#HalLAWeen Art: Dead Hand

"Is reference to the Framers' intent majoritarian? To the contrary; it amounts to rule by the dead hand from the grave."

Barry Friedman, Dialogue and Judicial Review, 91 Mich. L. Rev. 577, 594 (1993)

Graphic: Mary Whisner

#HalLAWeen Art: Hung Jury

"He asserts that if the Government failed to introduce sufficient evidence to establish his guilt beyond a reasonable doubt at his first trial, he may not be tried again following a declaration of a mistrial because of a hung jury."

-Richardson v. United States, 468 U.S. 317, 311-312 (1984), Google Scholar.

#HalLAWeen Art: Judicial Hellhole

"The term 'judicial hellhole' appears to have been created by the American Tort Reform Association and was used extensively during the CAFA debates."

Emery G. Lee III & Thomas E. Willging, The Impact of the Class Action Fairness Act on the Federal Courts: An Empirical Analysis of Filings and Removals, 156 U. Pa. L. Rev. 1723, 1725 n.2 (2008).

See Am. Tort Reform Found., Judicial Hellholes.

Graphic: Mary Whisner

#HalLAWeen Art: Parade of Horribles

"The briefs present a gruesome parade of horribles."

Diamond v. Chakrabarty, 447 U.S. 303, 316 (1980) (Burger, C.J.)

Graphic: Mary Whisner

#HalLAWeen Art: Blood from a Turnip

"Our decision merely recognizes that courts are without power to draw blood from a turnip." 
-Esteb v. Enright, 563 N.E.2d 139, 142 (1990), Google Scholar.

#HalLAWeen Art: Brooding Omnipresence in the Sky

"The common law is not a brooding omnipresence in the sky but the articulate voice of some sovereign or quasi-sovereign that can be identified . . . ."

Southern Pacific Co. v. Jensen, 244 U.S. 205, 222 (1917) (Holmes, J., dissenting), Google Scholar

Graphic: Mary Whisner

#HalLAWeen Art: Possession is Nine Tenths of the Law

"That possession is nine-tenths of the law is a truism hardly bearing repetition."
- Wilcox v. Stroup, 467 F.3d 409, 412 (2006), Google Scholar.

#HalLAWeen Is Coming!

Halloween is coming, and what better way to celebrate it than with some blog posts? Perhaps you've already read today's post, Ghosts and the Law. We're going to move on from there to present a gallery of some spooky or macabre legal terms, or what we call #HalLAWeen.

Now, we all know that law is serious business and affects real people's lives. This series of sketches takes a break from the seriousness to have what we hope is good-natured fun. If you see a guillotine or gallows illustrating "execution of remedies," please understand that we're just going for a visual pun and we aren't commenting on the appropriateness of different forms of capital punishment.

Be warned: spooky cartoons coming!

Ghosts and the Law

The courtroom is generally an area where facts are all that matter, and where anything that cannot be proven may as well not exist. This might lead one to the conclusion that the courts are largely silent on the topic of ghosts and the paranormal, but that assumption would be incorrect. This post will briefly discuss some legal cases revolving around the legal treatment of ghosts.

The most famous ghost-related case is Stambovsky v. Ackley. A woman named Helen Ackley lived in a house that she swore was haunted. She reported on paranormal incidents to local and national publications. Ackley decided to sell the house to a man from out of town named Jeffrey Stambovsky, but neither she nor her realtor disclosed the alleged haunting. When Stambovsky learned of the haunting, he attempted to withdraw from the agreement and sued Ackley.

The New York Supreme Court, Appellate Division ultimately found in favor of Stambovsky, ruling that the house was haunted as a matter of law. While the house may or may not have been haunted, the fact that Ackley had publicly treated the house as though it had been haunted meant that she was required to disclose the house's condition. While the decision is most famous for its ruling, the opinion became known as the "Ghostbusters Ruling" thanks to its numerous references to ghosts and spooky turns of phrase.

An ongoing copyright case addresses the existence of ghosts more directly. Horror fans might be familiar with Warner Bros.' Conjuring films. This franchise, which currently consists of four films, is based on the case files of paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren. The couple were involved with a number of high profile allegedly supernatural occurrences, including a murder trial where the defendant pled not guilty by reason of demonic possession. Gerald Brittle, the author of the Warren biography The Demonologist, has filed a nearly one billion dollar lawsuit claiming that the franchise infringes on his exclusive rights to the Warrens' stories.

The chain of ownership is a bit complicated, but one of the core issues in the case is whether the Warrens' case files were factual or not. Copyright law protects original works of authorship. Facts are in the public domain, and are therefore not generally protected by copyright. However, the compilation, arrangement, and selection of facts- those elements of a historical account that require creativity from the author beyond recitation of events- are protected through copyright law. You can learn more about the nuances of copyright in this FAQ from the U.S. Copyright Office. 

