A Guide to Translations of Foreign Legal Texts into English

Members of the Law Library of Congress have written a guide to Translation of National Legislation into English (March 2012).

This 46-page book provides information on the official languages and legal materials for 13 countries, several international organizations, and international courts and tribunals. The countries included are:

• Afghanistan
• Argentina
• Brazil
• China
• France
• Germany
• Greece
• Israel
• Italy
• Japan
• Lebanon
• Mexico
• Russia

You might use this title in conjunction with the Foreign Law Guide, a commercial database to which the Gallagher Law Library subscribes.

[Word cloud from Crethi Pleithi, Middle East News].

Peep Up for Your Favorite Peepshow

The inaugural Gallagher Law Library National Library Week Peepshow is now on display. Take a look and then vote for your favorite entry in each of our three categories:

• Legal Peeple
• Library Peeple
• Peeples' Choice

Follow the link at the top of the page to the Catalyst WebQ Survey to place your votes. You will be prompted to login with your UW NetID.

Note that we slyly did not include the names of the peeple who submitted entries. [One group identified its members in their submission.] We want you to judge the peep pics uninfluenced by the names of their creators.

And join us on Thursday, April 12, from 5-7pm for the Library-sponsored TGIT, celebrating National Library Week. Expect a peepin' good time!

Lotteries, Luck, and a Smidgeon of Law

With $640 Million Dollars up for grabs last week, chances are some of our readers caught the Mega Millions lottery fever! Nationwide three winning tickets were sold, one each in Maryland, Illinois, and Kansas. Mirlande Wilson, a 37 year-old Maryland woman, claims to have purchased the winning ticket. But she has a slight problem: a dozen of her coworkers with whom she participated in an office pool for that drawing are irate. 

Perhaps unsurprisingly, this isn’t the first time lottery winners have been accused of cutting out fellow pool players. Litigating lottery “luck” is actually quite popular. Americo Lopes of New Jersey won a sizable jackpot in 2010.  Unfortunately for him, the winning ticket was one he purchased with pooled money from his coworkers. Coworkers who subsequently sued him. Less than a month ago, a jury returned a civil verdict against Mr. Lopes. Lest you find yourself in similar straits, FindLaw has a few good tips for participation in office pools and their legality in your jurisdiction. It is also an excellent resource for lottery-related law, including a database of state lottery laws. If Lady Luck was on your side, and you won more than the money required for a cup o’ joe, keep in mind that you aren't as rich as you think you are and make sure you pay your federal and state taxes. 

For an interesting read on the long sordid history of lotteries, and the legal means used to prohibit and regulate them, check out Law of Lotteries, Frauds, and Obscenity in the Mails, by John Lilburn Thomas (1903).  This title is available electronically at the Gallagher Law Library through HeinOnline's Legal Classics Library.

International Law Book Awards

The American Society of International Law has announced its 2012 awards in a number of areas. Here are the authors and books that were honored.

• Nico Krisch, Beyond Constitutionalism: The Pluralist Structure of Postnational Law (2011) — ASIL Certificate of Merit for a preeminent contribution to creative scholarship. The Awards Committee said that Kirsch "defends a pluralist account of international law – one that lacks hierarchically orientated actors or norms." His book’s "thought-provoking analysis stands to reframe debates about the nature of international law," the report went on to say.Publisher's page.


• International Law in the U.S. Supreme Court: Continuity and Change (David L. Sloss, Michael D. Ramsey & William S. Dodge eds., 2011) – Certificate of Merit for high technical craftsmanship and utility to practicing lawyers and scholars. The Awards Committee stated that the book presents "a comprehensive and thoughtful look at a body of law that, while existing, has not previously been brought to light." This work "promises to be the preeminent reference source in its field." Publisher's page.


• Sundhya Pahuja, Decolonising International Law: Development, Economic Growth, and the Politics of Universality (2011) – Certificate of Merit in a specialized area of international law. Pahuja "provides an important contribution to international development law and Third World Approaches to International Law scholarship," the Awards Committee said. This work helps illuminate "problematic dynamics in the international legal system and pathways towards a more equitable approach." Publisher's page.


• Ruti Teitel, Humanity’s Law (2011) – Honorable Mention in a specialized area of international law for Humanity’s Law. Publisher's page.

