What Happens to Courts If the Federal Government Shuts Down?

A news item from the courts indicates that the courts will use non-appropriated funds to continue operations--for 2 weeks.

Once that funding is exhausted, however, the federal court system faces serious disruptions. Following their own contingency plans, federal courts would limit operation to essential activities.

Essential activities all relate to the resolution of cases. All other personnel would be suspended and payments to jurors would be deferred.

The FBI's Vault

The Federal Bureau of Investigation has announced the opening of The Vault, a new electronic reading room with more than 2,000 documents and 25 files not previously available online. Access the contents of The Vault using the A-Z index or the categories list. Some of the A's in the A-Z index are:

• Al Capone


• Aristotle Onassis


• Aryan Nation


• Anna Nicole Smith


• Albert Einstein


• Amelia Earhart

Most of these documents have been scanned into PDF images. The handwritten and typed documents are often hard to read. Many documents have been heavily redacted.

Still, browsing The Vault for information about people in the Popular Culture category might provide some interesting trivia.

Of greater legal interest will be the files under the Supreme Court category, where you can find material about Hugo Black, William Brennan, Fortas, Thurgood Marshall, and the Court generally. The Supreme Court file is large, with 34 parts (each part consists of 100 pages or more).

Time will tell if the contents of the FBI's vault prove more interesting than Al Capone's secret vault.

Guide to Empirical Legal Studies

Empirical legal studies uses social science tools to examine law and legal institutions. These tools can include:

• surveys, e.g.:
• Attorney Satisfaction with the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure: Report to the Judicial Conference Advisory Committee on Civil Rules (Federal Judicial Center March 2010)
• Legal Needs and Civil Justice: A Survey of Americans: Major Findings from the Comprehensive Legal Needs Study (ABA 1994)
• Mary R. Rose, Christopher G. Ellison & Shari Seidman Diamond, Preferences for Juries Over Judges Across Racial and Ethnic Groups (2nd Annual Conference on Empirical Legal Studies, 2007), available at http://ssrn.com/abstract=998050.
• observation and analysis of legal events, e.g.:
• Mary R. Rose, Shari Seidman Diamond & Beth Murphy, Revisiting the Unanimity Requirement: The Behavior of the Non-Unanimous Civil Jury, Northwestern U. L. Rev. (forthcoming), available at http://ssrn.com/abstract=825125
• Rafael I. Pardo & Michelle R. Lacey, Undue Hardship in the Bankruptcy Courts: An Empirical Assessment of the Discharge of Educational Debt, 74 U. Cin. L. Rev. 405 (2005), available at http://ssrn.com/abstract=706761.
• Peter B. Oh, Veil-Piercing, 89 Texas L. Rev. 81 (2010) (dataset of 2,908 cases, 1658-2006), available at http://ssrn.com/abstract=1557972
• simulations, e.g.:
Valerie P. Hans et al., Science in the Jury Box: Jurors' Views and Understanding of Mitochondrial DNA Evidence, Cornell Legal Studies Research Paper No. 07-021, available at http://ssrn.com/abstract=998529 (mock trials)
• economic modeling, e.g.:
• John Armour et al., Shareholder Protection and Stock Market Development: An Empirical Test of the Legal Origins Hypothesis, University of Cambridge, CBR Working Paper ECGI - Law Working Paper No. 108/2008, available at http://ssrn.com/abstract=1094355

How can you learn about this diverse field? What are the leading works, what organizations work in the area, where are there standard datasets to use? A librarian at Fordham has prepared an excellent guide: Alissa Black-Dorward, Empirical Research (posted April 1, 2011). Tabs lead you to

• General Materials
• Statistical Software and Instruction
• Survey Research
• Banking
• Courts, Judges & Lawyers
• Crime and Criminal Justice
• Economics, Business & Finance
• Environment
• Evidence
• Foreign & International
• Health
• Intellectual Property
• Social Science Statistics
• State Statistics

Some of the information in the guide is tailored to Fordham, but you can find the equivalent here. For instance, our library has many of the books cited (although perhaps with different call numbers) and the UW has its own Human Subjects Division for ensuring ethical practices.

Update (May 22, 2011): see also this guide from Georgetown's law library.

Trouble in Dairyland

Have you been following the controversy in Wisconsin over changes to the collective bargaining rights, salaries, and benefits of public employees? The text of the controversial act is available here (PDF).