Brittle argues that the cases that inspired both the book and the films did not occur. In essence, the incidents described by the Warrens were independent works of authorship, since they reflected the creative processes of the investigators rather than actual facts. U.S. District Court Judge John Gibney Jr. has declined to explore this argument at this stage in the process, and has allowed the case to move forward with a trial date in April of 2018. You can read more about the trial in this piece from The Hollywood Reporter. 

As you can see, the law is an even scarier subject than you might think!

Celebrate #NationalPunctuationDay with a Salute to the Octothorpe

National Punctuation Day, celebrated Sept. 24 each year, gives us a chance to have a little nerdy fun or to rant about our pet peeves. Maybe I should I say pet peeve's: making plurals of uncommon words with an apostrophe is one of mine. One of my favorite restaurants had Banana's Foster French Toast for years. Even if I wince at a menu, I can still love the restaurant.

So what the heck is an octothorpe? It's that eight-pointed symbol more commonly known as a number sign, pound sign (another pound sign is £), or hash mark.

The odd name was made up by someone in Bell Labs during the development of the Touch-Tone phone. Obviously, it hasn't caught on, because thousands of automated answering systems advise us to "press the pound key" or enter our PIN, "followed by the pound sign"—and even the most annoying phone tree doesn't mention an "octothorpe." For more on the history of this and other punctuation marks, see Keith Houston, The Ancient Roots of Punctuation, New Yorker (Sept. 6, 2013), or Houston's book, Shady Characters: The Secret Life of Punctuation, Symbols & Other Typographical Marks (2013).

Announcing: West Academic Study Aids Online

At the end of a law student's quarter of law school, she might not know how to approach their exams. Students can't possibly expect to write everything that they learned in a three hour exam, so how do they pare their outlines down to the information that they need to know? How can a student figure out which of the cases that he has forgotten he needs to relearn? Of course, some students might have been too busy to do all of the reading for Contracts. How can they hope to catch up?

Any student would benefit from using a study aid to prepare for their exam for a number of reasons. Study aids are some of the most valuable tools that law libraries provide for law students. Experienced law students can tell you that they are so valuable that they can often be difficult to find around exam time. While many law libraries (including Gallagher Law Library) do what they can to keep paper copies of these resources available to students, they often go missing or are regularly checked out up until the moment the exam ends.

Gallagher Law Library has responded to this recurring issue by subscribing to West Academic Study Aids Online, which is now available to any University of Washington law student. You can reach the database through the library's home page, as shown to the right, or by searching for "study aids" in the Gallagher Catalog. The service provides students with online access to hundreds of the most popular study aids. These aids address a variety of different needs and are suited to a variety of learning styles. There's no one "right" way to learn the law, and exploring the variety of study aids available through this database is a great way to refine your own education process and make sure that you are getting the most out of your legal education.

While West Academic Study Aids Online contains many of the most popular study aids for law students, it does not contain all of the study guides that aspiring students might be interested in. Those wishing to test their knowledge might want to check out resources like Examples & Explanations or Questions & Answers from the library, or making use of the school's subscription to CALI Lessons. If you ever have trouble logging in to the resources at your disposal, need help finding a study aid or figuring out which one is right for you, you can always feel free to contact your reference librarian. The reference team looks forward to helping students find and use these tools in the upcoming year!

The Path to Lawyer Well-Being

The National Task Force on Lawyer Well-Being has just released its report, The Path to Lawyer Well-Being: Practical Recommendations for Positive Change (Aug. 2017). It's important for all sectors of the legal community, so it includes recommendations for judges, regulators, employers, law schools, bar associations, and others. The recommendations for law schools (pp. 35-40) include a mention UW Law's peer support program. For more on wellness and local resources, see UW Law's wellness page.

For a tragic story of a successful lawyer who left "the path to lawyer well-being" and died an addict, see The Lawyer, the Addict, a long article by the lawyer's ex-wife, Eilene Zimmerman (New York Times Magazine, July 15).

Human beings are physically and emotionally complex, so there is no simple answer as to why Peter began abusing drugs. But as a picture of his struggle took shape before my eyes, so did another one: The further I probed, the more apparent it became that drug abuse among America’s lawyers is on the rise and deeply hidden.

Confederate Monuments and the Law

Civil War monuments have been in the news lately, so I thought I'd do some research.