Last year's winners were:

• Jutta Brunnée & Stephen J. Toope  for their book Legitimacy and Legality in International Law: An Interactional Account (2010) – Certificate of Merit for a preeminent contribution to creative scholarship.
• Gary D. Solis, The Law of Armed Conflict (2010) – Certificate of Merit in a specialized area of international law.
• Gary B. Born, International Commercial Arbitration (2009) – Certificate of Merit for high technical craftsmanship and utility to practicing lawyers and scholars.
• Kal Raustiala, Does the Constitution Follow the Flag?: The Evolution of Territoriality in American Law (2009) – Honorable Mention for a preeminent contribution to creative scholarship.
• Anne T. Gallagher, The International Law of Human Trafficking (2010) –  Honorable Mention in a specialized area of international law.

And the winners from 2010 were:

• Beth A. Simmons, Mobilizing for Human Rights: International Law in Domestic Politics (2009) – Certificate of Merit for a preeminent contribution to creative scholarship.
  
• Mark Osiel, The End of Reciprocity: Terror, Torture, and the Law of War (2009) – Certificate of Merit in a specialized area of international law.
  
• Chester Brown, A Common Law of International Adjudication (2007) – Certificate of Merit for high technical craftsmanship and utility to practicing lawyers and scholars.

Free Case Law

It has been reported elsewhere that free case law through LexisNexis (whether from LexisONE or LexisNexis Communities) is no longer available. LexisNexis now states that, "Our case law collection is now only available through a subscription to Lexis Advance™ or lexis.com®."

For those of you who are students, you are probably unfazed by this news, since you still have unlimited access to LexisNexis and Westlaw. But when you graduate, and suddenly have to pay for your legal research, free, low-cost alternatives may suddenly matter more to you.

Do not despair! The library still has reporters! You can come and search for and update cases in print! Or, if you do not want to do that, there are plenty of other resources for free online legal material. The Gallagher Law Library is creating some new pages regarding free online material (more on that will come later) but in the meantime, here are a few free case law options to help fill the gaping hole left in your life:

FDsys: The GPO and the Administrative Office of the United States Courts have teamed together for a pilot project, United States Courts Opinions - Beta, which allows you to search opinions back to 2004. You can also search from the main universal search bar, and then narrow by United States Courts Opinions.

Google Scholar: Click the "Legal opinions and journals" radio button and get to work.

Justia.com: An easily searchable and browseable collection of free case law.

These are by no means the only options; the Internet for Lawyers post lists several others. The amount of free, searchable case law available online is becoming more complete and easier to access all the time.

Happy searching!

[Photo credit to j3net.]

April Fools' Round-Up

I enjoy a good spoof, and April 1 is a day when they often appear. This year's crop seemed smaller than usual (maybe because April 1 was a Sunday). I thought I'd share what I found:

• New Subcite Policy for the Harvard Law Review, Et Seq.: The Harvard Law School Library Blog, April 1, 2012. "The editors of the Harvard Law Review have revised their subcite policies by requiring not only the preservation of PDF copies of all sources cited but also the carbon-freezing of all authors cited."


•  April Fools! The Year's Best Library Pranks, Inside Scoop (American Libraries), April 4, 2012. Includes links to a report of Amazon using its legal personhood to run for president, Google Really Advanced Search, and a speech arguing against the public domain in copyright law.


• April Fools 2012: We Ruin Every (Tech-Related) Joke on the Internets, TechCrunch, April 1, 2012. Includes a video of Google Maps 8-bit for NES. I liked Gmail Tap, too: "It's 'a new input method designed for the future,' where every letter of the alphabet is represented by a series of dots and dashes."


• NPR offers a variety of faux headlines ("More Teens 'Going Amish,' Shunning Technology") and other treats here.

The Messy Business of Art Theft and Inheritance

Detail from Edgar Degas' "Dancer Making Points"

Heiress Huguette Clark, daughter of Montana copper king and U.S. Senator William Clark, died nearly a year ago. However, a legal battle rages on, involving relatives and her $400 million estate. Much of the dispute touches on the theft of a Degas painting of a ballerina from her Fifth Avenue apartment in the early 1990’s.

Details surrounding the disappearance of the Degas are vague. Reclusive and guarded, Clark advised her attorney and the FBI not to pursue the theft and did not report it to the Art Loss Register. In 2005, the painting was discovered to be hanging in the home of Henry Bloch, an art collector and co-founder of H&R Block. Although Clark claimed the work was stolen, Bloch and his wife claimed they purchased it in good faith. Clark and Bloch quietly arranged a deal that allowed the Blochs to keep the painting.