Several separate lawsuits are currently challenging the law. The first, a procedural challenge based on Wisconsin’s open meetings law was brought by the Dane County District Attorney. Last week the trial court judge in this suit issued a third temporary restraining order to enjoin enforcement of the law. Apparently the third time’s the charm, as Gov. Walker’s Department of Administration has announced they will comply with this order. You can view the complaint and various orders resulting from this case at the Dane County Clerk of Court’s homepage.

Wis. Stat. s. 19.87 (PDF) is the section of the state statutes that applies the open meeting requirement to the legislature. Wis. Stat. s. 19.87(2) allows the legislature’s internal rules to trump the open meetings statute in certain cases. Republican legislators claim Senate Rule 93(2), which applies during special sessions of the legislature, trumps the open meetings statute. Senate Rule 93(2) reads “[a] notice of a committee meeting is not required other than posting on the legislative bulletin board, and a bulletin of committee hearings may not be published.”

Another suit brought by local union chapters alleges that the act was fiscal in nature and therefore required a three-fifths quorum to be considered under the Wisconsin Constitution Article VIII s. 8 (PDF). The bill passed with the 14 Democratic senators in hiding in Illinois, leaving only 19 Republicans senators present when the bill passed, one short of the required three-fifths for fiscal bills.

You can follow the latest developments on this story at wispolitics.com and jsonline.com.

Harvard Law School Library Introduces Therapy Liger

Closely following the Yale Law School Library’s therapy dog program where Yale Law Students can rent a dog for several hours to counter stress, the Harvard Law School Library is announcing a similar program in which Harvard Law Students can borrow Harry the Harvard Law School Library Therapy Liger.

Meet the Harvard Law School Library’s Therapy Liger, Et Seq. (Harvard Law Library blog), April 1, 2011.

Changes in Library Subscriptions Announced

Antitrust Channel

One year ago today, the American Antitrust Institute launched the Antitrust Channel, airing antitrust news and events 24/7. If you haven't already been watching it,

Look for The Antitrust Channel on the cable monopoly in your area. If it is not being offered, call the FCC to complain and send a copy of your complaint to the AAI.

Avvo Announces Plastic Surgery Rewards Card

Avvo.com, the Seattle-based company that offers directory and ratings information about lawyers and doctors, announces its plastic surgery rewards card.

Printing from WestlawNext Now Available

Students, faculty and staff are now able to send documents from WestlawNext to the dedicated Westlaw printers.

If you are a student, please be sure to choose either the Library Alcove or the Room 222 Computer Lab printers.

The printer icon is located in the upper right hand portion of the page when you view a document.

Upcoming CLE: Ethics, Animals & the Law

The Student Animal Legal Defense Fund, Washington Chapter, is presenting a day-long conference, "Ethics, Animals & the Law: interdisciplinary approaches to standards of care," on Friday, April 15, 2011 at the UW School of Law.

The conference is funded by a generous grant from the Animal Legal Defense Fund, but pre-registration is required. For those interested in the 6.25 CLE credits (includes 1.5 Ethics credits), the conference is $25. For all other attendees, the conference is free. See the conference brochure or the UW School of Law CLE page for more information.

Writing a Brief? Better Follow the Rules!

A recent online ABA Journal Weekly Newsletter article reveals some perils involved in writing a brief. The Federal Rules of Appellate Procedure (FRAP) contain some very specific rules about the form of briefs. For instance, Rule 32(a)(4) provides:

(4) Paper Size, Line Spacing, and Margins. The brief must be on 81⁄2 by 11 inch paper. The text must be double-spaced, but quotations more than two lines long may be indented and single-spaced. Headings and footnotes may be single-spaced. Margins must be at least one inch on all four sides. Page numbers may be placed in the margins, but no text may appear there.

Rule 32(a)(7) covers the permissible length of a principal brief, limiting its length to 30 pages or 14,000 words (or 1,300 lines of text if using a "monospaced face"). If the attorney decides to use the latter limits, he or she is required to certify that the brief meets the word or line limits. As discussed in the above article, it is this rule about the length of the brief that is at issue in Abner v. Scott Mem'l Hosp., No. 10-2713 (7th Cir. Mar. 9, 2011).

The appellants' lawyer filed the required certification, stating that his brief contained 13,877 words. The appellee's brief, however, pointed out in a footnote that the appellants' brief was really 18,000+ words.

