Reference Office Hours Change for Friday, August 1st

The Reference Office will be open from 9:00-4:00 on Friday, August 1st.

History of Securities Regulation

Check out the Securities and Exchange Commission Historical Society, a virtual museum with lots of fascinating content: a timeline, original documents, oral histories, and more. It even includes film clips, such as a newsreel of SEC chairman Joseph Patrick Kennedy (1934) and an educational film, "What Is a Corporation?" (1949).

SEC Commission congratulations Commissioner William O. Douglas on his nomination to U.S. Supreme Court (March 20, 1939). Standing, left to right: Robert E. Healy, Jerome Frank, Edward C. Eicher, and George C. Mathews.
From SEC Historical Society.

Thursday, July 24, at 2 pm Eastern time, 11 am Pacific time, the site will broadcast a live audio program on the roles of women in securities regulation.

Reference Office Hours Change for Tuesday, July 22

The Reference Office will be closed for a short time on Tuesday, July 22, from 12:30- 2pm so that staff may attend a meeting.

The Law Library will be open its full schedule that day, 8am - 5pm.

When to Stop Researching

Many legal researchers struggle with the question: When can I stop researching?

No one answer is appropriate for all situations. Consider:

• Costs. If you're handling a case worth millions of dollars, it is worth spending extra time looking on the off chance that you'll find a crumb of information or an obscure precedent that will help. But if you're trying to collect $20,000 from an insurance carrier for a car accident, you need to keep your costs down.
• Knowledge. If you've been practicing in an area for several years and feel familiar with the field, you can probably stop sooner than a summer associate who is just learning about it.
• Time. If you're working on a tight deadline, you might need to stop researching before you feel you've covered everything thoroughly, in order to allow time to prepared your motion, memo, or other document.
• Resources. No one has access to all the databases, books, or journals that might be useful. Your research will need to stop before you consult the resources you don't have.

Appellate lawyer Jay O'Keeffe offers these guidelines (Legal Research: How Do You Know When Enough Is Enough?, De Novo: A Virginia Appellate Law Blog, July 11, 2014): 

1. What kind of appeal are we handling? It takes more research to find authority for a case urging the court to develop the law rather than correct an error based on well-established law.
2. Have we checked the obvious boxes? Has he (or his associate) followed a research process based on reliable secondary sources, plus keyword searches and citators.
3. Am I bored yet? 
4. Can I answer the tough questions?
5. Can I explain it to my eight-year-old?

For more on when to stop (as well as the research process generally), see

• Penny A. Hazelton, The Process of Legal Research, in Washington Legal Researcher's Deskbook 21 (2007)
• Mary Whisner, How Do You Know When Research Is Good?, 98 Law Libr. J. 721 (2009)
• Amy J. Wright, Bringing Research to a Close (USF law library guide)
• Christina L. Kunz, Terminating Research, 2 Perspectives: Teaching Legal Research & Writing 2 (1993)

Graphic: Mary Whisner

Ukraine Crisis and International Law

Would you like to get some historical and legal perspective on the crisis in Ukraine? Dan Wade, longtime foreign and international law librarian at Yale, surveys recent and not-so-recent books in a blog post, The Wart on Russia's Nose (that was a phrase Prince Potemkin applied to Crimea, a region he helped Russia annex in the nineteenth century). He leads with Crisis in Ukraine, a 128-page compilation of opinions pieces from Foreign Affairs, 2005-14 (available in several electronic  formats as well as print) and moves on through many other works.

Mary Whisner Receives Mersky Spirit of Law Librarianship Award

Mary Whisner (one of the reference librarians here at Gallagher Law Library) has received the Roy M. Mersky Spirit of Law Librarianship Award for her work with the Youth Tutoring Program sponsored by Catholic Community Services of Western Washington.

 From the nominating letter:

Since 2004 [Mary] has tutored youth on a weekly basis offering academic support and serving as a role model and friend to the students. The program targets six low and middle income housing communities in Seattle. Thus, most of Mary’s work has been with immigrants from eastern Africa and Southeast Asia. Mary’s commitment to this program and her volunteer work make a difference in many kids’ lives. 