Clark signed a deed, donating the Degas to the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, where the Blochs are benefactors. The Blochs gave up ownership and Clark benefited from the income tax deduction for the gift, appraised at $10 million. The Nelson-Atkins Museum agreed to loan the painting to the Blochs, allowing them to keep it in their home. Upon their deaths, the painting will be returned to the museum. The museum required a statement from a doctor that Clark was of sound mind when she donated the painting. Clark’s physician signed an affidavit to that effect. The agreement was kept secret, including from most of the museum’s trustees and staff. In October 2008, the trade was completed.


Clark died in May 2011 at the age of 104. She had signed two wills in 2005, a mere six weeks apart. The first left nearly all of her assets to her family. The second cut out her family entirely; included plans for an art museum at her Santa Barbara home; and left substantial gifts to her nurse, the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C, her doctor, her attorney, her accountant, and others. Clark’s family questions the involvement of Clark’s doctor, nurse, attorney, and accountant in her affairs, each of whom benefits substantially from her second will. No doubt this legal fight will not be resolved for quite some time. To follow the continuing drama, read more about the Huguette Clark mystery on MSNBC's website.

Art crime encompasses only one area of art law. Others include intellectual property, international law, and cultural heritage. If you have a legal research need in the area of art law, you may find these resources helpful:

·       Art Law: The Guide for Collectors, Investors, Dealers, and Artists by Ralph E. Lerner & Judith Bresler (3d ed. 2005) (KF4288 .L47 2005)

·       Art Law in a Nutshell by Leonard D. DuBoff and Christy O. King (4th ed. 2006) (KF4288 .Z9 D8 2006)

·       Art, Artifact, Architecture and Museum Law by Jessica Darraby (2010)

Available electronically on Westlaw (ARTARCHLAW)

photo credit: Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art

Court Journalist Anthony Lewis

The great journalist Anthony Lewis made a specialty of covering the Supreme Court and constitutional issues. In addition to his classic book, Gideon's Trumpet (1964) and countless articles for the New York Times, he's written:

• The Supreme Court: Process and Change (1963)
• Portrait of a Decade: The Second American Revolution (1964) (civil rights)
• The Supreme Court and How It Works: The Story of the Gideon Case (1966)(a children's book)*
• Make No Law: The Sullivan Case and the First Amendment (1991)
• Freedom for the Thought That We Hate: A Biography of the First Amendment (2007).
• Written into History: Pulitzer Prize Reporting of the Twentieth Century from the New York Times (2001)(edited by Lewis) (the articles included include a wide range of topics, from major world events to local stories you might never have heard of; it would be handy for someone who only has a few minutes at a time for non-required reading).

UW Law graduate Adam Eisenberg recently interview Anthony Lewis. You can read part one of the interview, with Lewis's thoughts on the Supreme Court, on HNN, the History News Network (April 2, 2012). Part two will be posted next week.

* I didn't realize it when I wrote this post an hour and a half ago, but today is International Children's Book Day. Isn't it cool that Lewis adapted Gideon's Trumpet so kids could learn about the Supreme Court and the right to counsel?

Even More Citation Guidance

The legal world has been abuzz since the announcement today by the editors of The Bluebook: A Uniform System of Citation that they are publishing a supplement to their ubiquitous citation guide.

The Bluebook has developed over its 19 editions from a slender pamphlet in 1926 (the PDF is just 28 pages) to the spiral-bound, cross-referenced behemoth beloved used by thousands of students today. But never before has it included a supplement. Since the base volume has no pocket to hold a pocket part, this one will be slipped into a special envelope to be affixed to the back cover.

Of course the big news is not the fact of a supplement, but the reason for it and what it does. Said Margaret Pease, Executive editor of the Harvard Law Review and leader of the four-journal team that publishes the Bluebook, "We realized that more and more significant legal commentary is being published on the Web, and the existing citation rules didn't take full advantage of the typographical versatility made possible by the medium." Since blogs and e-journals are enlivened by splashes of color, the supplementary citation rules use it to designate types of authority. For example, newspaper articles are to be cited in orange:

Adam Liptak, Recession Creates Opportunity for Alternative Law Firm Structures, N.Y. Times, Jan. 15, 2009, at A4.

However, tabloid newspapers are cited in orange with a yellow highlight: Eve Jenkins, Proof of Space Aliens in White House, Nat'l Enquirer, Sept. 17, 2011, at 1.

