Resources for Understanding Dobbs Abortion Case

You've no doubt heard that the Supreme Court is considering a case that could overrule Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973).* 

Maybe you've been following this news closely. Or maybe you've been concentrating on papers, exams, and getting food on the table. Either way, you might like to have some resources handy to help you understand the context of the case.

Good Overviews  

Laurie Sobel et al., Abortion at SCOTUS: Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health, KFF (updated May 4, 2022). 

(The Kaiser Family Foundation is a nonprofit organization that reports on health policy.)

Jon O. Shimabukuro, Supreme Court Considers Mississippi Abortion Law, Cong. Rsch.Serv., LSB10669 (Dec. 13, 2021).

(The Congressional Research Service is a branch of the Library of Congress that prepares nonpartisan reports on topics requested by members of Congress. Search for CRS reports here. Learn more about them in our guide.)

Marcia Coyle, If the Supreme Court overrules Roe in the new term, will we know for sure?, Nat'l Const. Ctr. (July 23, 2021)

(Marcia Coyle has been covering the Supreme Court for the National Law Journal for many years. This article posted on the National Constitution Center doesn't have the paywall that the National Law Journal's website does. You can search for more of her great reporting on Lexis or Bloomberg Law.)

Roe v. Wade in Peril: Our Latest Resources, Guttmacher Inst. 

("The Guttmacher Institute is a leading research and policy organization committed to advancing sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) worldwide." About page.)

Lauren Zazzara, 50 Years of Precedent: Will Roe v. Wade Be Overturned?, HeinOnline Blog (May 4, 2022) 

The Statute

The statute challenged in Dobbs is Miss. Code § 41-41-191

 

Discussions

SCOTUSblog coverage of Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization. Page links to over 30 blog posts on different aspects of the case, from the Court granting review to the amicus briefs to leak of a draft opinion. Includes links to parties' briefs and dozens of amicus briefs.

National Constitution Center podcasts:

• The Dobbs v. Jackson Case – Part 1 
• The Dobbs v. Jackson Case –  Part 2 

(For more commentary from the National Constitution Center, go to the site and search for "dobbs.")

The State of Abortion Laws

An Overview of Abortion Laws, Guttmacher Inst. (May 1, 2022)

Christine Vestal, Blue States Enact New Laws to Create Abortion Haven, Stateline (Pew Center) (April 1, 2022) 

("Established in 1948, The Pew Charitable Trusts is a global nongovernmental organization that seeks to improve public policy, inform the public, and invigorate civic life" About page. )

Historical Context

Jacque Wilson, Before and after Roe v. Wade, CNN (Jan. 22, 2013)

Deepa Shivaram, The movement against abortion rights is nearing its apex. But it began way before Roe, NPR (May 4, 2022)

Advocacy Groups

Perhaps you noticed that the links above are to nonpartisan organizations or mainstream media like NPR and CNN. If you want to explore what different groups have to say about the issues, one place to start is the amicus briefs linked on the SCOTUSblog page. There are briefs from religious leaders, right-to-life groups, pro-choice groups, academics, and more. 

The briefs should have a more developed exposition of the different positions than, say, bumper stickers or tweets. That's not to say that you can't read bumper stickers and tweets—just that the briefs will offer a different sort of discussion.

You can also check the organization's websites for press releases and other commentary on the latest developments.

For a Deeper Dive

Students need to get through finals, but if you're planning your summer reading, there are lots of interesting books, including:

Print Book
The family Roe : an American story
Joshua Prager, author.
2021 New York, NY : W.W. Norton & Company

Finalist for the 2022 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction, as well as part of Gallagher Law Library's Good Reads collection.

 

Print Book
Reproductive rights and justice stories
edited by Melissa Murray (Professor of Law, New York University School of Law), Katherine Shaw (Professor of Law, Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law), Reva B. Siegel (Nicholas deB. Katzenbach Professor...
2019 St. Paul, MN : Foundation Press

This is also available via our West Academic Study Aids package. Register to download the Red Shelf app and read the book on your mobile device. For more on study aids, see our videos.

 

Print Book
Before Roe v. Wade : voices that shaped the abortion debate before the Supreme Court's ruling
edited by Linda Greenhouse and Reva Siegel.
©2010 New York : Kaplan Pub. 

Free PDF of the book—all 406 pages—available on SSRN

 

ebook
Obstacle course the everyday struggle to get an abortion in America
David S. Cohen, 1972- author.
2020 Oakland, California University of California Press

eBook
Intimate wars : the life and times of the woman who brought abortion from the back alley to the board room

Merle Hoffman, 1946-

2012 New York City : Feminist Press at CUNY

 

Print Book
Beggars and choosers : how the politics of choice shapes adoption, abortion, and welfare in the United States

Rickie Solinger, 1947-

2001 New York : Hill and Wang 

 

Law Reviews and More

Hundreds of law review articles have been written about Roe v. Wade and other abortion cases. You can search HeinOnline, Westlaw, or Lexis. You can also find a lot on SSRN. (For more on searching SSRN, see our guide.)

-----------------------------

*That link is to the Caselaw Access Project, a free source of U.S. state and federal caselaw. Of course, if you have access to subscription databases, you can look it up in many sources, including HeinOnline, Lexis, Westlaw, and Fastcase.

Happy National Library Week! Celebrate with our new legal career guide!

Ever wondered about how to become a space lawyer or an animal rights lawyer but didn't know where to start? The Gallagher Law Library is here to help! 

