Remarks by the President

Last night’s State of the Union address is available from the White House press office. But what about prior addresses?

For one-stop shopping, check out The American Presidency Project, an online searchable archive maintained by UC Santa Barbara. It includes executive orders, proclamations, signing statements, veto messages - and every State of the Union delivered to Congress since 1790. A few fun (and possibly useful) lists such as length in words and length in minutes are included.

For more on Presidential Documents, see our research guide.

Big Changes Coming to Wexis

In case you haven't heard, big changes are coming to LexisNexis and Westlaw. See the article on the ABA Journal website: Inside the New Westlaw, Lexis & Bloomberg Platforms.

Both companies claim to be creating a legal research experience that will mimic the ease of use their customers have come to expect from the leading Internet search engine, Google.

You can check out other reports on these developments in the New York Times Technology section for Jan. 24th and Robert Ambrogi's LawSites blog for Jan. 26th.

But don't expect these new interfaces to appear on a monitor near you soon. The law firm market is likely to be offered these "upgrades" first.

Federal Judge May Face Impeachment

Yesterday a task force of the House of Representatives voted in favor of four articles of impeachment against Judge G. Thomas Porteous, Jr., Eastern District of Louisiana. The articles allege an improper financial relationship with a firm that handled a case before him, the failure to recuse himself in a case the firm handled, and more. Judge, Facing Impeachment, Mounts His Defense, The BLT: The Blog of the Legal Times, Jan. 22, 2010.

Impeaching a federal judge is very unusual. The Federal Judicial Center has a list of all the judicial impeachments from 1803 to 2009 -- just 14 in all. Only 7 of the judges were convicted.

The Federal Judicial Center offers a database that enables you to search profiles of all federal judges in history by characteristics such as nominating president, race or ethnicity, and -- a search I just tried -- termination reason.

Accessing Court Documents on Lexis

LexisNexis is now providing the academic market limited access to CourtLink. CourtLink is a docket/document retrieval and e-filing product containing millions of state and federal case dockets, briefs, motions, and complaints. For now, academic subscribers can access over six million of the 85 million documents available to commercial customers.

Washington-specific documents are limited to those filed in these federal courts: U.S. District Court, U.S. Bankruptcy Court, and the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. Washington state court dockets/documents are not available.

One way to find CourtLink: log in to Lexis at www.lexisnexis.com/lawschool and click Research Now to enter the research system. From the Legal tab, click on the heading Court Records, Briefs and Filings. On the next screen, click on the heading Court Records. Finally, click on the link for Litigant, Attorney & Judge Strategic Profiles. This opens a new window into CourtLink.
One of the new features now available is the Single Search box where you can enter a terms & connectors search to find your specific topic. Once you get to the results, there will be two tabs: one for dockets and one for documents.
After entering your term(s) in the single search box, you can then refine your search results on the left hand side by choosing case type, litigation area, state or date filed. You can narrow your results by entering a keyword in the “Search within Results” box.

The dockets currently do not provide live links to the documents listed.
Coverage for Washington’s federal courts is as follows:

• U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Washington: civil documents back to 1986; criminal documents back to 1992.
• U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington: civil documents back to 1987; criminal documents back to 1991.
• Bankruptcy Court for the Eastern District of Washington: back to 1988.
• Bankruptcy Court for the Western District of Washington: back to 1992.
• Also, the U.S. Court of Appeals, 9th Circuit (including the Bankruptcy Appellate Panel) has documents back to 2000.

Tulia: Race, Cocaine, and Corruption in a Small Texas Town

On one morning, members of a drug task force arrested forty-seven people for dealing cocaine. Forty-seven is a lot of drug dealers for a town of 5,000 people, and some people might have been struck by the coincidence that not one of them had cocaine when the surprise busts were made. But still, prosecutions went ahead and most of the suspects were convicted and given substantial sentences.