Law review pieces are not created equal, so the new rules allow you to show the seniority of the author: inexperienced, student authors in green, untenured faculty in brown, and tenured faculty and Article III judges in regal purple:

• Jordan Lee, Note, An Earnest and Thorough Exploration of a Recent Case, 52 Wash. L. Rev. 125 (1980)
• Jordan Lee, Critical Tensions in the Mailbox Rule: Toward a New Paradigm, 62 Wash. L. Rev. 51 (1990)
• Jordan Lee, Contract Law and Theory: My Thoughts, 72 Wash. L. Rev. 1 (2000)

Political leanings of judges may be indicated by red and blue:

• (Scalia, J.)
• (Ginsburg, J.)

Since many readers do not immediately perceive the subtleties of introductory signals, the Bluebook now allows authors to indicate the weight they attach to authority typographically as well as with signals, e.g.:

• See Adams v. Woodbury, 121 F.3d 999 (2d Cir. 2009)
• But see Richards v. Keith, 142 F.3d 209 (10th Cir. 2010)

All in all, this supplement shows great promise for communicating the value of authority.

April Fools' Day!

If one of your classmates has been groaning about reading those 400 pages for your next class on Monday, double check the assignment before you take her word for it. Actually, she's probably not joking and you most likely do have to read 400 pages. But you might not, because it is April 1!

Even Supreme Court Justices are not above a little bit of April foolery: Chief Justice William Rehnquist once put a life-size photo of Chief Justice Warren Burger on the the front steps of the Supreme Court Building with a sign asking tourists to pay $1 to get a picture with the Chief Justice. Then he then drove the Chief Justice by those steps so he could see his reaction to this prank. (S. Doc 109-7, p. 18).

It is probably not a surprise that more than one April Fools' Day joke has become the subject of a court case. Westlaw listed some last year. A couple other cases:

Dow Jones & Co., Inc. v. Harrods Ltd. 346 F.3d 357 (2d Cir. 2003): "To the question “What is in a joke?”, this lawsuit gives a decidedly wooden answer: a federal case."

In re Schivo, 462 B.R. 765 (Bankr. D. Nev. 2011): The court held that the attorney failed to act as reasonably competent attorney, partly because he filed a motion to reopen based solely on April 1st press release which, among other things, stated that President Bush was expected to sign a new law while aboard AirForce One. A good reminder to make sure you perform competent research!

Feel free to send us other entertaining April Fools' Day cases or stories. And check out this Gallagher page for more examples of judicial humor!

[Image is the 1996 Taco Bell April Fools' Day prank]

True Religion Wins Default Judgment in Counterfeit Suit

For any denim worshipper, a sale on a favorite brand of jeans is as much of a miracle as manna falling from the heavens or feeding thousands on five loaves of bread and two fish. It probably seemed too good to be true when it appeared that True Religion was selling their jeans at a fraction of the normal retail cost on discount websites. And it was.

According to the Los Angeles Times, global trade of counterfeit goods is estimated at well over $600 billion dollars a year. As a result, True Religion - among many brands - has been fighting counterfeits for years and paying their counsel and anti-counterfeit enforcers handsomely to protect brand integrity and put a stop to the misuse of their label. The investment in their legal representation seems to have paid off when earlier this month a New York district court judge ordered more than a hundred websites selling counterfeit True Religion jeans out of China to pay True Religion $8.15 million each, for a total of $864 million in damages.

Whether True Religion will ever see any of these damages is unknown but perhaps the true success for the denim brand is that the judge also ordered that all of the sites be disabled and their domain names transferred to True Religion. Hallelujah.

If the thought of counterfeits makes your blood boil, check out Brand Integrity: Strategies for Fighting Contraband and Counterfeit Goods, by Craig A. Stewart, Anthony J. Franze, and Evelina Norwinski. KF3197.5.B73 2011 at Classified Stacks.

Look at Northwest History!

Two new books in our Good Reads collection allow you to see Northwest history through maps and documents.

Derek Hayes, Historical Atlas of Washington and Oregon (F891.H39 2011 at Good Reads) has lots of maps, as you'd expect from the title, but also includes essays discussing the context and significance of the maps. And there are drawings and photographs, too—for example, the section on water and power (pp. 186-91) includes maps, a vintage brochure of the Skagit Power Project, a diagram of the Bonneville Dam, and a 1937 ad proclaiming that "Seattle's Model Kitchens are All-Electric."

