Banned Books Week

What do Captain Underpants and Cat's Cradle have in common? Twilight and Tropic of Cancer? The Awakening and The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian? All have been banned or challenged, according to the American Library Association’s Office of Intellectual Freedom.

September 22-28, 2013, is Banned Books week, an annual event celebrating the freedom to read. 

  

Take a look at the Banned Books display outside the main entrance the library. It has a pile of books – and information about recent challenges here in the Northwest. You might also want to browse the Banned Books Week website. Or read a banned or challenged book! You can find lists of frequently challenged books here. And we even have a few in the Law Library collection:

Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, at Classified Stacks F593 .B76 2009

In Cold Blood, at Good Reads HV6533.K3 C3

Snow Falling on Cedars, at Classified Stacks PS3557.U846 S65 1995

To Kill a Mockingbird, at Good Reads PS3562.E353 T6 1995

Research Washington State Gift Certificate Laws - Get a Treat!

So you're starting law school and you're organizing a budget for your spending.  Mom worries that you'll suffer from malnutrition while studying (or as some of us call it: stuDYING) at Gallagher Law Library subsisting on Doritos so she generously provides you with a gift certificate to your local grocery store. While you probably should use the gift certificate for nutritious things like bananas and zucchini - you might find that over the course of the quarter, your bar review funds begin to dwindle (to be clear, a bar review is when you go to a bar and "review" it).

Here is an example of a bar review in progress.

You wonder if you might be able to take your gift certificate back to the local grocery store and exchange it for cash.  Time for some legal research!

Chinese Legal Citation Guidelines

Citation Guidelines (PDF) | Chinese Legal Research Guide | EALD 

"Citation Guidelines for Chinese Language Materials" is a handy guide created by UW Law School Ph.D. students Paul Tao-Chou Chang and Maria Jiang (editors), assisted by Luke Chuang and Jay Jiang. The project was completed under the direction of Professor Jane Winn, with some help from Rob Britt of the Law Library's East Asian Law Department (EALD). Now available on the Gallagher Law Library website (see links above), the new guidelines provide interpretations of Bluebook rules for Chinese legal citation, plus detailed examples showing good practices (see screenshot of page one, below).

Climate Change Report

The Congressional Research Service published a timely report in August 2013:

Climate Change and Existing Law: A Survey of Legal Issues Past, Present, and Future

This 35-page report addresses:

• reducing greenhouse gas emissions
• liability for harm caused by climate change
• climate change-induced water shortages
• sea level rise and extreme precipitation
• other adaptation responses to climate change
• responding to and rebuilding after natural disasters
• immigration and refugee law

You can find out more about the Congressional Research Service and sources for its reports on the Gallagher guide, Congressional Research Service Reports. For other CRS reports on climate change and other environmental issues, visit the CRS Reports section of the National Council for Science and the Environment.

Update: Syria's Chemical Weapons -- UN Secretary General's report

The Secretary-General's report on the investigation of alleged use of chemical weapons in the Ghouta area of Damascus on 21 August 2013 is now available (41 pages).

The Congressional Research Service has published a new report, Syria's Chemical Weapons: Issues for Congress (Sept. 12, 2013). The report (25 pages) discusses latest developments, policy issues, a brief history and review of the chemical weapons program, a summary of cooperative threat reduction programs, and legislation.

For more on this topic, see:

• UN News Centre: News Focus Syria
• United Nations Office for Disarmament Affairs (UNODA)
• CRS Report, Armed Conflict in Syria: Background and U.S. Response (Sept. 6, 2013)
• CRS Report, Syria: Overview of the Humanitarian Response (Sept. 4, 2013)

Gallagher Law Library Tours for Law Students

You're about to start law school at UW and you hear that you'll be spending an awful lot of time in Gallagher Law Library over the next three years. Recognized as the "backbone of the School of Law's heritage", Gallagher Law Library is excited to welcome incoming and returning UW law students! To help introduce you to your new "home away from home", the Gallagher Reference Librarians are offering tours of the Law Library to incoming and returning UW law students! 

There's a seat here with your name on it!  Not literally, but you know what we mean.

You may have already visited the Law Library but do you know: 

• How to get into the Library after it has closed to the public?
• Where you can go to ask research questions? 
• How many printers are in the Library at your disposal?
• Where you can find study aids in the Library?
• How to gain entry into the exclusive Bogle & Gates Law Student Lounge? 

For answers to these questions and more, sign up here to tour the Law Library and meet some of your friendly Gallagher Reference Librarians!  If you're already vastly familiar with the Law Library but want to check Reference Office hours or find one of the helpful research guides created by the Gallagher Reference Librarians, the Law Library home page is a great place to start!

The Racial Dot Map

Where do people live in the United States? How are the races distributed? Within any city, what neighborhoods are mostly African American, Asian American, or white?

A researcher at the University of Virginia's Demographics Research Group has taken 2010 census data and programmed it into an interactive map, with one dot representing each person counted in the census—that's 308,745,538 dots.

You can look at the entire U.S. and notice that the West is much more sparsely populated than the East. There just aren't as many people in, say, North Dakota as in Michigan or New York. Even zoomed out this far, you can see that there are a lot of blue dots (representing whites) in most of the country, and a lot of green dots (representing Blacks) in the South and Southeast.

Racial Dot Map, U.S.

Understanding Tax Sources

Newcomers to tax (and some more experienced researchers, too!) are often confused by the myriad sources: there's the Internal Revenue Code, the regulations, temporary regulations, draft regulations, revenue rulings, revenue procedures, and more. Cases can go to the Tax Court, federal district court, or the United States Courtof Federal Claims. Ack!

If you'd some clarity, check out these tutorials from CCH (Wolters Kluwer CCH, a legal publisher): Tax Research: Understanding Sources of Tax Law (Why my IRC beats your Rev Proc!).

 

There are five lessons:

• Overview of Sources of Federal Tax Laws (13:33)
• Federal Statutes and Legislation (16:22)
• Treasury Regulations (14:06)
• Judicial System (12:02)
• IRS Rulings and Pronouncements (21:16)

It's easy to navigate within each lesson to hear about just the subtopic you need. Or you can read the accompanying PDF documents instead of listening to the narrator and watching the slides.

 

By the way, much of the material would be useful even if you aren't studying tax. For instance, most of the material about the federal legislative process is true of any federal law, not just tax laws. (Other laws go through different committees, not the House Ways and Means Committee and the Senate Finance Committee.)

Charging Station Available for UW Law Students in Bogle & Gates Law Student Lounge!

Do low battery alerts cause an unhealthy rise in your blood pressure?

Oh no! This device is running out of battery power and I forgot my charger at home!

If so, our little buddy wants you to keep your cool and visit the Bogle & Gates Law Student Lounge in the law library. 

Hey, don't sweat it!  Charge your stuff here!

This charging station (provided by WestlawNext, thanks WestlawNext!) is available to UW law students and will be stationed in the Bogle & Gates Law Student Lounge on the L1 floor of Gallagher Law Library. The charging station has 1 mini USB cable (older smartphones) and 3 micro USB (most smartphones from 2010-present). While the Bogle & Gates Law Student Lounge is accessible only to UW Law Students via Husky Card, be sure to keep an eye on your stuff even when it is charging!