In honor of National Library Week, the Gallagher Law Library created a new legal career guide, “Where Will Your Legal Education Take You?” This guide is designed to help law students, prospective law students, or those who would like a change in their career to explore over 30 different careers one could take after completing a law degree and links resources for future research into each of these careers. The guide also discusses graduate degrees that the University of Washington School of Law offers, which are mentioned on the career pages that they are most relevant to (a comprehensive list of UW Law’s graduate degrees can be found here). For many of the careers, we have also highlighted UW Law faculty who have experience working in relevant areas of law.

Don’t know where to start? Take our very short, interactive quiz (2-3 minutes) which will lead you to one of the career options for law school graduates. We encourage you to take it several times to see how your interests lead you to a different legal career path!

You may take the quiz here.

Want more fun? Check out Gallagher’s past National Library Week events like our puzzle pack or our virtual escape rooms!

Other resources for law students:

• Gallagher Law Library Guides:
• Diversity in the Legal Profession
• Law School & Careers
• Learning About Legal Careers & the Job Search Library Guide
• Legal Specialties & Practice Settings
• Library Catalog for Legal Career Resources
• UW Law Career Services
• Ask Us! 

Vintage Law Library Experience

Do you prefer the warm, rich sound of  vinyl records to the precise yet cold sound you get from digital media? Will you go out of your way to get a luscious heirloom tomato from a produce stand, when the local supermarket has plenty of industrially farmed tomatoes on offer? Then our new law library suite is for you!

After extensive renovation, the law library has devoted Floor L3 to creating a vintage law library experience for connoisseurs like you. 

 

The Condon Reading Room

John T. Condon
Photo by William F. Boyd,
Public domain,
via Wikimedia Commons

The heart of Floor L3 is the Condon Reading Room, named for John T. Condon, the first dean of UW Law. Here you can experience the law library the way previous generations did. Absorb the wisdom of scholars by reading print books without the distraction of email pop-ups or pings alerting you to new text messages. In fact, you can leave your digital devices in your locker, because we brought in a tech team to disable any wifi signals that might leak through from other floors. 

Follow in the intellectual footsteps of law students and lawyers from the last century. Do you want to find cases? Use the West Key Number System in print digests.

Shelves of Decennial Digests, with title page from volume 11 of the Sixth Decennial Digest, covering cases from 1946 to 1956 with Key Numbers in the Topics Declaratory Judgment through Divorce (Key Number 259).  "A Complete Digest of All Decisions of the State and Federal Courts as Reported in the National Reporter System and the State Reports"

Do you want to find out whether your case has been cited by later cases, perhaps even overruled? Take a look at the amazingly powerful Shepard’s Citations volumes. You’ll find that just a few minutes of study acquaint you with the treatment codes (you don’t need colored flags and traffic signals!). Before long, you will be able to make sense out of the columns of numbers and letters. Citation checking that would have eaten up minutes of your time using KeyCite or Shepards on Lexis can now be accomplished in only an hour or so.

Entries from Shepard’s Pacific
Citations.
Source: Tina S. Ching,
 Using Shepard’s Citations
in Print. (This PowerPoint 
presentation is undated,
but it’s not recent.)

No scanners are available in the Condon Reading Room, but you’ll find that copying selected passages by hand into your notebook actually improves comprehension and retention. (How many times have you downloaded or scanned a document but never gotten around to reading it?)

The Lomen Room and the Smith Room

In addition to the Condon Reading Room, Floor L3 also features two (mostly) soundproofed typing rooms, so you’ll be able to prepare your papers without disrupting your classmates (much). The typewriters in one room are manual, while the other room has IBM Selectrics from the 1970s.

The first room is named for Lucile Lomen (class of 1944).  Lomen was the first woman to clerk for a U.S. Supreme Court Justice (William O. Douglas). While she was a law student, she was an editor of the Washington Law Review and published five pieces of her own (without a laptop!). 

Washington Law Review staff. Lomen is third from left.
Source: 1943 Tyee (University of Washington yearbook), 
digitized by University Libraries

 

The second typing room—for those who prefer electric typewriters—honors Charles Z. Smith (class of 1955). Smith, who served as a trial judge and founded UW Law’s clinical program, was the first person of color to serve on the Washington Supreme Court (his father was Black and his mother was Cuban). He also produced a lot of work without a computer. (You can see his portrait on Floor 1, outside Room 133.)

Typescript of "The Judicial Function in the Criminal Justice System,"
presented by Charles Z. Smith to the National College of District Attorneys meeting
in Houston in 1971, when he was a judge on the King County Superior Court

The Johnson Room

Do you need to make a phone call? Use the Johnson Room, also on L3. Named for Professor Ralph W. Johnson, who was an expert in Indian law as well as natural resources law, the Johnson Room is equipped with a sturdy rotary-dial phone. There are also scratch pads and pencils for jotting notes or doodling.

Prof. Ralph W. Johnson. Source: University of Washington School of Law Yearbook 1965, at 10

A Law Library Experience That's New (to You)

Electronic media suffuse modern life, and legal education is no exception. From scans of first-week assignments to an online exam archive, from online study aids to classes on Zoom, law school is so shaped by digital media that it might be hard to imagine learning and researching the law in any other way. Visit Floor L3 to get a taste of vintage legal study. Maybe you won't find it as delicious as heirloom tomatoes, but it's surprisingly nourishing!

West Key Number System Keeps Adapting--Newest Renovation: Evidence

Key Numbers are powerful!