Obviously, historical maps could be of interest to legal scholars looking at property and land use. But this book touches on many more legal topics, for example, Indian law, environmental and natural resources law, and civil rights. (Color maps of the Japanese Evacuation Program from a 1943 report are on p. 196.)

Lorraine McConaghy, New Land, North of the Columbia: Historic Documents That Tell the Story of Washington State from Territory to Today (F891.M447 2011 at Good Reads) has a wide range of documentary material: postcards, photographs, posters, legal documents, newspaper stories, menus, even a paper doll (p. 95).

In just the first thirty pages, you can see the first marriage certificate in King County (Arthur Denny married Louisa Boren) (p. 3), the Point Elliott Treaty between the federal government and several tribes (pp. 4-5), the inventory of a decedent's estate in 1874 (p. 17), documents about anti-Chinese violence in 1885-86 (pp. 22-23), the summons in a case about women's suffrage (p. 27), the telegraph announcing Washington's statehood on Nov. 11, 1889 (p. 28).

A brochure (p. 102) asks Congress to investigate the size of the Olympic National Park—some citizens thought that it was too large; more should be in the National Forest and hence available for logging and other productive uses.

 (This dispute is also in the Historical Atlas, at 153, where another image shows that the park is bigger than Rhode Island.)

You can also see flyers from the local elections to create Metro and clean up Lake Washington (p. 106), to save the Pike Place Market (p. 117), and to fund the Kingdome (p. 121).

There's a handwritten letter from Washington Territory's surveyor-general in 1860, protesting the actions of Canadians who had helped his slave escape to Victoria (p. 11).

You can browse information and documents about industry, culture, labor, war. A poster for the 1995 Lesbian/Gay/Bisexual/Transgender Pride March/Parde & Freedom Rally in Seattle (p. 137), the application for a patent on what became the Sonicare toothbrush (p. 136), documents from the Industrial Workers of the World (pp. 68-69), a songbook from the Senior Loyal Temperance Legion (p. 56), . . . I could go on and on, but I'll stop with one more: a Seattle Times magazine section cover, "The Girl in the Cigar Factory," from a series on Seattle working women (p. 40).

These books are packed with information as well as with beautiful and arresting images. Take a look!

Take Me Out to the Ball Game!

This Wednesday, the Seattle Mariners and the Oakland Athletics will open their regular season. If you are already burning the midnight oil to get a jumpstart on the quarter, you do not have to go to bed at all! You can just stay awake until 3:10AM (the game is being played in Japan, at 7:10PM Japanese Standard Time).

Some of you may be more inclined to sleep. However, if you are looking for something to read before bed*, check out:

The Little White Book of Baseball Law, by John H. Minan and Kevin Cole. Available in the Good Reads section.

Also, if you are looking to brush up on your baseball and legal knowledge, check out Oyez Baseball, a baseball-and-supreme-court-trivia game that bills itself as “building Supreme Court knowledge through America’s favorite pastime.”

*Recommended bedtime reading means that it is fun, not that it is boring and will put you to sleep.

Photo of Safeco Field by SD Dirk.

National Library Week Peepshow Contest

No doubt many of you are already planning how you will celebrate National Library Week, April 8-14, 2012. And why not, given how vital the Law Library and its staff are to your academic success!

I have one more event to add to your crowded schedules: The Inaugural Gallagher Law Library Peepshow Contest!

Grab some peeps (the colorful candy variety) and stage them in humorous or dramatic vignettes. Then snap a photo and send it to Cheryl Nyberg, with a title and short description (if the image doesn't peep for itself). Short films are also acceptable.

Submit your entry in one of these categories:

• Legal Peeple
• Library Peeple
• Peeple's Choice (any theme that is not law and/or library-related

The entry deadline is Monday, April 9th.

Voting for the winner in each category will begin on Tuesday, April 10th and winners will be announced on lucky Friday the 13th.

Here are some additional contest rules:

1. All entries must be original. That is, you cannot reproduce a setting from the American Bar Association's Peeps in the Law contests or similar Peeps-featured settings. You may, however, derive inspiration from these sources.
2. Entries may be submitted by individuals or groups.
3. Entrants agree to permit the Gallagher Law Library to use submitted images and movies in noncommercial advertising or promotion.
4. The contest is open to students, faculty, and staff of the University of Washington School of Law.