When the appellants' lawyer did not contest that his brief was "oversized," the court issued a show cause order why the brief should not be stricken and/or sanctions applied for filing such a brief without permission. The lawyer responded, admitting the excess and including a (belated) Motion for Leave to Exceed Word Count.

The Seventh Circuit opinion, written by Judge Posner, fairly bristles with displeasure at the lawyer's actions. The decision points out that the court has rejected "many briefs" for failing to comply with the FRAP (for instance, for failing to include the standard of review as required by FRAP28(a)(9)(B)). But in this instance, the attorney also mislead the court with an incorrect certification. Moreover, the brief was "rambling and would have been more effective if compressed...."

The court finds that the explanation provided for the incorrect word count is not convincing and strikes the brief. Judge Posner points out that the court could have gone further, even dismissing the appeal. Several decisions are cited where appeals were dismissed as sanctions for violations of FRAP30, which prescribes the form and content of appendices to briefs. In this particular instance, however, the court does not need to invoke dismissal as a sanction:

The flagrancy of the violation in this case might well justify the dismissal of the appeal: let this be a warning. But in addition it is plain from the briefs that the appeal has no merit. To allow time for the appellants to file a compliant brief and the appellees to file a revised brief in response, and to reschedule oral argument, would merely delay the inevitable.

The motion to file an oversized brief is denied and the judgment of the district court summarily

AFFIRMED

Just remember, when writing briefs, content AND form matter. You have been warned!

Budget Analysis of Health Care Law

A year after the passage of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, there's still a need for studies of its potential impact.

The Congressional Budget Office—a non-partisan office of Congress—prepared a number of analyses during the consideration of the law and earlier proposals. Now we have a handy compilation of these reports: Selected CBO Publicaitions Related to Health Care Legislation 2009-2010:

Responding to many requests, this report compiles a set of those estimates and analyses for easy reference. The report begins with the cost estimate for the final legislation and several analyses related to that legislation. It also includes several cost estimates and analyses of earlier versions of that legislation and alternative proposals that were considered in the House and Senate before final passage. In addition, this report brings together analyses that CBO issued during this period concerning insurance premiums and premium subsidies, the budgetary accounting of proposals, changes to the medical malpractice system, and certain related topics that arose during the Congressional debate. A number of related cost estimates and publications are not included in this volume but are available on CBO’s Web site. In keeping with CBO’s mandate to provide objective, nonpartisan analysis, this report makes no recommendations.

It's available in PDF on the CBO's website, if you want to read it online or download it to your laptop or other device. Or you can check out the library's print copy (RA410.53 .S428 2010 at Classified Stacks), because sometimes it's handier to flip through pages of budget analysis than to navigate through a long document online.

If you want to stay on top of this issue, you can follow the CBO Director's blog. The posts on health are here. The latest entry is Revisions to CBO’s Estimates of the Cost of Last Year’s Major Health Care Legislation, March 23, 2011.

In its ongoing monitoring of developments, CBO has seen no evidence to date that the steps that will be taken to implement the legislation—or the ways in which participants in the health care and health financing systems will respond to the legislation—will yield overall budgetary effects that differ significantly from the ones projected earlier. Therefore, the evolution of the estimates does not reflect any substantial change in the estimation of the overall effects of PPACA and the Reconciliation Act from what was projected in March 2010.

Google Books Settlement—Not

I haven't been following the whole Google Books issue closely, but last week there was a new development.

The basics (up to last week) are: Several years ago Google, cooperating with a handful of big research libraries, started digitizing millions of books. A group of publishers and authors sued. In 2008 the two sides negotiated a settlement that included a way for copyright holders to opt out of the digitization project—i.e., not to have their stuff in Google's huge digital library. And Google would set up a fund to compensate rights holders whose interests were infringed. Google in turn would get to sell access to millions of books that were out of print.

The new developments (told in headlines):

• Judge rejects Google’s deal with authors and publishers to put books online, Wash. Post, March 22, 2011


• Judge Rejects Google Books Settlement, Wall St. J., March 23, 2011


• Editorial, Online books and copyright law, Wash. Post, March 25, 2011


• The Google Settlement Rejection: What Comes Next? With the Google settlement rejected, parties ponder future, Publishers Weekly, March 28, 2011 ("When it was introduced in 2008, the Google Book Settlement was hailed by its creators as historic. Now, it is history.")


