stimson Bullitt Professor of Environmental Law, has recently published Climate Change: A Reader (William H. Rodgers Jr., Michael Robinson-Dorn, Jennifer K. Barcelos & Anna T. Moritz eds., Carolina Academic Press 2011).

The back cover provides a description:

Climate Change provides a comprehensive and unique introduction to the emerging issues of global climate change. It presents many of the foundational documents, background scientific explanations, and excerpts from the leading thinkers in the vast literature on global warming. It features original articles and essays from scholars in the fields of environmental science, and environmental, energy, international and human rights law. Designed for use in the burgeoning number of new courses in areas such as global warming, climate change and climate justice, this book is organized around the topics of science, justice, impacts, energy, the U.S. response, international law, state and local law, and innovative litigation. The Reader weaves together the important story of the global warming saga in a thorough and approachable manner.

The book is organized into the following chapters:

• Setting the Scientific Stage
• The Justice of Transformative Change and the Spread of Global Fever
• The Health of the Planet: The Atmosphere, the Earth, the Sea, the Residents
• Reconstructed Energy Futures
• Framing the Climate Change Debate
• United States’ Response to Climate Change
• The International Law and Policy of Climate Change
• Local, State, Regional, Tribal and Private Climate Change Initiatives
• Legal Initiatives Designed to Turn the Tide on Climate Change (on CD-ROM)

Throughout the book are extensive references, figures, and tables. A detailed index is included.

Climate Change: A Reader is located in the Classified Stacks at KF3783 .C578 2011.

Is Legal Education in Crisis?

Last week the National Law Journal launched Law School Review, "an online forum examining the current state and future of legal education."

We want to address the question, "Are law schools in crisis?" If the answer is yes, what are the most pressing problems and how should educators and regulators address them? If the answer is no, what is it that law schools are doing right? Is this enough to ensure their future viability? We have assembled a panel of experts to share their thoughts on the subject [noted law school deans and law professors], and we hope to create a robust dialogue and exchange of ideas.

If you're interested in what law schools do (and why wouldn't you be?), this is worth a look.

Halloween Treats

Its Halloween, but don't panic!
We've found litigation Satanic.

U. S. ex rel. Mayo v. Satan and his Staff, 54 F.R.D. 282 (1971).
Plaintiff, alleging jurisdiction under 18 U.S.C. § 241, 28 U.S.C. § 1343, and 42 U.S.C. § 1983 prays for leave to file a complaint for violation of his civil rights in forma pauperis. He alleges that Satan has on numerous occasions caused plaintiff misery and unwarranted threats, against the will of plaintiff, that Satan has placed deliberate obstacles in his path and has caused plaintiff's downfall.

Plaintiff alleges that by reason of these acts Satan has deprived him of his constitutional rights.

We feel that the application to file and proceed in forma pauperis must be denied. Even if plaintiff's complaint reveals a prima facie recital of the infringement of the civil rights of a citizen of the United States, the Court has serious doubts that the complaint reveals a cause of action upon which relief can be granted by the court. We question whether plaintiff may obtain personal jurisdiction over the defendant in this judicial district. The complaint contains no allegation of residence in this district.

While the official reports disclose no case where this defendant has appeared as defendant there is an unofficial account of a trial in New Hampshire where this defendant filed an action of mortgage foreclosure as plaintiff. The defendant in that action was represented by the preeminent advocate of that day, and raised the defense that the plaintiff was a foreign prince with no standing to sue in an American Court. This defense was overcome by overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Whether or not this would raise an estoppel in the present case we are unable to determine at this time.

If such action were to be allowed we would also face the question of whether it may be maintained as a class action. It appears to meet the requirements of Fed.R. of Civ. P. 23 that the class is so numerous that joinder of all members is impracticable, there are questions of law and fact common to the class, and the claims of the representative party is typical of the claims of the class. We cannot now determine if the representative party will fairly protect the interests of the class.

We note that the plaintiff has failed to include with his complaint the required form of instructions for the United States Marshal for directions as to service of process.

For the foregoing reasons we must exercise our discretion to refuse the prayer of plaintiff to proceed in forma pauperis.

From the Gallagher guide on Judicial Humor.