Need some ideas?

• Thirteen Famous Librarians (Real and Fictional)

• Peep Research: A Study of Small Fluffy Creatures and Library Usage

Podcasts: Your Way to a Better Life

Judd Apatow was on NPR's radio show Fresh Air in 2009 where he explained that to distract himself when falling asleep, he began listening to podcasts, in particular Fresh Air, which is simply the radio show available for download as an mp3 file on iTunes or on the NPR website. Oddly enough, I was listening to this particular episode while trying to fall asleep after a stressful day at the office, and it was reassuring to know I wasn't the only one out there who had discovered the escapism of podcasts. Oftentimes they're better than a book when trying to fall asleep because you can simply turn off the lights, close your eyes, and listen. I found this particularly helpful when studying for the Washington State bar exam, and I wish podcasts had been around when I sat for law school exams!

But podcasts aren't just great for soothing the troubled mind. They're also a fantastic way to distract yourself when you exercise and can help you learn something new.
Training for a marathon or simply trying to squeeze in a 20 minute walk and some distraction? From NPR, try Wait Wait...Don't Tell Me!, This American Life, The Splendid Table. If you're a comedian-in-training, podcasts can be a goldmine with everyone from Marc Maron to Doug Benson to Riki Lindhome producing free podcasts. (Just a warning, though: comedy podcasts may contain objectionable content.)
Another pair of podcasts produced in part by the Discovery Channel have shorter, often humorous explainers to educate you in a painless way: Stuff You Should Know and Stuff You Missed in History Class.

Podcasts can also be a way to learn about a new area of law or keep up-to-date on current legal issues. Handel on the Law covers common legal issues in a newsy way, and a number of universities post law lectures on iTunes.

So the next time you're looking for a distraction, try a podcast. They're usually free and entertaining---two of my favorite qualities in a distraction.

Photo credits. Judd Apatow: www.imdb.com and Runners: Microsoft Office Clip Art

Gomulkiewicz on Open Source Software Licenses

Robert W. Gomulkiewicz, Enforcement of Open Source Software Licenses: The MDY Trio's Inconvenient Complications, 14 Yale J. L. & Tech. 106-37 (2011), available at http://ssrn.com/abstract=1790022.

In his latest article, Professor Gomulkiewicz carefully examines three software licensing cases decided by the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit: Vernor v. Autodesk, 621 F.3d 1102 (9th Cir. 2010) [Court Westlaw LexisNexis]; MDY Industries v. Blizzard Entertainment, 629 F.3d 928 (9th Cir. 2010) [Court Westlaw LexisNexis]; and UMG Recordings v. Augusto, 628 F.3d 1175 (9th Cir. 2010) [Court Westlaw LexisNexis], which he calls the “MDY Trio.” He suggests a refinement to the license versus first sale test articulated by the Ninth Circuit in these cases, as well as an alternative approach to differentiating between a contract covenant and a license condition.

The article is organized in three sections. Section I describes open source licenses and enforceability under the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit’s opinion in Jacobsen v. Katzer, 535 F.3d 1373 (Fed. Cir. 2008) [Court Westlaw LexisNexis]. Section II discusses the first sale doctrine and end user license agreements, and further delves into the “inconvenient complications” arising from the MDY Trio. Section III explains the difference between conditions and covenants, and proposes a multifactor, sliding scale approach in the context of injunctive relief.

NPR's Legal Crossword Puzzle

From NPR:

A Legal Puzzle: Crossword Feature / by Bill Chappell

In the next two weeks, the Supreme Court will hear arguments about issues that range from sentencing guidelines to mandatory health insurance. To help readers get in the mindset for news from the court, we've prepared a special crossword puzzle, inspired by the reporting of NPR's legal affairs correspondent, Nina Totenberg.

ProQuest Databases Down for Maintenance This Weekend

Many of the ProQuest databases to which the UW Libraries subscribe will be down for scheduled maintenance this weekend, March 17 and 18. Among the affected titles are:

• Alt-Press Watch
• ERIC (education-related literature)
• Historical Newspapers: Chicago Defender, Los Angeles Times, New York Times, Wall Street Journal
• Index Islamicus
• PAIS (public affairs literature)

Is C. Wonder a Tory Burch Rip-Off?

When Tory Burch created her gorgeous flats, female attorneys everywhere rejoiced that they no longer needed to hoof in 4-inch pumps to court but could wear comfortable, courtroom appropriate, and beautiful flats! Tory may have to wear some of her flats to court as well due to some issues with her ex-husband, Chris Burch.