• Press release, Praise for Decision to Stop the Google Books Deal, American Antitrust Institute, March 23, 2011


• Siva Vaidhyanathan, Thank You, Judge Chin: Why the Google Books setback is an opportunity to reassert academic values, Chron. of Higher Educ., March 24, 2011


• Julian Sanchez, Google Books, Fair Uses, and “Copyright” as Misnomer, Julian Sanchez blog, March 24, 2011

Judge Denny Chin's opinion in The Authors Guild v. Google, Inc., No. 05 Civ 8136 (S.D.N.Y. March 22, 2011) is available on Justia.

UW Resources on the Life of Geraldine Ferraro

The UW Libraries own three books written by the late Geraldine Ferraro (1935-2011):

• Ferraro, my story, available at Suzzallo/Allen at E840.8.F47 A 34 1985


• Framing a Life: a family memoir, available at Suzzallo/Allen at E840.8.F47 F47 1998; and


• Changing History: women, power, and politics, available at Odegaard and Suzzallo/Allen at E838.5.F472 1993

Articles by and about Ferraro are also available in a number of journals and newspapers. Search by author, subject or keyword(s).
See the Statement by the President on the Passing of Geraldine Ferraro.

How People Find Lawyers

According to an article in the online ABA Journal Law News Now, more people now turn to the Internet rather than the Yellow Pages when searching for an attorney. The article describes a report issued in February of this year by the ABA Standing Committee on the Delivery of Legal Services.

The report is based on the committee-sponsored Harris poll of 1000 individuals reached by land line telephones. Here are a few of the findings from the report:

* People with personal legal matters are far more likely to turn to trusted sources instead of impersonal sources to find a lawyer, yet impersonal sources have a substantial and stable place in providing access to legal services.

* Innovative online models, such as those that enable an exchange of questions and answers with lawyers and those that provide consumer feedback about lawyers are most likely to be used to assist in finding a lawyer for personal legal matters.

* People would not use social media avenues to a substantial degree to assist in finding a lawyer for a personal legal matter, but relatively few lawyers market their services through these avenues at this time.

* When people would proceed on a personal legal matter without a lawyer, they report they are likely to turn to free online services and self-help books, but are not likely to turn to online services that charge costs.

Be sure to take a look at the comments to this article. Several posts strongly agree with the committee's "caution" that the results would be quite different had the poll used cellphone numbers rather than land line telephones. A few posts discuss other methods used to find clients.

New Book: Stones of Hope

Stones of Hope: how African activists reclaim human rights to challenge global poverty is a new book just added to our collection.

Edited by Lucie E. White and Jeremy Perelman, with a foreword by Jeffrey D. Sachs and Lisa E. Sachs, Stones of Hope "engages with the work of remarkable African advocates who have broken out of the conventional boundaries of human rights practice to challenge radical poverty." (Stanford University Press)

Chapters include both case studies and essays.

Stones of Hope, part of the Stanford Studies in Human Rights series, is available in the Classified Stacks at JC599. A36 S76 2011.

New Book on the Global Food Crisis

The Worldwatch Institute has dedicated its 2011 State of the World edition, Innovations that Nourish the Planet, to the global food crisis.

Some of the chapters include the following:

* Moving ecoagriculture into the mainstream

* The nutritional and economic potential of vegetables

* Africa's soil fertility crisis and the coming famine

* Feeding the cities

* Harnessing the knowledge and skills of women farmers

* A roap map for nourishing the planet

Danielle Nierenberg & Brian Halweil; Linda Starke, ed., 2011 State of the World: Innovations that Nourish the Planet is available in the Reference Area at HC59 .S734 2011.

Wide-Ranging Books on Women and the Law

March is Women's History Month, but we acquire books about women's history and women and the law throughout the year, on a wide variety of legal topics. Here's a sampling of recent works in the library.


Biography

• Barbara Allen Babcock, Woman Lawyer: The Trials of Clara Foltz (2011)

Comparative Law

• Marnie S. Anderson, A Place in Public: Women's Rights in Meiji Japan (2010)
• Rebecca J. Cook & Simone Cusack, Gender Stereotyping: Transnational Legal Perspectives (2010)

Corporate Governance

• Douglas M. Branson, The Last Male Bastion: Gender and the CEO Suite in America's Public Companies (2010) (Did you take a course from Prof. Branson when he visited here last year?)
  