In Tulia: Race, Cocaine, and Corruption in a Small Texas Town (HV8079.N3 B55 2005 at Good Reads) reporter Nate Blakeslee explores all the things that went wrong -- the dishonest undercover cop, the sheriff who ignored repeated warning signs (even an indictment of the cop for theft from another county), the prosecutor who pressed on and stonewalled anything negative, the court-appointed counsel who didn't do much, the judge who didn't let the defense attorneys question the cop's background, the newspaper who assumed the guilt of all charged, the white community that was eager to believe the worst of the black defendants.

He also explores some things that went right -- a few community members (white and black) who advocated for the defendants, sending out mailings to get some media attention, the Texas Observer story (written by Blakeslee), the national media coverage, the New York drug reform advocate, attorneys from Texas, DC, and New York who handled the habeas case and civil suits.

Blakeslee followed the events in Tulia after his first magazine article. He attended court hearings, interviewed defendants and family members, and pored over trial transcripts. He brings to this legal tale background about the community and the families entangled in the arrests.

Blakeslee gives an inside view of the legal maneuverings -- the judge's decisions to exclude certain evidence from the original trials, the different level of investigation by the different court-appointed attorneys, the involvement of the Texas ACLU (search for "tulia" to learn about advocacy related to the case), the litigation strategy of the habeas team, and some beautiful cross-examination in the habeas hearing. The habeas team was spearheaded by Vanita Gupta, a young lawyer at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, fresh out of law school and funded by a Soros fellowship. She threw herself into the case and recruited the "dream team" of lawyers from DC and New York law firms.* Blakeslee had access to the team and so could write with immediacy of the "war room" discussions and the teamwork involved in the litigation. Behind one lawyer's brilliant cross-examination, for instance, was another lawyer's painstaking work culling through transcripts to find the undercover officer's previous misstatements.

Blakeslee makes it clear that he does not think that the injustice in Tulia is unique to that time and place, and he discusses more general issues about multi-jurisdictional drug task forces and the indigent defense system. In a closing chapter, he reports some reforms implemented in Texas in response to the Tulia events.

You can preview Tulia on Google Books, and of course you can check the whole book out from the library.

* For profiles of and interviews with Gupta see New York Times (April 16, 2003), NYU Law (Jan. 2004)), Rediff India Abroad (Dec. 8, 2004), and Wikipedia.

Children in Disasters

Earlier this month, I attended the annual meeting of the Association of American Law Schools. Partly because the meeting was in New Orleans, the Section on Children and the Law organized a day-long program, "Meeting the Needs of Children During Times of Crisis: Hurricane Katrina and Beyond."

One speaker (Anna Williams Shavers) remarked that disasters have a more severe impact on people already disadvantaged or suffering injustice, and disasters can also serve to reveal existing injustice. Her focus was public education in New Orleans -- but the same is true in Haiti. The natural disaster is hitting hard in a community already suffering from poverty and years of unstable governments, and the disaster is bringing the underlying situation to the world's attention.

Here are some publications related to the AALS program:

• Children, Law, and Disasters: What We Learned from Katrina and the Hurricanes of 2005 (a project of the ABA and the Univ. of Houston), KF3735 .C45 2009 at Classified Stacks


• symposium on Hurricane Katrina, 31 Thurgood Marshall Law Review 327-572 (2006), available on HeinOnline -- table of contents here.


• Kristi L. Bowman, Rebuilding Schools, Rebuilding Communities: The Civic Role of Mississippi's Public Schools after Hurricane Katrina (2008). MSU Legal Studies Research Paper No. 06-10. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1135309


• Juvenile Justice Project of Louisiana, Treated Like Trash: Juvenile Detention in New Orleans Before, During, and After Hurricane Katrina.


• Meghan Halley & Abigail English, Center for Adolescent Health & the Law, Health Care for Homeless Youth: Policy Options for Improving Access (2008)


• Left Behind: The Story of New Orleans Public Schools (a new documentary, not yet available on campus or in Netflix)

The Pocket Veto

When presented with a bill passed by Congress, the President of the U.S. may sign it into law, veto it, or send it back to Congress. As with any situation, the President may also take no action. Usually, if the President takes no action then the law becomes effective without his signature. However, if the Congress isn't in session when the President's time limit to return the bill to Congress expires -- the bill dies. This so-called "pocket veto" is specifically enumerated in Art. I, Sec. 7, Cl. 2 of the Constitution.