The West Key Number System has been helping researchers find relevant cases since the late nineteenth century. Part of what has kept it useful is the editors' ongoing work to keep it up to date (or as up to date as you can keep such a large, complex system).

Some of the changes have responded to changes in technology. When the original outline was created, there wasn't a need for Automobiles (Topic 48A) or Aviation (Topic 48B). 

Some of the changes have reflected societal changes. Topic 223, Intoxicating Liquors, is more palatable (or potable) than the old Drunkards Topic. 

And some changes reflect developments in the law. Maybe the editors find that they've been shoehorning so many headnotes into one Key Number that it should be subdivided. Or maybe the Topic's entire outline needs to be rethought.

I just saw an announcement  that the editors (the company calls them "attorney-editors," to emphasize that they have legal training) have reworked Evidence (Topic 157), and created an entirely new outline. (The announcement was in Thomson Reuters's Information Management Consultant Newsletter—that's a fancy way of saying "Update for Librarians.")

The Key Number editors could have said: "We used to put Evidence into Key Numbers 1-601. Starting now, we'll put new cases into Key Numbers 701-3067. You researchers, you have to look in two places. Deal with it." But they didn't do that. Instead, they went back through all the headnotes about Evidence in all of U.S. caselaw and reclassified approximately 490,000 headnotes. One Key Number will bring together cases from 1822, 1922, and last week.

I'm sure that the editors had a lot more on their minds than just changing technology, but here's one change inspired by tech: there's now a headnote for hearsay issues with respect to emails, text messages, and social media posts (that's 157k1216, if you want to run a search). A while ago, those cases would have been classified in Key Number 318(2), "Writings--Letters and telegrams." 

When you search for Key Numbers in Westlaw, you can still use the old numbers. For example, when I searched for 157k318(2) (the old number), I retrieved headnotes with Key Numbers in the new scheme, parenthetically noting the former number. 

Westlaw shows the former Key Number (157k318(2)) as
well as the current one (157k1216)

When I click on the broader heading to skim IX. WRITINGS AND OTHER DOCUMENTARY EVIDENCE, k1211-k1560, I see that email turns up a couple of times--under hearsay and under "writings as self-serving statements." If I'm interested in both, I can search for 157k1216 or 157k1229.

Excerpt from Evidence Topic

For more on using the West Key Number System, I recommend the Stanford Law Library's guide, Case Finding and Advanced Searching Strategies and Westlaw's own PowerPoint, The Topic and Key Number System. For more on the changes to the system over time, see Sarah Gotschall, Common Scolds, Drunkards and Embracery: Exploring the Past and Present Through West Digest Topics, RIPS Law Librarian Blog (Nov. 24, 2020). 

And for more on keys and lightning (literally, not just metaphorically, as in my graphic), see Benjamin Franklin and the Kite Experiment, Franklin Inst. (June 12, 2017)

Database of All Article III Judges Through History

With the nomination of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to be the 116th Justice of the United States Supreme Court, news reports have noted that the great majority of Justices through history have been white. Judge Jackson would be only the third African American to serve on the Court (after Justices Thurgood Marshall and Clarence Thomas) and the sixth woman (after Justices Sandra Day O'Connor, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor, and Amy Coney Barrett). And she would become the first Justice who is both African American and a woman. 

This seems like a good time to bring up one of my favorite web resources: the Federal Judicial Center's Biographical Directory of Article III Judges 1789-Present. 

This database makes it easy to find out about any Article III judge in history, not just the headliners on the marquee. And of course the lower court judges do a lot of the work of the judiciary. Most litigation never reaches the Supreme Court.

Basic graphic of black robes and white heads.

(I toyed with the idea of making the heads different shades,
but I didn't have the time. And the fact remains:
if you selected 30 federal judges from history, you
might not have much racial diversity at all.)

The FJC historians have prepared information about Diversity on the Bench, including essays and graphs. Since this is Women's History Month, let's check out the page on Gender. A graph shows how the number of judges has swelled since 1789—as well as the growing number of women in the last couple of decades. If you visit the site, you can use the slider to zoom in on any time period.

Gender of Article III Judges, 1789-2020
source: Federal Judicial Center

 

The Diversity page also links to lists of judges by race, ethnicity, and gender:

• African American Judges on the Federal Courts
• Afro-Latino Judges on the Federal Courts
• American Indian Judges on the Federal Courts
• Asian American Judges on the Federal Courts
• Chaldean Judges on the Federal Courts
• Hispanic Judges on the Federal Courts
• Pacific Islander Judges on the Federal Courts
• Pakistani Judges on the Federal Courts
• Women Judges on the Federal Courts 

Choose the database's Advanced Search option to pull out different combinations of attributes. Curious about Afro-Latino or Hispanic judges nominated by President Clinton? You can search for that. How about district judges whose professional background includes the word "prosecutor"? You can search for that, too. Asian American judges who took office on or before December 31, 1999? Yep, you can search for that. 

Try searching for "University of Washington School of Law" in the Education field. You'll find 25 UW Law alumni who have been federal judges. (If you search for "University of Washington," you'll find some of these, and you'll also find 5 judges who got their bachelor's degrees at the UW but went elsewhere for law school.)

First Washington Women in Government

To start off your celebration of Women's History Month you might visit the Secretary of State's online exhibit, Moving Forward Looking Back: Washington's First Women in Government.  