Please join us in congratulating Mary for receiving this well-deserved honor!

Baseball napper suing MLB and ESPN for defamation and IIED

While most of us are excited when we catch the attention of the cameras at baseball games, a Yankee fan was not amused when the cameras caught him dozing and ESPN commentators Dan Shulman and John Kruk proceeded to comment during an April 13 Yankee and Red Sox game.

The indignant (and perhaps no longer drowsy) fan, Andrew Robert Rector has retained legal counsel and is suing Major League Baseball, the Entertainment and Sports Programming Network (ESPN) as well as Dan Shulman and John Kruk for defamation and intentional infliction of emotional distress.  Damages are sought by Rector in the amount of $10 million.  See the full complaint here.

Baseball seems to intersect with the law a bit more often than expected, see our other baseball blog posts here!

U.S. Courts July Fourth Video

What does our independence mean to you? How do U.S. Courts protect our freedoms?

Consider the observations of attorneys, judges, and regular people featured in this video posted by the U.S. Courts.

Educating Homeless Kids

Nearly a quarter of homeless people are children.* Over a million children were homeless at the start of the 2010-2011 school year. And being homeless can make it tough to get an education. To address some of the problems, the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act (1987) set up the Education for Homeless Children and Youth Program.

The ABA Commission on Homelessness and Poverty just published Educating Children Without Housing: A Primer on Legal Requirements and Implementation Strategies for Educators, Advocates and Policymakers (Gallagher Law Library Classified Stacks KF4217.H6 D84 2014). One of the coeditors is Casey Trupin, the Coordinating Attorney for the Children and Youth Project at Columbia Legal Services and also a lecturer in UW Law's Legislative Advocacy Clinic.

Casey Trupin

Here are some links if you want to learn more about these issues:

• U.S. Dep't of Education, National Center for Homeless Education
• National Association for the Education of Homeless Children and Youth
• Washington State Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction, Homeless Education
• Seattle Public Schools, Health & Safety—Homelessness
• Seattle King County Coalition on Homelessness

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* See p. 1 of HUD's 2013 Annual Homeless Assessment Report to Congress.

Strawberry-Flavored IP

Did you know that more than half of the strawberries in the supermarket trace their roots to strains patented and licensed by UC Davis? It's in the news because a couple of researchers are leaving the university and strawberry growers want assurance that the breeding program will continue there. Breeding Battle Threatens Key Source Of California Strawberries, All Things Considered (NPR), July 1, 2014.

Here are two illustrations that accompanied the patent application for Strawberry Plant Named 'Mojave', one of UC Davis's patented cultivars.

Fig. 1 from PP 22,589

Fig. 4 from PP 22,589

When you're having a nice dish of strawberry shortcake at your Fourth of July picnic on Friday, give a quick thought to tech transfer, patents, licensing, and agribusiness. And then get back to enjoying your dessert.

Library Hours Change

On Thursday, July 3, the Law Library and the Reference Office will close at 2pm. We will also be closed on both Friday and Saturday, July 4 and 5, as previously announced.

Cause' I'm the taxman...

Summer just began and you are hopefully basking in your freedom from law school though you should keep in mind that September (and classes) will be upon you before you know it.  Former Reed Smith tax partner, James Kleier is also hopefully soaking in his freedom, since he is expected to begin serving a one year sentence in prison in September.

Kleier's tax law work in big law firms including Preston Gates & Ellis, Reed Smith, and Morrison & Foerster in addition to his work as the American Bar Association Section of Taxation's Chair of the Special Project Task Force of the Administrative Practice Committee and past Chair of the San Francisco Bar Association's Barristers Club Tax Section and including his role as a tax professor at Hastings and Golden Gate make it all the more shocking that Kleier will be facing prison time for federal tax evasion.

Had Kleier heeded the 1966 Beatles song, "Taxman," before he began to neglect reporting earned income between 1999 and 2010, he might not be preparing for a year behind bars:

Now my advice for those who die - Taxman!
Declare the pennies on your eyes - Taxman!
Cause' I'm the Taxman, yeah I'm the Taxman
And you're working for no one but me
Taxman!