President Obama used the pocket veto last fall to kill (more accurately, "let die") an appropriations bill. However, "[f]or those unaware the president had even vetoed a bill emanating from the Democratic Congress, don’t worry. The measure was a stop-gap spending measure for the Pentagon that became unnecessary when the president instead signed the annual Pentagon money bill in time. He then vetoed the five-day, interim bill as unneeded legislation." (link to nytimes)

The New York times also reports that Congress voted last week on an effort to override that veto. The override attempt is a surprising move -- given the bill's substance was moot and any general procedural changes to the pocket veto would likely require changing the text of the constitution.

For a detailed look into the pocket veto (or any other provision of the Constitution, for that matter) check out "Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis & Interpretation." This meaty tome is an annotated version of the U.S. Constitution prepared by the Congressional Research Service of the Library of Congress. As a government document it is available online through the government printing office (GPO). But to get a sense of the hefty consideration the Constitution has had over the years you can find it in the Reference area and the Reference Office.

-- Patrick Flanagan

American Law Institute and Capital Punishment

The American Law Institute (A.L.I.) produces restatements of the law, model codes, and principles of law. This group of lawyers, judges, academics, and law librarians deliberatively comments on both what the law is and what the law should be. Notably, the ALI promoted their model penal code for adoption by the fifty states. With many variations and exceptions, they were largely successful.

The ALI membership in the 1960's included in the model penal code provisions detailing and implicitly ratifying the death penalty. As the New York Times reported last week, the ALI voted last year to withdraw the model code's sections concerning capital punishment.

The vote followed from the ALI's report on the death penalty, available here in pdf.

-- Patrick Flanagan

2009 Report on the Federal Judiciary

Chief Justice Roberts has issued his 2009 Year-End Report on the Federal Judiciary. He is following a tradition set by Chief Justice Warren Burger in 1970. Normally, this report discusses problems the federal judiciary faces, with an appendix that briefly summarizes the workloads of the various courts. In this year’s report, the Chief Justice included the appendix, but decided to skip the discussion of problems:

In the past few years, I have adhered to the tradition that Chief Justice Burger initiated and have provided my perspective on the most critical needs of the judiciary. Many of those needs remain to be addressed. This year, however, when the political branches are faced with so many difficult issues, and when so many of our fellow citizens have been touched by hardship, the public might welcome a year-end report limited to what is essential: The courts are operating soundly, and the nation’s dedicated federal judges are conscientiously discharging their duties.

If you want to read reports from other years, visit the Supreme Court’s website, where you will find the year-end reports back to 2000.

Recent Enhancements to THOMAS

Thomas, the free website of Congressional information provided by the Library of Congress, has been recently enhanced.

The five most-searched-for bills from the past week are listed in the center box on the right side of the homepage. Hovering the mouse over the bill number will display the title of the bill. The top bill this week is the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, the big health reform bill.

Users may select an RSS feed for information about bills that are awaiting the President's signature. PDF images of bills have been are now easier to find.

Immigration Law Primer from the Federal Judicial Center

Immigration Law: A Primer (177 pages) is newly published by the Federal Judicial Center. It focuses on issues that arise in litigation, including:

• grounds for inadmissibility and deportation
• asylum and refugee law
• the intersection of criminal law and immigration law
• state-assisted enforcement of immigration law in the workplace

A glossary of terms and a table of cases is also included.

The Federal Judicial Center is the research and education agency of the federal judicial system.

Military Commission Reporter

The National Institute of Military Justice, a nonprofit associated with American University Washington College of Law had compiled and published “every publicly available decision, order, and ruling issued by the military commissions conducted at the U.S. Naval Base, Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and all known substantive opinions and rulings of the United States Court of Military Commission Review from October 2006 through June 1, 2009.” The hard copy version is available at KF7661.N38 2009 at Reference Area. You can download the PDF from the NIMJ publications page. The publications page also includes the first supplement (which will be compiled “in due course”) and NIMJ’s 4-volume Military Commission Instructions Sourcebook.