There you'll find profiles of the first women to serve as state representatives, state senator, Superintendent of Public Instruction, mayor of Seattle, Washington Secretary of State, U.S. representative, governor, senate majority leader, Washington Supreme Court justice, Commissioner of Public Lands, Insurance Commissioner, Washington State Attorney General, and U.S. Senator.

Bertha Knight Landes, mayor of Seattle, 1926-28,
from Moving Forward Looking Back

Guess which woman in that list was a graduate of UW Law? Hint: it's not Bertha Landes, the first woman to be mayor of Seattle (although Jenny Durkan, the second woman to serve, elected 91 years later, is a UW Law grad).

Anniversary of Executive Order 9066, Incarceration of Japanese Americans During WWII

Tomorrow (Feb. 19) is Civil Liberties Day of Remembrance, the anniversary of Roosevelt's Executive Order 9066, which set in motion the removal of thousands of Japanese American families from their homes and their imprisonment in isolated camps. See this brief essay on OurDocuments.gov. Read the order as it was published in the Federal Register Feb. 25, 1942. (HeinOnline has PDFs of the Federal Register starting with its first issue, in 1936. For more about the collection see this guide.)

PDF from HeinOnline of 7 Fed. Reg. 1407 (Feb. 25, 1942)

We Hereby Refuse: Japanese American Resistance to Wartime Incarceration (2021) is a graphic work presenting the history of three resisters. The law library's copy is in the Good Reads collection—but it happens to be checked out as I write this blog post. You can click on the link to request the book when it's available.

We Hereby Refuse was co-published by the Wing Luke Museum of the Asian Pacific American Experience. Take a look at the museum's interactive timeline showing the events in the book. 

Did you know that the Wing Luke Museum is named for a UW Law graduate? Wing Luke ('54) served as an assistant attorney general 1957-62, before becoming the first person of color on the Seattle City Council (and the first Asian American to hold any elective office in Washington State). He was killed in an airplane crash in 1965. In 2015, Attorney General Bob Ferguson established the Wing Luke Civil Rights Division.

Wing Luke's bio on the museum's site says that he fought back against high school bullying by drawing comic strips, eventually becoming so popular he was elected president of Roosevelt High School in Seattle. Wing Luke's teenage work in comics makes extra cool that the museum published a graphic novel. (For more on Roosevelt High, see this post from two weeks ago.)

In this YouTube video,Tom Ikeda, from Densho, interviews the two authors (Frank Abe and Tamiko Namura) and one of the illustrators (Ross Ishikawa) about how they researched and created this amazing work. Densho is an online resource with oral histories and other resources about the history of Japanese American incarceration.

 

Meet ProQuest Legislative Insight (and Remember HeinOnline's Legislative Histories, Too)

The University Libraries has subscribed to ProQuest Legislative Insight Major Laws (1789-present). 

ProQuest says that the content in the database has been "selected to support entry-level study of U.S. History, Political Science, and Government." But you know who else likes to research federal statutes? That's right: legal researchers!

ProQuest's editors have selected several hundred federal laws, from the Congressional Oath Act (June 1, 1789) to the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021. 

If you know when a law was enacted, you can browse by Congress. For example, if you're interested in the Copyright Act of 1976, Pub. L. No. 94-553, you know that it was enacted in the 94th Congress (that's the first two digits of the Public Law number).

 Screen snip from ProQuest Legislative Insight Major Laws,
showing number of laws included from 92nd Congress through
101st Congress

Skimming the laws from the 94th Congress, you'll see other topics the 94th Congress addressed, such as antitrust, tax reform, and pollution. You can quickly select 94-553. 

Screen snip from ProQuest Legislative Insight Major Laws,
showing some laws from 94th Congress that are included in
the collection

If you don't know the public law number, you can browse an alphabetical list of laws.

Screen snip showing alphabetical list of laws (Cooperative Research Act
through Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act)

You can also search. For example, searching for laws with "copyright" in the title field turns up 10 laws, including the Copyright Law Revision Act of 1976.  (Those 10 aren't the only statutes with "copyright" in the title--just the 10 that the editors selected for the "Major Laws" collection.)

Once you get to the Copyright Act, you get a list of dozens of related bills, some as old as 1967. Then there are links to the Congressional Record, House and Senate committee reports, and hearings. 

You can search within this set of materials. 

For instance, I searched for "Xerox" and found 10 documents. I could click on each to see a PDF and read about how witnesses and legislators were wrestling with technological innovations like photocopies and microfilm. For example, a witness from the American Book Publishers Council, Inc. read into the record a Wall Street Journal story that characterized a street near Harvard University as "the Sunset Strip of copying." The president of a clothing store said that the store's Xerox 2400 was "an aid to education" because students could copy journal articles or book chapters. 4 Copyright Law Revision: Hearings Before the Subcomm. on Patents, Trademarks of the S. Comm. on the Judiciary, 94th Cong. 1109 (1967).

 

You can do this sort of research in HeinOnline's U.S. Federal Legislative History Library too. In fact, HeinOnline has three different compiled legislative histories of the Copyright Act of 1976!

Copyright Act of 197, Pub. L. No. 94-553 

• Kaminstein Legislative History Project: A Compendium and Analytical Index of Materials Leading to the Copyright Act of 1976 6 v. Latman, Alan and Lightstone, James F.; Fred B. Rothman & Co. 
• Legislative History of the General Revision of the Copyright Law, Title 17 of the United States Code, and for Other Purposes : P.L. 94-553 : 90 Stat. 2541 : October 19, 1976. 10v. Washington: Covington & Burling, 1976 
• Omnibus Copyright Revision Legislative History 17 v. Grossman, George S.; William S. Hein Co., Inc.