Chris Burch recently stepped down from his co-chair position at the Tory Burch brand. While the couple has remained publicly amicable since their 2006 divorce, trouble seems to be brewing between their brands.

Rumor has it that Tory Burch is upset by similarities in her ex-husband's new fashion line, C. Wonder to her own namesake brand. A recent New York Magazine article detailed similarities in brand items and discussed former Tory Burch employees who have since moved on to C. Wonder. Tory Burch was awarded $164 million last summer in a suit against online counterfeiters - whether the company will pursue claims

against former co-chair Chris Burch for perceived similarities in his brand, C. Wonder or a breach of fiduciary duty remains to be seen.

The conflict is fraught with potential trademark law issues, corporate law issues, family law issues and community vs. separate property issues. The library has a myriad of relevant resources. See our trademark law research guide, corporate law research guide, and family law research guide. All the potential issues could cause major migraines for attorneys on both sides, but hey, at least their feet won't be hurting!

Photo Credit 1: Tory Burch

Photo Credit 2: New York Magazine

Law Students and Their Laptops in Class

If you sit in the back of a classroom, you can spot some laptop screens with Facebook, ESPN, or Spider solitaire, but you also see screens with notes or class-related texts. Some students seem to be doing non-class stuff most of the time, while others just pop into email for a moment here and there.

Critics think all of this is a sign that students are not committed to their education. But what's really going on?

Kim Novak Morse, a professor at Saint Louis University, is working on a Ph.D. in higher education and took on the laptop-in-class issue for her dissertation research. She found that most students are on-task most of the time. In her sample, second-year students were off-task more than either 1Ls or 3Ls. And, perhaps surprisingly, the students who were off-task the most often did just fine in the class: there was no correlation (negative or positive) between time off-task and grade. See Karen Sloan, 2Ls are worst offenders when it comes to laptops vs. lectures, Nat'l L.J. Feb. 29, 2012.

For more detail, see this handout from a presentation Prof. Morse gave at a conference on law teaching at New York Law School last June: Redirecting Laptop Users' Attention: Lessons from the Field.

Sunshine Week 2012 Webcast

Sunshine Week 2012 Webcast: Secrecy, Disclosure and the Risks for Security and Accountability
Friday, March 16, 2012
10:15am – 12:30pm
Univ. of Washington Research Commons Green A. The Research Commons is located in the Allen Library (South Wing).

This year’s discussion, “Secrecy, Disclosure and the Risks for Security and Accountability,” will feature two panels. The first panel will focus on the topic of whistleblowers and the press. The second panel will discuss secret government and secret laws. For more information on this year’s speakers, see http://www.openthegovernment.org/node/3375

Please join us on Friday, March 16 on the UW campus to watch the national webcast.

About Sunshine Week:
March 11 – 17, 2012 is Sunshine Week: Your Right to Know. Sunshine Week is a national initiative to promote a dialogue about the importance of open government and freedom of information.

Sunshine Week 2012 National Dialogue is brought to you in celebration of Sunshine Week by the American Association of Law Libraries, American Library Association, Association of Research Libraries, League of Women Voters, National Freedom of Information Coalition, OMB Watch, OpenTheGovernment.org, Project On Government Oversight, Sunshine Week, Special Libraries Association, and the Sunlight Foundation.

Library Hours During Interim Week

The Law Library will operate on a reduced schedule during the week of interim between the end of Winter quarter classes and the beginning of Spring quarter classes.

The Law Library will be closed on the following days and dates:

• Saturday - Monday, March 17 - 19
• Saturday - Sunday, March 24 - 25

Tuesday through Friday, March 20 - 23, the Library will open from 8am - 5pm and the Reference Office will be open from 9am - 12noon and from 1 - 4pm.

Is Your Speech Being Jammed?

What would you do if all of a sudden you weren't able to speak?

The savvy editors at the technology review blog at MIT identified a new technology that could very directly disrupt one's free speech rights. The device is a curious black box sitting on a trigger handle. When pointed at people and activated it can completely befuddle speakers, causing them to break down in a stuttering mess.

The actual paper by Kurihara and Tsukada introducing the device and research can be found here.

Here are a few links to other devices that could be used to squelch one's 1st Amendment rights.