One great (and free) starting point is SSRN, a site where scholars can post their papers and researchers can search them. I typed in civil war monument and found North Carolina's Heritage Protection Act: Cementing Confederate Monuments in North Carolina's Landscape, by Kasi Wahlers, posted Nov. 3, 2015. Here's the abstract:

The History and Law of Special Counsel

Robert Mueller

You may have heard about special counsel Robert Mueller, who is investigating any potential connection between President Donald Trump's election campaign and the Russian government. The public relationship between President Trump and Mueller has been strained, with President Trump allegedly considering terminating Mueller as counsel. Meanwhile, Mueller has expanded the scope of the investigation beyond its initial parameters. With all of this news, one could be forgiven for not actually knowing what the special counsel does or what its relationship is with the President. This post will try to provide a bit of background on the position.

Law-Related Blogs in Washington State

Do you think lawyers only write motions, briefs, wills, and contracts? Think again: a lot of lawyers write blogs. Why? To share information, to express opinions, to establish their expertise, and to market their practices. Why read them? To learn about new developments in different fields and the lawyers who practice in those fields.

We have revamped our guide, Law-Related Blogs in Washington State. You'll find blogs on a wide variety of topics, from IP to DUI defense, from bankruptcy to international development.

UW Law Reads: Summer Reading Recommendations

Now that finals are over and summer is upon us, how about some summer reading recommendations from UW Law faculty and staff?

Since 2015, we have added to a research guide that contains book recommendations from the UW Law community. Whether you prefer literary fiction or memoirs, prize-winning nonfiction or escapist fantasies, or are just looking for some new recipes for summer picnics and parties, there's likely something that suits your tastes on our reading list.

A new display in the entrance to the law library features some of these faculty and staff recommendations.

De-stress with Art in the Library!

Need a quick and mentally stimulating study break?  Look no further than the walls and shelves around you!  You may have noticed some of the wonderful artwork displayed throughout the library and wondered where it came from. Much of it is part of a contemporary Native American Art collection put together by artist John Feodorov.  This helpful map can guide you as you wend your way through the stacks and carrels to view all the entire collection.  In addition, this page provides information about the artists who created the works and includes their comments on the pieces displayed.

"Skinwalker" by John Feodorov (2000).  On display behind the Gallagher Circulation desk.

As an added bonus, your art viewing session may help to decrease any built up finals-related stress. In a study completed by researchers at the University of Westminster, London city workers were asked to spend 35 minutes in an art gallery over their lunch hour.  The participants' levels of cortisol (the hormone linked to stress) and self-reported stress levels were measured both before and after their time in the gallery. The result?  Individuals who entered the gallery with high levels of stress experienced a reduction in cortisol that would normally occur over a five hour period.  Talk about a great use of your lunch break!

Source: http://westminsterresearch.wmin.ac.uk/3472/2/Clow_&_fredhoi_2006_final.pdf

If you feel the lure of the sunshine and want to get your art fix out-of-doors, the University of Washington has a walking tour designed to help you explore the campus artwork on foot.

Happy viewing!

No key card access to library tonight and early tomorrow morning

The card readers at the doors to the library are temporarily malfunctioning. Law students hoping to stay in the library after hours can stay, but will not be able to re-enter the building after leaving between 11:00 PM tonight and 8:00 AM tomorrow morning. Please talk to staff at the Circulation Desk if you have any questions.

The Legal Challenges of Comic Book Movies

Super heroes have become a dominant force in American cinema, and the prevalence of super heroes has inspired studios to create movies that overlap with other movies to create “cinematic universes.” There is a lot of complexity attached to these cinematic universes that may escape the notice of the average moviegoer, and this post will try to draw attention to some of the complexities of the intellectual property law surrounding super heroes.

There are two major companies in charge of super hero comic book publication, Marvel and DC. DC owns the rights to heroes like Batman and Superman. It is also a subsidiary of Warner Bros. Entertainment, which means that the same company owns the film rights to these characters and does not have the same complicated legal structure as Marvel. Marvel, which is currently owned by Disney, owns the rights to characters like Spider-Man and The Avengers. Marvel and DC have always allowed their characters to appear in other books owned by the company. 

While the DC and Marvel shared universes were generally distinct from one another, crossovers were not unheard of. One character owned by both parties, Access, has the power to move between each company’s comic universe. Both companies own the rights to the character, and both have published stories featuring the character independent of the other company.

Shining a Light on Government

Although Sunshine Week has come and gone, open government, also known as government transparency, is a continuing issue.  Sunshine week is an initiative from the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press to celebrate, "access to public information and what it means to you and your community."  The focus is on freedom of information services, such as the Freedom of Information Act ("FOIA").  FOIA requests are an important tool for citizens exercising their right to know what the government is doing, who they are doing it with, and why they've decided to take these actions.  