HeinOnline has some convenient search features, as well as great content. If you're really into the Copyright Act, try the HeinOnline legislative histories, perhaps in addition to the ProQuest collection. 

Both collections had legislative histories of the Copyright Act of 1976, but there are lots of statutes that are included in one collection but not the other.  For example, HeinOnline doesn't have a compiled legislative history for Pub. L. No. 80-104, the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act and ProQuest Legislative Insight Major Acts does. The ProQuest collection doesn't have a legislative history of Pub. L. 80-129, the Housing and Rent Control Act of 1947, but HeinOnline does. 
 

It's not one-stop shopping, but these are two great resources!

Lawyers of Color - Snapshot from the 1970s, Plus Links for Today

The legal profession, which was almost entirely white, slowly began to crack open its doors to lawyers of color in the 1970s. The 1972-73 Prelaw Handbook (p. 9) noted that "the number of lawyers from minority groups is still disproportionately small" but there were "signs of change."   

👉Research tip: Back before prospective students researched law schools on the web, people relied on the annual Prelaw Handbook, which included profiles of all accredited law schools. The law library has a long run, so you can look for information about law schools over the decades. Classified Stacks KF285 .A83.

The Handbook noted: 

Large law firms and corporations which once were not open to Negroes now seek young black lawyers. . . . There has been a significant increase in government positions, with minority group lawyers serving in the offices of city attorneys, federal district attorneys and agencies of all kinds. Black judges sit on federal, state and municipal benches. In 1970 there were 3,845 black lawyers and 214 black judges. By contrast in the 1971-72 academic year, there were 3,732 Blacks, 881 Chicanos, and about 1,000 other minority group members enrolled in law schools. 

Think of that: there were almost as many Black law students that year as there were Black lawyers!

What was it like for those early lawyers of color?

One snapshot is in Minority Opportunities in Law for Blacks, Puerto Ricans & Chicanos (Christine Philpot Clark ed., 1974) [link to catalog record]. Its chapters include private practice, law teaching (by critical race theory pioneer Professor Derrick A. Bell, Jr.), politics and government, "community interest law," and the bench. It also has a chapter on the bar exam and one discussing the Black bar's role in Black people's struggle for social justice. 

The book had an interesting genesis. The Practising Law Institute recruited Christine Clark to edit a collection of articles about career opportunities for minority lawyers. She did, but PLI decided not to publish it. The official reason was that it was far too negative in tone, emphasizing obstacles rather than opportunities." Clark said that the real reason was that the book was "too radical." Joel Dreyfuss, The Verdict Was 'Too Negative,' Wash. Post, Sept. 30, 1973, at L1 [ProQuest Historical Newspapers link] The book was published the next year, but by Law Journal Press, not PLI. 

👉Research tip: UW users can search current and historic newspapers through databases that the University Libraries licenses. Start with this guide.

What about now? 

Today the United States has about four times as many lawyers as it did in 1970. 

1970: 326,842 lawyers

2021: 1,327,910 lawyers

Source: ABA National Lawyer Population Survey at 3. Perhaps 15% of lawyers are Black, Latinx, Asian, or multiracial. Id. at 4. 

👉Research tip: For statistics on the legal profession, a good place to start is the ABA Legal Profession Statistics page. 

• Why did I give the vague number "perhaps 15%"? Because that column of the table was based on only 25 state bar associations or licensing authorities who reported the statistic. 

Research guide

Our guide, Diversity in the Legal Profession, includes lots of sources, such as studies of the profession, advice for employers, and advice for law students and lawyers. Take a look! (Black History Month is one of the best twelve months to learn about this topic!)

Get Involved with the Gallagher Law Library!

The Gallagher Law Library is seeking UW Law Students to become members of the first Law Library Student Advisory Board (LLSAB).

 
LLSAB is a quarterly forum for law students to share direct feedback with the library and establish a platform for students to discuss how the library can continue to support their needs. All members must be willing to attend one meeting per quarter during lunchtime. All members will receive a complimentary lunch.

 

First Meeting: March 1, 2022
Time: 12:30 - 1:30 PM

Place: TBA

Interested in joining? Please send a 3-5 sentence message to oykc1@uw.edu. Tell us why you are interested.

 

If you would like to learn more about LLSAB click here!

New Books About Black Women on the Bench

Black History Month is one of the twelve best months to see new books about impressive Black leaders. These two just came in:

LaDoris H. Cordell, Her Honor: My Life on the Bench . . . What Works, What's Broken, and How to Change It (2021) (print)

Judge Cordell, the first African American woman to sit on the Superior Court of Northern California, knows firsthand how prejudice has permeated our legal system. And yet, she believes in the system. From ending school segregation to legalizing same-sex marriage, its progress relies on legal professionals and jurors who strive to make the imperfect system as fair as possible. Cordell takes you into her chambers where she haggles with prosecutors and defense attorneys and into the courtroom during jury selection and sentencing hearings. She uses real cases to highlight how judges make difficult decisions, all the while facing outside pressures from the media, law enforcement, lobbyists, and the friends and families of the people involved.--Provided by publisher.