There is a laundry list of lessons one can draw from this sad story but perhaps the most obvious are:

1. Pay your taxes, and
2. Be grateful that your plans for September do NOT involve surrendering yourself to the authorities.

Marijuana Policy: Lessons from Tobacco?

In the "Perspective" section of the New England Journal of Medicine, two public health specialists suggest that regulators can learn some lessons about how to treat marijuana from experience with the tobacco industry. Kimber P. Richter & Sharon Levy, Big Marijuana — Lessons from Big Tobacco (June 11, 2014).

This might interest you if you're following Washington's (and Colorado's) new marijuana laws.

A broader lesson is that lawyers and legal scholars can find many useful policy pieces in non-legal journals.

For example, the New England Journal of Medicine has been covering the implementation of the Affordable Care Act, as well as other topics. You can sign up to get NEJM tables of contents in your email, and UW users have access to the full text.

For more on research health law and policy, see our Health & Medicine guides.

Ethics of Advising Marijuana Users, Farmers, and Merchants

Under RPC 1.2(d), a "lawyer shall not counsel a client to engage, or assist a client, in conduct that the lawyer knows is criminal . . ."  Does this cover lawyers advising clients under Washington's new marijuana law, when possession is still a crime under federal law?

To address this, the Washington Supreme Court is considering a new comment to RPC 1.2:

Special Circumstances Presented by Washington Initiative 502

[18]  At least until there is a change in federal enforcement policy, a lawyer may counsel a client regarding the validity, scope, and meaning of Washington Initiative 502 and may assist a client in conduct that the lawyer reasonably believes in permitted by this initiative and the statutes, regulations, orders and other state and local provisions implementing them.

Anyone may comment on the proposal and, as the court receives comments, you can read what others have sent.

You can sign up here to get email notifications of proposed court rule changes. You can also sign up for new opinions, caseload reports, and other information from the Washington Courts.

A dog cannot recover for emotional distress?

You are probably well aware of the West Key Number System and headnotes but are you familiar with Westlaw’s Headnote of the Day provided on Thomson Reuters’ Legal Solutions Blog?  If not, today’s headnote might make you want to subscribe:

A dog cannot recover for emotional distress.

Obserschlake v. Veterinary Assoc. Animal Hospital, 785 N.E.2d 811 (Ohio App. 2003)

While it is unlikely that the Headnote of the Day will significantly help you with your work  (the blog does state that  they “offer the Headnote of the Day as a diversion; the point of law it contains may no longer be good law”), it might brighten up an otherwise gloomy Friday!  TGIF and congratulations to all of our UW law students for surviving the year!

Library & Reference Office Closed June 14-17

The Law Library and the Reference Office will be closed from Saturday, June 14 through Tuesday, June 17.

The Reference librarians will respond to your requests and questions beginning again at 9am on Wednesday, June 18.

New on the Shelf: Structuring Sovereignty: Constitutions of Native Nations

The UCLA American Indian Studies Center just published a textbook, Structuring Sovereignty: Constitutions of Native Nations, Classified Stacks,
K3165.T38 2014.

From the Introduction: "Drafting and adopting a constitution is more than a legal process. It is a journey of self-discovery and reflection. A successful constitution is one that reflects both a community's vision of itself and the rules by which a community agrees to govern itself over time." The book's goal "is to guide the reader to an understanding of the purpose of a constitution and the particular components necessary to achieve that purpose."

An electronic appendix provides the complete text of excerpted and other constitutions. The appendix is linked in our catalog record or can be directly accessed here.

Universal Citation

One of the first things law school students learn is how to properly cite legal authority. Bluebooking is difficult to learn and time consuming to practice. Surprisingly, a few law students develop a love for the Bluebook after years of torture in some form of Bluebook Stockholm Syndrome.