Judge Patricia Wald’s 9-page Foreword to this first volume of the Military Commission Reporter was reprinted in the Green Bag.

State Court Statistics

Interested in what state courts are doing? After all, ninety-five percent of all cases initiated in the United States are filed in state courts! Check out the just released 2009 publication Examining the Work of State Courts: An Analysis of 2007 State Court Caseloads. This joint project of the Conference of State Court Administrators, the Bureau of Justice Statistics, and the National Center for State Courts analyzes state court filing and disposition data. The Foreword to the publication (p. 6) provides links to other state court statistical information and states:

The purpose of Examining the Work of State Courts is to provide a concise, graphically oriented volume that makes state court statistics highly accessible. Examining the Work of State Courts has been designed to be interactive, giving the reader on-line access in its interactive PDF version to information that cannot reasonably be included in the text of the document. The links provided in this format encourage the use of the Web and provide the reader with additional resources that help to facilitate the understanding of the work of state courts.

Zillions of Book Reviews!

Bookmarks Magazine's website is a great source for book reviews. It includes the magazine's own reviews and links to other online reviews. For instance, if you look up SuperFreakonomics, you'll find links to reviews in the Chicago Sun-Times, the Guardian (UK), the Independent (UK), the Los Angeles Times, the Telegraph (UK), the Times (UK), and the Washington Post.

I've heard law students say that they don't have time for leisure reading -- but I've also heard some say that they get a chance to read for pleasure when they're on the bus or winding down for the night. If you're among those students, this tip's for you.

And if you feel you have to read all law all the time, take a look at the books listed under the Legal Matters theme -- or maybe Government & Politics.

Library Hours for the End of the Year

The Gallagher Law Library will be closed:

• Saturday, Dec. 19 through Tuesday, Dec. 22
• Thursday, Dec. 24 through Sunday, Dec. 27
• Friday, Jan. 1 through Saturday, Jan. 2
  

The Library will be open:

• Wednesday, Dec. 24, 8am - 5pm
• Monday, Dec. 28 through Thursday, Dec. 31, 8am - 5pm
• Sunday, Jan. 3, 12 noon - 5pm
  

On the days that the Law Library is open from 8am - 5pm, the Reference Office is open from 9am - 12 noon and from 1 - 5pm.

Regular hours resume when Winter Quarter begins on Monday, January 4, 2010.

Happy Holidays!

Prof. Schnapper Testifies on Pleading Rules

Congress is considering legislation to undo the Supreme Court's holdings in Bell Atlantic v. Twombly (2007) and Ashcroft v. Iqbal (2009). The Washington Independent reports:

Does a House bill about legal civil procedures provide a way to restore the protection of civil rights in America, or is it an unwarranted gift to trial lawyers that could be “paralyzing if not deadly” to the federal government?

* * *

As in the Senate, House lawmakers appear divided along party lines. Democrats and their witnesses say that the Supreme Court’s recent decisions in Bell Atlantic v. Twombly and Ashcroft v. Iqbal have gutted the civil rights and antitrust laws and imposed an unfair and often insurmountable burden that will doom many valid claims. Republicans and their witnesses, meanwhile, say the court did the right thing to help reduce frivolous lawsuits that destroy small businesses and drag busy government officials into court unnecessarily.

Has the Supreme Court Undermined Civil Rights Enforcement?, Washington Independent, Dec. 17, 2009.

One of the witnesses was Prof. Eric Schnapper of the University of Washington, who argued that Congress should act quickly to overturn Iqbal and Twombly. whose 39-page prepared statement is here. The bill being considered in the House is H.R. 4115, the Open Access to Courts Act of 2009.