 

Tomiko Brown-Nagin, Civil Rights Queen: Constance Baker Motley and the Struggle for Equality (2022) (ebook)

See  Karen Grigsby Bates, The Life of a 'Civil Rights Queen', NPR (Feb. 3, 2022)

Documentary Explores Race & Education, Right Here in Seattle—@4racialequity

Whether you grew up here or just moved here for law school, you'll learn a lot about race in Seattle by watching the new documentary, Roosevelt High School: Beyond Black and White.

Composite of images from Roosevelt High School: Beyond Black and White

 

Roosevelt High School is just under two miles north of UW Law. In the 1960s, it was almost entirely white, because of residential segregation shaped by redlining and other factors. See Segregated Seattle, by the Seattle Civil Rights & Labor History Project. 

In the late 1960s, the Seattle Busing Voluntary Racial Transfer Program (VRT) brought a few dozen students of color to Roosevelt. Fifty years later, as protestors went to the streets over police treatment of Black Americans (as well as other inequities), some members of the class of '71, of different races, began talking (over Zoom) about their experience and their city. Why were so many issues the same as decades ago? 

They formed a group, Roosevelt Alumni for Racial Equity (RARE), which has grown beyond Roosevelt and beyond alumni.

This week, RARE premiered a half-hour documentary, Roosevelt High School: Beyond Black and White (31:00), which looks at race and education. It is thoughtful and thought-provoking. It includes interviews with alumni from that first group of busing students, as well as students, teachers, and administrators from today. One of the key people behind the film is UW Law Professor Emeritus Lea Vaughn, a member of that RHS class of '71. 

To explore racial patterns today, visit the 2010 and 2020 Census Map Viewer for Seattle and the Region. The interface lets you create different views of the city. For example, here is a map showing the racial make-up of Seattle. The area north of the UW is almost all light blue––the code representing people who identify as White. East of downtown and moving south, magenta dots represent Black or African American (not Hispanic or Latino) residents. And the green in the university district and south end represents Asian (not Hispanic or Latino).

Seattle is not as segregated as it was in the 1960s, but it clearly has neighborhoods that are largely one race or another. In 2010, a Seattle Times analysis ranked US cities by percentage of White residents, and Seattle was fifth. Now Seattle has diversified a tiny bit (our city is now sixth) and it is diversifying at a faster rate than many other cities. Gene Balk, Seattle Ranks as Fifth Fastest-Diversifying Big City of the Decade, Seattle Times (Sept. 30, 2021). 

Take half an hour to watch the video. If you have a little more time, explore some of the other resources on RARE's website, which has a curriculum guide for using the film in classes. 

While you shouldn't limit your learning about these topics to one month, this is a good way to kick off Black History Month.

 

Doggone Paywalls! . . . But There's Good News: Libraries Provide Access!

Some of you find great stuff out on the web. And then you're frustrated because the publisher's paywall cuts you off from full access. That is disappointing, isn't it?

But wait a minute. Libraries subscribe to lots of databases to provide you with access to zillions of magazines and newspapers. We made a video explaining how you can find magazines and journals through the University Libraries:

 

Retrieving Magazine Articles: Tips for Source Gathering

 

While searching the web can turn up lots of great stuff, you might also consider starting with a database with advanced search features and links to the full articles. If you're looking for articles from say, psychology or sociology, using PsycInfo or Sociological Abstracts will focus your search much better than Google, Bing, or any other search engine. 

To get to those specialized databases, start with the University Libraries A-Z Databases list. If you don't know which databases might be useful, take a look at the terrific Research Guides prepared by the University Libraries' subject specialists. If you don't know where to start for computer science or East Asian studies, those guides will get you going. (If you're looking for legal topics, remember the Gallagher Law Library guides!)

Here's a tip for Google Scholar. You can set your preferences so it automatically connects you to sources licensed by the University Libraries. See these blog posts, with illustrations.

PS If you're reading this post and you aren't affiliated with the UW, check out what's available from your local public library. They also subscribe to databases!

Research Tribal Court Caselaw

Most legal scholarship focuses on federal and state law, with perhaps a quick nod to local government law. But what about the law of the 574 federally recognized tribal governments? 

Prof. Elizabeth A. Reese (Stanford Law) makes a persuasive plea for moving tribal law into the mainstream of American legal study in The Other American Law, 73 Stan. L. Rev. 555 (2021).  

UW Law has been taking tribal law seriously for a long time, notably through the work of the Tribal Court Public Defense Clinic and the Native American Law Center. 

But how are you going to study tribal law (or anything else?) if you can't find it? That's where your library can help. We have a research guide on Indian & Tribal Law. And in the last two weeks we've been updating the section on tribal court decisions, complete with a new video posted today.

Library Closed for Thanksgiving Holiday

Gallagher Law Library will be be unstaffed from Wednesday, November 24 at 5:00 pm until Monday, November 29 at 8:00 am for the Thanksgiving holiday. We will not be providing Info Desk staffing, reference services, or individual appointments during that time. The library facility will remain open to UW Law community members (see our 24/7 Access Policy for more information). 

Please use our online reference form to ask your questions while we are closed. We will return your message as soon as we are able when we reopen on Monday. 

Happy Thanksgiving!

National Bison Day

Today is National Bison Day (S. Res. 441). It comes around on the first Saturday of November. Hats off to our National Mammal (Pub. L. 114-152)!

 American Bison, by Pelck's Scenic & Art Studio, circa 1906.
Source: Library of Congress

 

It's appropriate that National Bison Day falls during Native American Heritage Month because bison were and remain important to many tribes. 