• Cell phone disablers in cars, actively cutting communication above certain speeds. Discovery.com
• The Mosquito, a device emitting an annoying high-pitched sound to deter loiterers. New York Times

International Women's Day

To mark International Women's Day, we list some recent UW journal articles about women's issues in foreign or international law articles:

• Rangita de Silva de Alwis, Mining the Intersections: Advancing the Rights of Women and Children with Disabilities within an Interrelated Web of Human Rights, 18 Pac. Rim L. & Pol'y J. 293 (2009)
• Mukta Jhalani, Comment, Protecting Egg Donors and Human Embryos—The Failure of the South Korean Bioethics and Biosafety Act, 17 Pac. Rim L. & Pol'y J. 707 (2008)
• Ji Hye Kim, Comment, Korea's New Prostitution Policy: Overcoming Challenges to Effectuate the Legislature's Intent to Protect Prostitutes from Abuse, 16 Pac. Rim L. & Pol'y J. 493 (2007)
• Rachel Brehm King, Comment, Redefining Motherhood: Discrimination in Legal Parenthood in Japan, 18 Pac. Rim L. & Pol'y J. 189 (2009)
• H. Ray Liaw, Comment, Women's Land Rights in Rural China: Transforming Existing Laws into a Source of Property Rights, 17 Pac. Rim L. & Pol'y J. 237 (2008)
• Michael L. Perlin, “Everybody Is Making Love/Or Else Expecting Rain”: Considering the Sexual Autonomy Rights of Persons Institutionalized Because of Mental Disability in Forensic Hospitals and in Asia, 83 Wash. L. Rev. 481 (2008) 
• Megan L. Starich, Comment, The 2006 Revisions to Japan's Equal Opportunity Employment Law: A Narrow Approach to a Pervasive Problem, 16 Pac. Rim L. & Pol'y J. 551 (2007)
• Lori K. Walls, The Persecutor Bar in U.S. Immigration Law: Toward a More Nuanced Understanding of Modern "Persecution" in the Case of Forced Abortion and Female Genital Cutting, 16 Pac. Rim L. & Pol'y J. 227 (2007)

A Case of Mistaken Content ID

We’ve all watched videos on YouTube, and maybe some of us have uploaded our own videos to the ubiquitous service in the hopes of becoming, at the very least, Internet famous. With individuals free to upload videos of their choosing, one of YouTube’s biggest concerns is violation of copyright due to the unauthorized use of copyrighted material.

YouTube provides a service called Content ID for copyright owners that creates and stores an identification file for copyrighted audio and music in a database. When someone uploads a video to YouTube, the Content ID service compares the uploaded content against the database and identifies any copyright violations. When a match is found, the copyright owner is notified and and given the choice to block the video, track its viewing statistics, or add advertisements to the infringing video. Because this service is automated and not 100% accurate, it has been highly controversial.

While it is well-known that video content providers don’t enjoy having their creations uploaded by users, you may not have considered that the owners of copyrights for audio content can also request that their work be removed from users’ uploads. A YouTuber who recently uploaded a video of himself foraging for a salad in the wild found himself ensnared in a troubling situation when Content ID flagged his video as matching licensed material owned by the Portland, Oregon, music licensing firm Rumblefish. The only problem? The user’s video had no music at all, just the sounds of the natural world.

Andy Baio has all the sordid details on this kerfuffle at Wired (as well as some updates at his personal blog), but essentially, the user here has been innocently caught in a predicament, as claimants are given essentially total discretion over whether to block the allegedly infringing content. In this case, a representative from Rumblefish either mistakenly or intentionally blocked the user’s non-infringing video, leaving the user with no recourse but YouTube’s support forums.

Some takeaways:

• Content ID is a fallible system that gives unwarranted discretion to copyright owners, who are able to abuse the review process or often simply don’t understand principles of copyright law, especially the fair use doctrine.
• Content ID was intended to expedite and simplify the copyright violation review process in favor of the slower Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) review process, which allows recipients of takedown notices to counter-claim to dispute alleged violations.
• Content ID may actually violate DMCA’s safe harbor provisions by allowing copyright owners to skirt the DMCA review process and prevent, at the owner’s discretion, a non-infringing user from disputing the alleged copyright violation.

As it is, YouTube’s copyright review process, while a profitable source of income for YouTube--to the tune of 1/3 of YouTube’s revenue--prevents innocent, non-infringing YouTube users from being able to pursue claims against mistakes or abuses enabled by the flawed Content ID system.