New Faculty Publication: Helen Anderson on Revising Harmless Error

Helen A. Anderson, Revising Harmless Error: Making Innocence Relevant to Direct Appeals, 17 Tex. Wesleyan L. Rev. 391 (2011), available at http://ssrn.com/abstract=1698982.

Professor Anderson’s latest article explores the history and development of harmless error. Describing findings from the Innocence Project, she examines how harmless error analysis is applied in cases where the likely causes of wrongful conviction are implicated.

She proposes guidelines and changes that can be made to reinvigorate harmless error analysis so that courts recognize and take seriously the possibility of innocence, writing:

It is time for a better-informed harmless error standard that incorporates the lessons of the last three decades about the realities of criminal justice.

Law Professor's Memoir of Schizophrenia

Elyn Saks opens her memoir, The Center Cannot Hold, with a scene every law student can identify with: three students working in the law library on a weekend night, trying to get a moot court brief done. But the action moves to something most students don't experience, hallucinations that lead her onto the law school's roof and, eventually, to the state mental hospital, where anti-psychotic medications are forced on her.

The memoir offers a gripping inside look at mental illness and its treatment. Saks was hospitalized in both England (when she was studying at Oxford) and the United States (when she was studying at Yale), and the contrast between the two mental hospitals is striking. Although many psychiatrists think that schizophrenia can only be treated with drugs, Saks has found benefit from a combination of talk therapy and medication.

The book's call number is RC464.S25 A3 2007 at Good Reads. Links: Publisher's page; WorldCat; Amazon.

Saks has not only lived with a diagnosis of schizophrenia, she has also been very successful professionally. Despite that incident on the roof, she finished law school and became an expert in mental health law.

She is the Orrin B. Evans Professor of Law, Psychology, and Psychiatry and the Behavioral Sciences at the University of Southern California. When she was awarded a MacArthur Foundation "genius" grant, she used the award to establish the Saks Institute for Mental Health Law, Policy, and Ethics at USC.

(This is another post in our series for Disability History Awareness Month.)

Living Voters Guide

From UW Today:

"The Living Voters Guide is powered for the Nov. 8 election, updated with the three statewide ballot initiatives, two state constitutional amendments and 120 local and regional measures.

Actually, the guide is powered by citizens. It’s a website that helps ordinary voters form and share their opinions with other people, together producing a citizen-written voters’ guide. The guide was created for the 2010 ballot initiatives, but this year, regional and local measures have been added along with additional means for sharing opinions."

The general election voters guide (and much more) is at the Secretary of State's Elections and Voting page.

United Nations Day

Today marks the anniversary of the United Nations coming into existence—the day when a majority of the original 51 signatories of the UN charter had ratified it. (Today there are 191 member states.)

For a quick overview of the UN, see The United Nations: An Introduction for Students.  More detail about this large and complex organization is here.

The UN system includes a number of specialized agencies, such as:

• World Bank
• International Monetary Fund
• International Maritime Organization
• World Health Organization
• World Intellectual Property Organization

If you want to observe Disability History Awareness month as you observe United Nations Day, check out the FAQs for the UN Secretariat for the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.

Graphic: mw

There's an App for . . . HeinOnline

HeinOnline--the go-to source for PDF images of law reviews--now offers an iPhone/iPad app!

It offers

image-based PDFs, access content by citation, browse by volume, navigate a volume with the electronic table of contents, and use full advanced searching techniques.

Correction: When you download the app, you will be asked to authenticate your access. The authentication will last for 30 days, at which time you will be asked to re-authenticate. So you don't need to use the Library's Off-Campus Access login as was first mentioned. Thanks to Mary Whisner for the correction.

Cameras in the Federal Courts

Since July, fourteen federal courts have been participating in a trial program [pun intended] for videotaping court proceedings. The U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington is one of the participants.

The Cameras in the Courts webpage identifies the courts,  provides an overview of the pilot program, links to the program's guidelines, and links to the videos. Currently the site provides videos of seven civil trials. No video from the Western District is available yet.

Three Degrees Project at UW School of Law

A think tank housed at The University of Washington School of Law is dedicated to promoting climate justice worldwide. Employing human rights discourse as a framework for addressing the problems of environmental degradation, Three Degrees Project “harnesses the power of the academy and the law to promote fair and equitable adaptation strategies in regions most vulnerable to climate impacts.”