To learn more about bison, see Andrew C. Isenberg, The Destruction of the Bison: An Environmental History, 1750-1920 (2000), available to UW users as either an ebook or a print book. 

What about bison and the law? Here's a selection of law review articles:

• William Holland, Note, The Spirit of the Buffalo: The Past and Future of an American Plains Icon, 21 Animal L. 151 (2014) [HeinOnline]
  
  
• Dean Lueck, The Extermination and Conservation of the American Bison, 31 J. Legal Stud. S609 (2002) [HeinOnline]
  
  
• Erin Patrick Lyons, Note, Give Me a Home Where the Buffalo Roam: The Case in Favor of the Management-Function Transfer of the National Bison Range to the Conferederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes of the Flathead Nation, 8 J. Gender Race & Just. 711 (2005) [HeinOnline]
  
  
• Peter Morrisette, Is There Room for Free-Roaming Bison in Greater Yellowstone?, 27 Ecology L.Q. 467 (2000) [HeinOnline]
  
  
• Temple Stoellinger et al., Where the Deer and the Antelope Play: Conserving Big Game Migrations as an Endangered Phenomena,  31 Duke Env't L. & Pol'y F. 81 (2020) [HeinOnline]

(You might wonder why I link to HeinOnline, when you can also look up law review articles in Lexis or Westlaw. In fact, I did use Westlaw to find these articles--but I like HeinOnline's PDFs. Unlike Lexis and Westlaw, that are licensed only to UW Law users, HeinOnline is available to anyone at the UW.)

Native American Heritage Month on Your Screen

Check out these films and presentations during Native American Heritage Month.

Native Cinema Showcase, from the National Museum of the American Indian, will stream feature films and shorts from several countries, November 12 to 18. Check the schedule: the feature films are only available for 24 hours each. Four panels with indigenous filmmakers will be available during the whole week. 

The Burke Museum presents Historical Trauma and the Native American Boarding School Experience Thur. Nov. 18, at 5:30 pm. It's free, but you have to register.

You can also stream documentaries on PBS, including films about Natives in the military, the trauma of the adoption era, Natives in rock and roll, and Native women's influence on the suffrage movement.

Take you pick among dozens of video and audio recordings curated by the National Archives, the Library of Congress, and the Smithsonian.

Our Fastcase Now Includes WSBA Deskbooks

Did you know that Washington lawyers have access to Fastcase through the bar association? Fastcase has primary materials for federal and state jurisdictions. (There used to be another service called Casemaker, as well, but the companies merged this year, so now there's Fastcase.)

The Law Library subscribes to Fastcase for UW users. See the link under Washington on our homepage.

All WSBA members have access to the primary materials on Fastcase, but there are other modules. The Law Library also subscribes to a module with the incredibly useful WSBA deskbooks. If you want the scoop on estate planning, look at Estate Planning, Probate, and Trust Administration in Washington. If you have an ethics question, consult The Law of Lawyering in Washington. Real property, land use, or environmental law? Washington Real Property Deskbook. 

From Fastcase's home screen, click on "Browse Libraries." Then the WSBA materials are listed under Commentary. See the screen snips below.

Indigenous Peoples' Day - Land Acknowledgments, Research Guide

Different groups and governments have started marking Indigenous Peoples' Day instead of (or in addition to Columbus Day). This year, for the first time, a Presidential proclamation recognizes the day. See today's stories from NPR and the New York Times.

 

Indian camp with canoes on the Seattle waterfront, Washington, ca. 1898.
Photograph by Anders B. Wilse.  Negative Number NA698, UW12293.
University Libraries digital collection.

 Many institutions have begun acknowledging that they are on indigenous peoples' land. For example, the Washington Law Review states

Washington Law Review (WLR) acknowledges the Coast Salish peoples’ original ownership of the land on which the University of Washington sits, the traditional territory of all tribes and bands within the Suquamish, Tulalip, Duwamish, and Muckleshoot nations. WLR further acknowledges the state’s continuing obligation to fulfill promises made in the Treaty of Point Elliott.

The editors consulted with former Professor Emeritus Robert Anderson, then  Director of UW Law's Native American Law Center, in crafting the statement. Anderson was recently confirmed to be Solicitor of the United States Department of the Interior (although his agency profile still lists him as Principal Deputy Solicitor). (Other agency work might be higher priority than updating web profiles. Browse recent press releases to learn more about Interior's activities.)

Land acknowledgments can be controversial. In some cases, they might seem like mere lip service. Or they might give the mistaken impression that the indigenous people who once occupied the land are simply part of a mythic past. This essay by three anthropologists 2021 explores the topic (The Conversation, Oct. 7). 

Would you like to learn more about treaties with local tribes, federal Indian law, and tribal law? Check out our guide, Indian & Tribal Law.

Neat Trick: Search Law Firm Websites for Practice Tips, Legal Updates

You've probably stumbled across law firm newsletters or blogs that have helpful guidance about some area of the law.

Without counting on the lucky stumble, how can you find these gems? If you just use Google or another search engine, you might all sorts of stuff—newspaper articles, personal blogs, etc., in addition to law firm documents. Instead, try the Law Firm Search Engine, which uses a custom Google search to focus on law firm sites.

This can be really helpful. For example, I entered nonprofit incorporation washington state and found a post from Davis Wright Tremaine from May 2021: David A. Lawson, Washington's New Nonprofit Corporation Act: Is Your Nonprofit Ready?  What? There's a new statute? It goes into effect in less than three months?? Tell me more!