Circuit Courts Archiving Cites to Online Sources

Citing to internet sources can be tricky: the content can change, the address can change, or the site could disappear altogether. Courts have particular difficulty becuase those citations ultimately get incorporated into the law. The federal judiciary has begun addressing the issue. As reported in The Third Branch, The Newsletter of the Federal Judiciary in July 2009:

The Judicial Conference has issued a series of “suggested practices” to assist courts in the use of Internet materials in opinions. [...] The guidelines suggest that, if a webpage is cited, chambers staff preserve the citation by downloading a copy of the site’s page and filing it as an attachment to the judicial opinion[.]>

At least two of the circuits' law libraries--the fifth and the ninth--make those pdfs available from their websites. Watch here for other courts making those resources readily available.

5th Circuit Opinion Archived URLS - http://www.lb5.uscourts.gov/Resources/ArchivedURLs/
9th Circuit Opinion Archived URLS- www.lb9.uscourts.gov/webcites/2008.php

-- Patrick Flanagan

Searching Online Law Journals via ABA

The Law Librarian Blog points us to a good resource for searching online law journals. The American Bar Association Legal Technology Resource Center has put together a Google-powered portal to search over 300 online journals: (http://www.abanet.org/tech/ltrc/lawreviewsearch.html) But, as they note:

Coverage may vary; for more complete coverage visit your local law library and fee-based online legal research services.

This fast and free search of secondary sources can certainly jump start your legal research.

-- Patrick Flanagan

Good Law School Exam Answers

The Wall Street Journal Law Blog has a great article just in time for this quarter’s exams: What Makes a Good Law School Exam Answer? Law Profs Weigh In. Author Ashby Jones presents comments from seven law professors across the country who were asked to complete the sentence “A good law exam answer is _______.” He does include this small caveat:

Of course, none of these responses will, alone, unlock the key to success. And an A exam to one might be a B plus to someone else. But taken collectively, they just might shed some light on what the Great Professoriate is looking for.

If you have a few minutes extra, check out the comments, reached by clicking the comments tab at the top of the article. Some are cynical, some are disgusted with the exam process, and some question the value of exams at all!

How Can You Compare Dollars (or Pounds or Yen) Over Time?

Measuring Worth is a website by two economic historians -- backed by an impressive advisory board -- to help us make sense of monetary amounts at different times. They introduce the topic like this:

Intrinsic things are priceless. The love of your life or a beautiful sunset. There is no objective way to measure these, nor should there be.

The worth of monetary transactions is also difficult to measure. While there is a price, wage, or other kind of transaction that can be recorded at a precise price, the worth of the amount must be interpreted.

The price of a hamburger is probably worth more to a starving homeless person than to a very wealthy one. An allowance of five pennies a week was worth more to a child in 1902 than it is to a child today.

It can be more difficult when the question is to determine the "historical" worth of something. The price, even deflated for inflation, is not enough. Was Andrew Carnegie richer than Bill Gates? Did Babe Ruth make more than David Beckham? Was the cost of a loaf of bread more then than now? These questions all depend on the context and the calculators on this web site enable users to make their own comparisons.

Suppose you're reading a case about a cow that was sold for $80 in 1886 (Sherwood v. Walker, 33 N.W. 919(Mich. 1887)). If you want to get a sense of what $80 meant in 1886, go to the Relative Values - US $ calculator. You find that there are different ways to look at it:

In 2008, $80.00 from 1886 is worth:

$1,888.62 using the Consumer Price Index
$1,775.84 using the GDP deflator, using the value of consumer bundle
$10,610.85 using the unskilled wage
$18,146.12 using the nominal GDP per capita
$94,854.54 using the relative share of GDP

No matter what, you see that $80 is not what it used to be.

By the way, if you'd like to learn the outside-the-casebook story of Sherwood v. Walker, see Norman Otto Stockmeyer, To Err Is Human, To Moo Bovine: The Rose of Aberlone Story, 24 T.M. Cooley L. Rev. 491 (2007), available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1223402.

Faculty Publication on Open Source Software Licenses

Robert W. Gomulkiewicz, Open Source License Proliferation: Helpful Diversity or Hopeless Confusion?, 30 Wash. U. J.L. & Pol'y 261 (2009).