Three Degrees was founded by Co-Executive Directors and former UW law students Jeni Barcelos and Jennifer Marlow. This leading climate justice center stemmed from a 2009 Conference at the UW School of Law that included a lecture by Mary Robinson, the first woman President of Ireland and the former United Nations High Commissioner on Human Rights. The mission of Three Degrees is to “design future institutions capable of addressing the human impacts of climate change and to assist climate-impacted communities in seeking compensation for climate harms.”

In borrowing from environmental and human rights law, Three Degrees has not only gone on speaking tours around the world, but has also implemented the following projects:

• Cambodia Project: Working with photojournalists Michael Harris and Kevin Ely, and the staff of Wildlife Alliance, Three Degrees produced a short video about the Southern Cardamom forest and the long-term threats posed by a titanium mine. 

• Climate Justice Seminar: Open to twenty-five students from across the UW, the course examines predicted climate futures in locations around the world where climate change is likely to harm marginalized populations, and to understand the limitations and strengths of international and domestic legal and policy systems to alleviate these impacts.

• Simulation Summits: Bringing local people together with scientists, legal experts, artists, and public health practitioners, Simulation Summits empower impacted communities to analyze climate threats specific to them. Simulation Summits identify responses to legal and policy barriers, which may include litigation, developing new fiscal mechanisms for supporting adaptation, creating international and domestic institutions for hearing climate claims, and increasing access to local legal and technical resources. 

In the near future, Three Degrees will be speaking at the Global Washington Conference: Opportunities and Obstacles in Turbulent Times located at the Microsoft Campus in Redmond, WA on October 31 and at the World Affairs Council Forum in Juneau, Alaska in mid-November.

Finding Historic Newspaper Articles

From time to time, you may need to find a news article as it appeared in its original format. It may seem like a challenging endeavor when the news article you are trying to locate is from 1911, instead of 2011!

There are many excellent sources for historical news. One resource you may want to try is the ProQuest Historical Newspapers database (UW Restricted).

Current coverage includes major newspaper such as The New York Times (1851 – 2007), The Wall Street Journal (1889 – 1993), the Los Angeles Times (1881 – 1987), and the Chicago Defender (1910 – 1975). Full-text articles are available in PDF format.

To find this database, go to the UW Libraries website (when you are working off-campus, be sure to log in with your UW NetID and password before connecting to a UW Restricted database).

Then, on the left side under "Find It," click on Subject Guides. The subject guides provide access to resources (article databases, catalogs, background information, web sites, and more) organized by topic, and are created by the librarians responsible for the areas of study listed.

Under "N," is a link to a subject guide for News. One of the choices on this page is a link to “News, pre-1990.” Look for the section on "Historical Newspapers," where you will see links to a number of news sources, including those mentioned above.

For historic news originating in Washington, see the Gallagher Law Library research guide Washington State News Sources Online.

Lawyers with Disabilities

How many lawyers with disabilities are there? What challenges do they face? What accommodations are offered in the workplace? See The Second National Conference on the Employment of Lawyers with Disabilities: A Report from the American Bar Association for the Legal Profession (2009) (99-page PDF).
Check out the Lawyers with Disabilities portal on the American Bar Association's website.
The ABA's Commission on Mental and Physical Disabilities offers a mentor program that "pairs prospective law students, law students, and recent law school graduates with disabilities with a mentor."
Prof. Donald Stone has studied several aspects of lawyers with disabilites, such as accommodations in taking the bar exam and mental health screening in bar admissions. His most recent work looks at the workplace:

Donald H. Stone, The Disabled Lawyers Have Arrived; Have They Been Welcomed with Open Arms into the Profession? An Empirical Study of the Disabled Lawyer, 27 Law & Ineq. 93 (2009). 

He summarizes:

This Article proceeds in seven parts. Part I briefly outlines the ADA's position on reasonable accommodations. Part II addresses how law firms are reacting and responding to the fact that they employ lawyers with mood disorders, such as depression or bipolar disorder, attorneys with learning disabilities, and individuals with alcohol or drug addiction. What disabilities are most often represented? Are lawyers with disabilities apt to receive work modifications to accommodate their disability? Are attorneys with mental illness provided with less stressful case assignments? Are lawyers with substance use disorders and alcohol or drug addiction assigned co-counsel to monitor or offer support to the disabled individual?