Domestic Violence

• Jeannie Suk, At Home in the Law: How the Domestic Violence Revolution Is Transforming Privacy (2009)

Local History

• Shanna Stevenson, Women's Votes, Women's Voices: The Campaign for Equal Rights in Washington (2009)
• Adam Eisenberg, A Different Shade of Blue: How Women Changed the Face of Police Work (2009) (Adam Eisenberg is a graduate of the UW School of Law.)
  

International Law

• Migrations and Mobilities: Citizenship, Borders, and Gender (Seyla Benhabib & Judith Resnik eds., 2009)
• Ekaterina Yahyaoui Krivenko, Women, Islam and International Law within the Context of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (2009)

Juvenile Justice

• Jane B. Sprott & Anthony N. Doob, Justice for Girls? Stability and Change in the Youth Justice Systems of the United States and Canada (2009)

Law and Literature

• Christine L. Krueger, Reading for the Law: British Literary History and Gender Advocacy (2010)

Law Practice

• Reaching the Bar: Stories from Women at All Stages of Their Law Careers (Robin Sax ed., 2009)
• Sharing the Pants: Essays on Work-Life Balance by Men Married to Lawyers (Jacquelyn Hersh Slotkin & Samantha Slotkin Goodman eds., 2009)

Legal History: 19th Century Trials

• A. Cheree Carlson, The Crimes of Womanhood: Defining Femininity in a Court of Law (2009)

Legal Theory

• Gender Equality: Dimensions of Women's Equal Citizenship (Linda C. McClain & Joanna L. Grossman eds., 2009)

Reproduction

• Jeanne Flavin, Our Bodies, Our Crimes: The Policing of Women's Reproduction in America (2009)
• Before Roe v. Wade: Voices That Shaped the Abortion Debate Before the Supreme Court's Ruling (Linda Greenhouse & Reva B. Siegel eds. 2010)

Research Ethics

• Rebecca Skloot, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks (2010)

Health Care Reform Law Turns One

March 23 is the one-year anniversary of the passage of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, Pub. L. 111-148, 124 Stat. 119. This 906-page act is also known as PPACA, the Affordable Care Act, or just ACA.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services maintains Healthcare.gov, a website about the law and its implementation. You can follow the site on Facebook, Twitter -- or even its YouTube channel.

That site is fine for the basics, but how can you find reliable reporting on new legal developments?

One great source is BNA's Health Law Reporter. Follow the BNA link from the library's homepage; if you are off campus, you'll need to click on the off-campus access link in the upper-right corner and enter you UW NetID before going into this subscription database. Once you're into the newsletter, you can read the latest issue or browse by date. Or you can click on Recent Topics at the top of the screen and choose a topic. I chose Health System Reform and found lots of articles about the latest developments.


You can also do a word search. For example, searching for "mckenna" will pull up articles that mention Washington Attorney General Rob McKenna's opposition to the law.

If you click on "BNA Insights," you'll see a list of analyses of current topics by lawyers—e.g., Webb Millsaps & Adam J. Rogers, Top 10 Things to Know About Accountable Care Organizations, Feb. 24, 2011, or Mark S. Hedberg, Health Care Reform After Florida v. United States: Now What?, Feb. 10, 2011.

Health law is just one of the many areas covered by BNA newsletters. You can also use BNA newsletters to follow new developments in fields from antitrust to the WTO.

—Mary Whisner

OMB Watch Releases Assessment of Open Government

OMB Watch today published an in-depth analysis of the Obama administration's progress on a wide-ranging set of open government recommendations. The recommendations were crafted by a diverse group of organizations and individuals as part of the 21st Century Right to Know Project, which was coordinated by OMB Watch in 2007 and 2008.

The recommendations, presented to Obama's transition team and the incoming leadership of the 111th Congress after the 2008 elections, urged quick action on a number of key government openness issues while also encouraging a more systematic, longer-term approach to transparency problems that plague the federal government. The recommendations were endorsed by more than 300 organizations and individuals from across the political spectrum.more . . .

Assessing Progress: Toward a 21st Century Right to Know is available here, in both PDF and browser-based ebook format.