While FOIA is one mechanism for citizens to access information, there have been strides in recent years for government to facilitate the accessibility of government documents and data. The concept of open government and access to government documents was a key component of the Obama administration.  They published their first National Action plan in 2011.  The plans reflected President Obama's "commitment to an open and citizen-centered government."

Executive Order Download

President Trump's executive orders have made headlines and inspired lawsuits. But he's not the first use use executive orders.

Federalregister.gov makes it easy to look at the last few administrations, with bulk downloads of executive orders from 1994 in different formats.

This table shows tallies of the number of executive orders per year since 1994:

So far, President Trump has issued 15 executive orders. President Obama issued 37 in his first year in office and President George W. Bush issued 51. Clinton, Bush, and Obama each issued just a handful (7, 3, and 7, respectively) in their last years in office. 

To learn more about executive orders, see the Useful Reference section of our Presidential Power guide.

Right to Carry: 30 States Allow Guns in Public Libraries

Under many states' laws, including Washington, public libraries (not affiliated with schools or private institutions) cannot restrict patrons who are carrying firearms from entering the premises.

For example, a recent Missouri law relaxing the regulation on concealed weapons in public spaces has affected the public libraries in the state. Missouri Senate Bill 656 eliminates the requirement to have a permit to carry a weapon in most public spaces, and public libraries are not listed among the exempted institutions. The Missouri State Legislature voted to override then Governor Nixon's veto of the bill on September 14, 2016 and the law went into effect on January 1, 2017. In response to a letter from a state representative, the public libraries in Columbia, MO changed the signs on their doors from "Carrying or possession of firearms or weapons prohibited" to "No person shall possess, on the library premises, a weapon of any kind, unless authorized by law" on February 17, 2017. A spokeswoman for the library said that, for the time being, the library would allow concealed weapons on the premises, but the library received complaints from patrons about the policy change and its attorney is reviewing the situation and would make a report to the board.

Missouri is not the only state to allow weapons, concealed or otherwise, in public libraries. In a 2012 decision, a state appellate court in Michigan held that a public library policy prohibiting weapons was in conflict with state law and the policy is therefore "preempted."

Diana Gleason of the University of Idaho College of Law Library conducted a study entitled "Can I Bring my Gun?" and found that you can likely bring your gun to public libraries in over 30 states. Her study is a 50 state survey of gun laws in which she created two charts: one with citations to statutes regarding (1) preemption of local government restrictions on guns, (2) open carry, and (3) concealed carry, and a second chart assigning point values to the restrictions (or lack thereof) and ranking states from most likely to least likely to uphold gun restrictions in libraries. The survey was last updated in 2015, so Missouri's new law is not included. As Gleason says, "Research on gun laws is a moving target, so to speak."

State surveys are a good way to compare and contrast state laws regarding a specific subject. Westlaw and Lexis both offer 50 State Survey tools; both services have them available with their secondary sources/materials. Gallagher's own Cheryl Nyberg is an author of the "Subject Compilation of State Laws," available in print in the reference area or through HeinOnline.

Keyboard Designed for Lawyers

https://www.legalkeyboards.com/products/legal-keyboard

On January 5, Brian Potts debuted a new $65 "legal keyboard" at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. As a partner at Foley & Lardner, Potts encountered the familiar frustration of having to use the symbol browser to insert the section (§) symbol. Security software on the firm's computers prevented Potts from saving shortcuts in Word, so he set about designing a keyboard specifically for lawyers.

Some of the features include (all available with a keystroke):

• Insert section, paragraph, and copyright symbols
• Insert words: Supreme Court, Court of Appeals, Court, id., see, e.g., U.S., F.3d, F.2d, F.Supp, U.S.C., C.F.R., plaintiff, defendant, appellant, and respondent
• Switch between large and small caps
• Insert a footnote or comment
• Spacing: single, 1.5, and double spacing
• Bullets

For more see: Robert Ambrogi, Debuting Tomorrow: A Keyboard Designed Just for Lawyers, and a video of unboxing and using the board.

Keeping up with Washington v. Trump

Washington State's case challenging President Trump's executive order banning travel by people from seven predominantly Muslim countries is moving fast. If you'd like to catch up and read some of the news coverage and court documents, see the Washington v. Trump page in our Presidential Power guide.

ACLU Papers Now Available Online

With the ACLU in the news recently and likely for the foreseeable future, you might be interested to learn more about the organization's history. 

Papers from the collection of the American Civil Liberties Union are now available to researchers through a database provided by GaleCengage. American Civil Liberties Union Papers, 1912-1990 [UW Restricted], a collection of clippings, client and member correspondence, case files, legal briefs, and administrative documents, will be interesting to law students who want to dig deeper into the history of some of the most-studied constitutional law cases of the 20th century.