Part III of this Article outlines the annual ABA report on lawyers with disabilities, which includes recommendations as to how employers should accommodate disabled persons from the hiring process through employment. A fundamental concern underlying the provision of reasonable accommodations within the law firm is the potentially negative impact on client representation. Part IV of this Article analyzes the balancing act of providing reasonable accommodations to the disabled lawyer and the importance of providing competent representation to the client. Part V examines attorney disciplinary proceedings pursuant to the Model Rules of Professional Conduct in order to shed light on the issues related to the disabled lawyer. Part VI discusses and analyzes court decisions in the area of reasonable accommodations in the workplace to note the impact of the ADA and the direction in which courts are heading as they tackle this challenging and significant area of law.
Empirical data contained in this Article serves as a backdrop for purposes of elaboration and comparison of these and other questions. Attorneys from fifty law firms in nine states were surveyed to obtain data and their opinions on questions relating to employment accommodations by law firms. Because of the significant number of disabled lawyers entering the workforce and seeking modifications and accommodations, such an inquiry is well warranted. Law firms are beginning to grapple with the disabled lawyer's claim for fair and equitable treatment, while still serving their clients to the best of their ability. Part VII presents and analyzes this empirical data. In conclusion, this Article offers recommendations regarding fair and equitable reasonable accommodations for disabled lawyers in the workplace.

For more of his work, see Prof. Stone's SSRN page.

Happy Disability History Awareness Month!

Film and Discussion: Civil Rights in 1961 and 2011

Organizers of the National Immigrant Integration Conference, taking place Oct. 24-26, invite the public to an evening event on Tues., Oct. 25: Connecting Across Movements and Generations 50 Years Later

Acclaimed film maker and Emmy-winning MacArthur "genius" fellow Stanley Nelson will share clips from his documentary "Freedom Riders," an inspiring documentary of the more than 400 black and white Americans risked their lives to end legal segregation in the Deep South.
The Freedom Riders endured savage beatings and imprisonment to assert their humanity and to challenge the federal government to intervene on the side of justice. Today, our country desperately needs fresh energy from diverse people working together to enlarge social and economic justice. DREAM activists - undocumented young people who have been "coming out" by the hundreds - have been called the Freedom Riders of our day. Together with people of all ages and backgrounds, they are taking profound risks in standing up for immigrants and refugees as integral members of American society. 
Join us a rare and inspiring dialogue between civil rights activists and participants in the immigrant rights' movement as they exchange stories and lessons.

This event is free and open to the public. Tuesday, Oct. 25, 6:30-8 pm, Westin Hotel Grand Ballroom.

You can watch "Freedom Riders" here:

Watch Freedom Riders on PBS. See more from American Experience.

Ginsburg's Advice to Judges: Dare to Disagree

At the National Association of Women Judges conference in Newark last week, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg "offered a piece of advice: Dare to disagree."

"It is a subject that I have had the occasion to talk on quite often," Ginsburg said to laughter, referring to her long career on the bench and the many Supreme Court cases in which she has sided with the dissenting opinion.

. . .

The petite, 78-year-old jurist, who was appointed to the Supreme Court in 1993, traced the history of dissension in the courts, starting as early as Justice Benjamin Curtis’ 1857 dissent in the Dred Scott Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg offers advice to female Newark judgesCase. In the infamous ruling, the Supreme Court’s majority opinion said that people of African descent in the United States could not become citizens.

"On rare occasions, a dissent turns the court and becomes the opinion of the court," Ginsburg said last night.

She noted that often a well articulated opinion can spark action, as occurred after her dissent in the 2007 Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. case.

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg offers advice to female Newark judgesN.J. Star-Ledger, Oct. 16, 2011.

Justice Ginsburg has been interested in the role of dissents for some time. In 1989, when she was still on the D.C. Circuit, she spoke on the topic at UW Law. See Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Remarks on Writing Separately, 65 Wash. L. Rev. 133 (1990), HeinOnline, WLR archive.

You can see Prof. Schnapper's interview of Lily Ledbetter, the plaintiff in Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co., on UW Law's Multimedia Gallery.

Juvenile Crime in Seattle

A new report from the U.S. Justice Department's Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention focuses on Hot Spots of Juvenile Crime: Findings from Seattle.