Try a Freedom of Information Game

Sunshine Week offers an online quiz, the Ray of Sunshine Game. It's a lot less stressful than law school exams, and it's a fun way to learn about access to government information. Some of the answers may surprise you!

Freedom of Information Blog

In The Art of Access blog two journalism professors post tips and commentary about getting access to public documents. David Cuillier (U. Arizona) and Charles Davis (U. Missouri) include a page of FOI Help: links to sample request letters, laws, allies, and more. For aspiring journalists, they link to sources of story ideas that would use public records.

The blog links to interesting articles that use public documents to report a story -- for instance, The Making of Manhattan's Elite Welfare Farmers, New York Press, June 15, 2010 (some farm subsidies might go to ma and pa on the farm, but millions of dollars go to corporations and rich individuals).

This week, Davis comments on one of his "pet peeves in FOI…the way university presidents get to interview for megabucks, taxpayer-funded jobs in secret, . . . all aided by these private search firms that states also pay huge amounts of money to, so they can tap their stable of secret candidates." Mass. AG to Review Selection of University President, March 14, 2011. Come to think of it, the University of Washington is looking for a new president right now, too. (The Board of Regents met today, by the way.)

In the blog I learned about a public records victory by a woman in our own state. As part of Sunshine Week, the American Society of News Editors honors a "local hero" -- an individual who fought to make state or local government more accessible. This year's first-place award goes to Gloria Howell of Stevenson, WA, "who used the courts to force the disclosure of public records that revealed corruption in her county auditor's office." Washington State Woman Wins Sunshine Week Contest, news release, March 14, 2011.

Howell, a former Stevenson school board member, got involved after her daughter, Angela Moser, was allegedly fired from the Skamania County auditor's office for theft and because of her concerns about irregularities in ballot processing and alleged misuse of public funds. Howell filed suit to obtain the records. The suit resulted in a criminal investigation by the Skamania County Sheriff's Office, a criminal referral to the Washington State Attorney General, an investigation and report by the Washington State Auditor, and the resignation of Skamania County Auditor Michael J. Garvison.

Gloria Howell's comments on her work are here. You can read clippings about the auditor controversy from the Skamania County Pioneer here (requires Adobe Flash).

The blog is a companion to Cuillier and Davis's book, The Art of Access: Strategies for Acquiring Public Records (2011).

Photo of Gloria Howell from the Sunshine Week press release.

James Madison's Birthday - Freedom of Information Day

Freedom of Information Day is observed on March 16 in honor of James Madison, who was born March 16, 1751 (March 5, Old Style -- there was a calendar change in the 1700s).

Why Madison? In addition to shaping the Constitution and pushing for the Bill of Rights, he left us some inspirational prose on the topic:

A popular Government, without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a Prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy; or perhaps both. Knowledge will forever govern ignorance.

Letter to W. T. Barry, Aug. 4, 1822, quoted in Fred R. Shapiro, The Yale Book of Quotations 484 (2006). Image is from James Madison Papers collection at the Library of Congress.

To the press alone, chequered as it is with abuses, the world is indebted for all the triumphs which have been gained by reason and humanity over error and oppression.

Report on the Resolutions, in 6 Writings of James Madison 389 (Gaillard Hunt ed., 1906), quoted in Respectfully Quoted 285 (Suzy Platt ed., 1989)

It will be of little avail to the people, that the laws are made by men of their own choice, if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood; if they be repealed or revised before they are promulgated, or undergo such incessant changes that no man, who knows what the law is to-day, can guess what it will be to-morrow.

The Federalist 411-12 (Benjamin F. Wright ed., 1961) (Federalist no. 62), quoted in Respectfully Quoted 192-93. (Respectfully Quoted attributes this Federalist to Madison with a question mark. Shapiro says it might have been by Hamilton. The Yale Book of Quotations 483.)

Learned Institutions ought to be favorite objects with every free people. They throw that light over the public mind which is the best security against crafty & dangerous encroachments on the public liberty.

Letter to W. T. Barry, Aug. 4, 1822, 9 Writings of James Madison 105, quoted in Respectfully Quoted 98.

Since the general civilization of mankind, I believe there are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people, by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power, than by violent and sudden usurpations.

Speech at Virginia Convention, 5 June 1788, in 5 Writings of James Madison 123, 126 (Gaillard Hunt ed., 1904), quoted in Fred R. Shapiro, The Oxford Dictionary of American Legal Quotations 153 (1993).