When I searched for covid vaccine mandate, I found a post from Littler, a big employment law firm, from today: Mandatory Employee Vaccines – Coming to A State Near You? (Oct. 7, 2021). If you just used Google (or another search engine), you'd find lots of documents, but you'd probably have to wade through a lot of news and opinion (not to mention a dose of misinformation) before getting to a legal analysis from a law firm.

This handy site was developed by Jeffrey Buckley, a law librarian in New York and graduate of the UW's iSchool. Cool, right?

Good Reads in the Law Library

 You know that the Law Library has tons of great resources for research, such as practice manuals and treatises, not to mention all the study aids. And, golly, the databases! 

But there's more! The Law Library also has a collection of books that we think might appeal to you for leisure reading. This Good Reads collection is on the low shelving across from the Law Student Lounge. Recent additions include a memoir (The Watergate Girl), a novel (The Coyotes of Carthage), and a comic-book-style book about the Constitution (Constitution Illustrated). Take a look!

Book jackets: The Watergate Girl,
The Coyotes of Carthage, Constitution Illustrated

Library Reopening! Woo-hoo!

After a long closure for the pandemic, the Law Library is reopening to the UW Law community, Monday morning, September 20. We're excited to see you again, and we hope you'll be happy with the study spaces, collections, and services available.

Photo by Alex Knight on Unsplash

There's still a pandemic going on, though, so we all need to be careful.

• UW Law students, staff, and faculty may visit the library in person. Just swipe in with your Husky card. 
• One person at a time, please!
• No guests allowed: just UW Law.
• Your Husky cards will open the door 24-7. Remember that Gates Hall is closed 1-6 a.m., and of course you have to be in the building to open the library door.
  
  
• Mask up! 
• Beverages are allowed (in covered containers). You may pull down your mask to take a sip.
• The only library space where food is allowed is the student lounge on L1. Obviously, you'll need to unmask to eat. But don't sit too close to others.
  
  
• Socially distance!
• You can now reserve your seat at a table or study carrel.
• Tables in the Reference Area and soft seating are available to the first sitter.
  
  
• Library staff will be here M-F, 8-5. You'll have remote reference service 9 am to 7 pm Monday-Thursday and Sunday afternoon.
   
  
• Self-service Course Reserves
  
• New check-out stations enable you to check out books to yourself with your Husky card.
• Course reserves may be checked out for four hours at a time, for use in the library only.
• Check them back in and reshelve them.
  
  
• Self-service Checkout
• You can check out books from anywhere (except the Reference Area and Reference Office) at the self-service checkout.
• Return those books to book drops.
   
• Contact us
• Email lawref@uw.edu (UW Law community only)
• Phone 206-543-6794
• Chat (coming soon!)
• Zoom--use the new terminal at the Information Desk to be connected directly to a reference Zoom Room!
  

 

What if you're not a UW Law student, staff member, or faculty member? We can serve you remotely. 

• Ask Us! service (You ask a question via a web form and get an answer via email.)
• Phone 206-543-6794
• Chat (coming soon!)

 

Let's have a great school year!

Access to Justice Speaker Series (Sept. 21—Nov. 30)

Angélica Cházaro, UW Law

Sports fans know that the Pac-12 is an athletic conference of major universities in the West. But the universities are much more than their sports teams. Most of them also have law schools (all but WSU* and Oregon State). 

The law schools don't face off on the football field or volleyball court (although that might be fun to see). Instead, they've gotten together to plan a speaker series on access to justice, featuring big thinkers from around the conference. 

The series runs Tuesdays throughout the fall, and concludes on November 30 with Angélica Cházaro from UW Law.

Tuesday, September 21, 6 pm Pacific Time
Jody Armour
University of Southern California Gould School of Law
Negrophobia and Reasonable Racism: Race, Language, Unequal Justice, and the Law

September 28
David Oppenheimer
University of California Berkeley School of Law
Responding to the Humanitarian Crisis in Afghanistan 

October 5
Margaret Hagan
Stanford University Law School
Justice Innovation

October 12
Anna Carpenter
University of Utah S.J. Quinney College of Law
Judges in Lawyerless Courts

October 19
Stacy Butler and Christopher Griffin
University of Arizona James E. Rogers College of Law
Developing and Simulating Non-Lawyer Models of Medical Debt Advocacy

October 26
Scott Skinner-Thompson
University of Colorado Law School
Identity By Committee 

November 2
Laura Gomez
University of California Los Angeles School of Law
Inventing Latinos: A New Story of American Racism

November 9
Justin Weinstein-Tull
Arizona State University Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law
Title coming soon 

November 16
Kimberly Johnson
University of Oregon School of Law
This is My America: Stories, Storytelling and Access to Justice

November 30
Angélica Cházaro
University of Washington School of Law
Due Process Deportations? The Limits of Universal Representation for Immigrants

Right now, registration is only available for the first presentation. Check the series website for the following lectures' times and registration as they become available. 

 

————

* The legislature decided back in 1917 that only the UW would have a law program and only WSU would have programs in agriculture and veterinary science. 1917 Wash. Laws ch. 10, Regulating Courses of Instruction in State University, College, and Normal Schools. By now the list exclusive to UW includes law, medicine, forest products, logging engineering, library sciences, and fisheries. RCW 28B.20.060. 

Speaking of "library sciences": the UW Information School is home to a terrific program in law librarianship. If you're curious about this rewarding field, ask a law librarian, or start with this online essay.