This study is "the first to identify where juveniles commit crimes and how these places differ from hot spots of adult crime. Over a 14-year period from 1989 to 2002, researchers mapped all crime incidents in Seattle in which a juvenile between ages 8 and 17 was arrested. They located juvenile crime hot spots, determined juvenile crime trends, and identified risk factors for juvenile crime."

Disability History Awareness Month

A few years ago, the Washington legislature found that

annually recognizing disability history throughout our entire public educational system, from kindergarten through grade twelve and at our colleges and universities, during the month of October will help to increase awareness and understanding of the contributions that people with disabilities in our state, nation, and the world have made to our society.

Lawmakers also hoped to "increase respect and promote acceptance and inclusion of people with disabilities" and to "inspire students with disabilities to feel a greater sense of pride, reduce harassment and bullying, and help keep students with disabilities in school." Laws of 2008, ch. 167, § 2.  See RCW 28A.230.158 (K-12) and 28B.10.918 (higher ed).

Our Disability History Month blog posts began with a global perspective, looking at the World Report on Disability.  Watch for more posts over the next couple of weeks.

Middle Eastern & Islamic Resources

If you need Middle Eastern and Islamic resources for your research the Gallagher Law Library has access to the rich collection of the Center for Research Libraries (CRL). Through the UW Libraries’ membership in CRL we can request materials owned by this specialized library. Send your requests to our Resource Sharing Librarian at lawlibil@u.washington.edu.

To find out more about some of the resources and how researchers have benefited from the resources at CRL read the current issue of Focus on Global Resources which features Middle Eastern and Islamic resources. One of the types of resources that CRL collects are dissertations from countries outside the United States. Doing a quick search for “Islamic law” yielded a number of results ranging from The Journal of Islamic Law to dissertations such as The role of islamic law in commercial litigation in North Yemen [microform] / Isam Muhammad Ghanem (1987, University of London doctoral thesis).

Focus on Global Resources, Fall 2011, v.31, no.1, Middle Eastern & Islamic Resources:
http://www.crl.edu/focus

HeinOnline's History of Bankruptcy & the U.S. Bankruptcy Appellate Panel of the Ninth Circuit Come to UW Law

In nearly every modern State the situation of a trader who has ceased to pay his debts as they mature in the ordinary course of business is regulated by special provisions of law... the public interest is so closely involved, by reason of the plurality of creditors who have claims against the debtor, that in most countries the intervention of a public authority has been thought necessary to adjust the conflicting rights, and to discover and punish any wrong-doing.

S. Whitney Dunscomb, Bankruptcy; A Study in Comparative Legislation 9 (1893).

The tradition of regulating the reorganization of assets and liabilities of insolvents with special provisions of law has continued since before Dunscomb's time to the present. Today, bankruptcies are heard by federal bankruptcy district courts and bankruptcy appeals in the Ninth Circuit are usually referred to the U.S. Bankruptcy Appellate Panel (BAP) of the Ninth Circuit for disposition. The Law School will be hosting the BAP of the Ninth Circuit on Friday, October 21, 2011 while the panel holds hearings for four appeals.

Coincidentally, the Law Library just began a subscription to a new HeinOnline library; HeinOnline's History of Bankruptcy is considered Part III of Taxation and Economic Reform in America. If you happen to be one of the fortunate students or faculty attending the luncheon with the BAP after their hearings, you may want to impress your colleagues and the BAP by browsing and sharing information from one of the resources provided in the History of Bankruptcy Library. It includes legislative histories, treatises, documents and more related to bankruptcy law in America. It also includes classic books dating back to the late 1800s and links to scholarly articles that are related to the study of bankruptcy in America.

Photo Credit: Preservation Virginia

This small brick structure located in Accomac, Virginia was originally built in 1782 as a jailer's residence until 1824 when iron bars, oak doors, and locks were added and it was used as a debtors' prison until 1849.

Video: How to Use FDsys

The University of Colorado, Boulder, released another informative video, "How to Use FDsys."

FDsys, the Government Printing Office's Federal Digital System, provides free access to official federal government publications. Collections include the Code of Federal Regulations and the Federal Register; Congressional Record; Compilation of Presidential Documents; public and private laws; the United States Code; and congressional bills, reports, and some hearings.

How to Use FDsys is a companion to an earlier, quite entertaining video, "What is FDsys?"