Licenses govern the usage and redistribution of software and are required whether the software is proprietary (like Microsoft’s Windows) or free and open source software, aka FOSS (like Mozilla Firefox). The Open Source Initiative (OSI) is a nonprofit organization that reviews licenses based on their compliance with the Open Source Definition, which sets standards to guarantee free access to software code and free redistribution rights. The OSI “certifies” licenses submitted to it that meet the Definition’s requirements and had approved about 60 different licenses at the time of the conference. This article explores those licenses granted to software developers in the FOSS world to determine whether the sheer number of different licenses is useful or causes unnecessary problems.

Professor Gomulkiewicz uses, as a vehicle for the discussion of license proliferation for FOSS, his own experience in submitting the Simple Public License to the OSI for certification. He then outlines the pros and cons of the present system based on what he found. In the final section of the article, he offers three steps that might be taken to ameliorate the problems created by the number and variety of certified licenses.

Professor Gomulkiewicz’s article is part of the tenth anniversary volume of the Washington University Journal of Law and Policy. All the articles are taken from papers presented at a 2008 conference held at Washington University that focused on open source and proprietary models of innovation in a number of technologies. Here is a description of the issue from its introduction:

Part I of the symposium consists of introductory articles on business, law, and engineering perspectives on open source innovation. Part II focuses on open source biotechnology, while Part III focuses on open source and proprietary software development. Part IV examines collaborative innovation, the economics of innovation, and two examples of constructed commons--namely universities and a multilateral system for plant innovation for food and agriculture.

Gomulkiewicz’s is one of three papers in Part III about software development issues.

9th Circuit Case Summaries from the ABA

The American Bar Association Standing Committee on Federal Judicial Improvements has launched a new site called Media Alerts on Federal Courts of Appeals. In the pilot program stage, cases from three circuits are available: the 3d, 5th, and 9th Circuits.

This website is designed to provide reporters, lawyers, educators, and the public with prompt, accurate, unbiased information about newsworthy and legally significant cases pending in and decided by the Federal Courts of Appeals. Our goal is to assist the media’s efforts to provide timely and extensive reporting about federal court decisions.

ABA members and non-members are invited to subscribe.

US Government Manual

The new 2009-2010 United States Government Manual is now available through GPO Access. You may search or browse the current edition and search former editions, beginning with the 1995-1996 issue. Here is a description of the Manual from the GPO Access website:

As the official handbook of the Federal Government, the United States Government Manual provides comprehensive information on the agencies of the legislative, judicial, and executive branches. It also includes information on quasi-official agencies; international organizations in which the United States participates; and boards, commissions, and committees. The Manual begins with reprints of the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution.

A typical agency description includes:

• A list of officials heading major operating units.
• A summary statement of the agency's purpose and role in the Federal Government.
• A brief history of the agency, including its legislative or executive authority.
• A description of its programs and activities.
• Information, addresses, and phone numbers to help users locate detailed information on consumer activities, contracts and grants, employment, publications, and other matters of public interest.
  

The Manual is revised each year. The Gallagher Law Library typically receives its copies in the fall, though receipt this year is running a bit behind schedule. Check out the most recent edition in the Reference Area or Reference Office at JK421 .U57; earlier editions are in the classified stacks at the same call number.

New Missing Persons Database

The US Department of Justice has launched a free, new database, the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System (NamUs).

NamUs is "a clearinghouse for missing persons and unidentified decedent records."

The Missing Persons Database contains information about missing persons that can be entered by anyone; before it appears as a case on NamUs, the information is verified. NamUs provides the ability to print missing persons posters and even map out possible travel routes in a search for a missing person. Other resources include links to state clearinghouses, medical examiner and coroner offices, law enforcement agencies, victim assistance groups and pertinent legislation.

Directory of open access journals

The Directory of Open Access Journals lists thousands of journals (4475) that are available free on the Web. Over a third of them (1718) are searchable on the article level.

Go to Law and Political Science and you'll find 77 law journals, including some you've probably heard of (Duke Law Journal) and some you probably haven't (Forum Historiae Iuris).

You don't have to stop at law, of course -- the directory includes art, psychology, math, biology, and more.