In addition to browsing quotation books -- as I did -- you can read Madison's papers on this site by the Library of Congress. For instance, his letter to W. T. Barry quoted above is here (image of original handwriting) and here (transcription).

The White House's website has a brief biographical sketch of Madison. (That's the source of the portrait at the top of this post.)


Freedom of Information Day

The 12th annual National Freedom of Information Day Conference was held on Monday. This year’s conference title was “What Has Become of Freedom of Information?” The event was sponsored by the First Amendment Center, Sunshine Week, the American Library Association, OpenTheGovernment.org, and the Sunshine in Government Initiative.


Reading List

The New York Public Library offers a list of 11 books to read in honor of Freedom of Information Day, ranging from 1984 to two 2011 books on Wikileaks. (The list links to WorldCat -- which means that you can find the books in local libraries, even though the list was written by a librarian in New York.)

Freedom of Information Website

On March 14, the Department of Justice Office of Information Policy (OIP) announced the launch of a new website:

As the flagship initiative of the Department’s Open Government Plan, OIP is proud to announce the launch of FOIA.Gov, a comprehensive public resource for government-wide FOIA information and data. FOIA.Gov displays graphically a wealth of data on agency FOIA compliance, contains educational material about how the FOIA works, and contact information for all government agencies.

FOIA, or the Freedom of Information Act, became effective in July, 1967. As explained at FOIA.GOV,

... the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) provides that any person has a right, enforceable in court, to obtain access to federal agency records, except to the extent that such records (or portions of them) are protected from public disclosure by one of nine exemptions or by one of three special law enforcement record exclusions. A FOIA request can be made for any agency record. ... The FOIA also requires that agencies automatically disclose certain information, including frequently requested records.

Federal departments and agencies submit to the Department of Justice annual reports about their compliance with FOIA. Those reports cover details such as the number of requests received, their dispositions, and the amount of time for processing them. A visitor to the website can request that a report be generated from the information collected by Justice. In addition, recent and "most popular" reports that have been generated for visitors are available by clicking their links.

For those interested in filing a FOIA request, the website includes a list of links for federal agencies and departments. After selecting an agency, the visitor selects a specific office, then is shown the name of the FOIA officer, the address for submitting the request, and the link for the agency's FOIA website. FAQs describe how to make a request and what the response process entails.

What's "IN" the Price of a Gallon of Regular Gasoline

When the price of crude oil rises, as it has been lately, we all see the effects at the gas station. But other costs also affect what we pay. The U.S. Energy Information Agency sponsors a website called Today in Energy. Last week it posted a webpage that shows the part played by the major components of the price of gasoline - crude oil prices, refining costs, distribution and marketing expenses, and taxes. As the site explains:

The portion of the gasoline price each of these components accounts for can vary significantly over time. Crude oil is typically the largest cost component of gasoline, and its share of the price of a gallon of gasoline was significantly higher in 2010 than it was, on average, over the 2000-2009 period.

When you look at the historical data (2000-2010) for crude oil costs, its percentage of the total we pay at the pump has varied from a low of 35% in May, 2001, to a high of 75.8 in July, 2008.

But why is there such variety in prices across the country at any given time? One of the reasons covered by the website is taxes. The federal tax on regular gas is 18.4 cents per gallon. Each state also taxes gasoline, from a low of 7.5 cents per gallon (Georgia) to a high of 37.5 cents here in Washington. That high and low is a bit misleading, however, because those figures include only the rates of "general application." Some states add other taxes, such as Iowa's 1 cent per gallon Environmental Protecton Charge or Virginia's 2% sales tax in areas covered by mass transit. Other states permit "local option taxes," such as Honolulu's 16.5 cents per gallon.

Energy is a major topic in our government and in our lives. Check out Today in Energy to keep abreast of the current issues. Here is a description of the website.

The Today in Energy website:

* Covers key energy issues and topics in a short-article, one-page format
* Includes a visual explanation — a chart (sometimes interactive), map, animation, or photo — to illustrate the point.
* Makes data series behind charts often available for download
* Is written in plain language for a broad audience
* Gives you a way to send feedback to EIA experts and analysts
* Contains archives so you can retrieve a favorite story.
* Enables you to subscribe to our RSS feed or email version so Today in Energy comes to your browser or inbox every weekday