The Bluebook, in a complex way, standardizes citations which is a huge value to legal research and scholarship. But it is time to think beyond the Bluebook and start moving citation into a digital age. Universal citation is one small step that needs to be taken to move legal citation beyond its print origins.

Consider a Bluebook formatted court opinion citation. Looking at Bluebook rule 10 would yield a citation such as Palsgraf v. Long Island R. Co., 248 N.Y. 339, 162 N.E. 99 (1928). This citation allows a reader to find this specific case in printed volume sets. It also allows a reader to glean some intrinsic information about the case pertaining to time period, jurisdiction, and strength of authority. These Bluebook citations, however, were designed in a time period where published volumes existed without an electronic counterpart.



Online legal information content providers such as Westlaw or Lexis used the rigid nature of Bluebook citations to create instant digital access to cited documents. Since they have large internal databases, they can assign a unique identifier to legal documents based on the intrinsic information contained in the citations. In short, the addition of unique identification allows for accurate hot linking to digital documents--a huge time saver when doing research.

But what about the materials becoming freely available online? For example, many courts publish their decisions directly to the court’s website. Legal citation should also support these free legal materials by using unique and publisher neutral identifiers.

The American Association of Law Libraries has proposed a citation format designed to be both unique and publisher neutral and it is being adopted by a number of jurisdictions(and covered by Bluebook rule 10.3.3). The format is year, standardized abbreviation, accession number (for example, 2011 PA Super 33).  This format is also easy to read while communicating information about the decision’s year, jurisdiction, and strength of authority. It would allow for the development of online tools to search and link to legal materials freely available online and could lower the cost of legal information.

But why stop there? Universal citation is just one change that should be mandated in a digital age. In an online and networked world, does it still make sense to follow the many complex and time consuming Bluebook rules that were designed for an age of print?

For further reading, see these unique citations:
http://www.law.cornell.edu/wiki/lexcraft/american_legal_citation
http://blog.law.cornell.edu/voxpop/2011/09/01/universal-citation-for-state-codes/

US Courts Opinions on FDsys

FDsys, the Government Printing Office's Federal Digital System, reached one billion retrievals this spring. The one billionth document was a Federal Register notice from the SEC, and the single most downloaded document is PL 111-148 (the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act), but one of the most interesting new and expanding collections on FDsys is USCOURTS.

USCOURTS is a collaborative effort between GPO and the Administrative Office of the US Courts to provide public access to opinions from appellate, district, and bankruptcy courts. Opinions are authenticated with digital signatures, based on the secure transfer of files to GPO. Started as a pilot program in 2011, it was opened to all federal courts in January, 2013. Opinions go back as far as 2004, but note that earlier years are incomplete.

The collection is growing nicely. In November, 2013, 64 courts participated (up from the 29 in the pilot program). As of May, 2014, 87 courts, plus the U.S. Court of International Trade, are participating and more are expected to be added this year. Although not quite half of the federal courts have voluntarily opted in, the collection is consistently one of the most used on FDsys. USCOURTS is worth trying - and definitely worth keeping an eye on - since FDsys offers free, authentic, and digitally signed PDF documents.

Looking for a court not yet available on FDsys? Need older opinions? Check out the Gallagher Law Library's Free Law Online guide to U.S. Court Opinions for more information.

U.S. Courthouse (1941), Seattle, WA.
Completed in 1940. Source: National Archives

U.S. Post Office, Court House, & Custom House (1941), Spokane, WA.
Completed in 1909. Source: National Archives

Upcoming Changes to Law Library Hours

Spring quarter is drawing to a close and that means that the Law Library will be moving to shorter hours of operation.

The last week of exams, June 9 - 13, the Reference Office will be open from 9am - 5pm. We will not be open for evening hours.

The Law Library will be closed June 14 - 17, Saturday - Tuesday.

June 18 - 20, Wednesday - Friday, the Library will be open from 8am - 5pm and the Reference Office will be open from 9am -12 noon and 1 - 5pm.

Summer quarter hours begin on June 23, Monday:

Monday - Wednesday the Library is open from 8am - 7pm and the Reference Office is open from 9am - 5pm.

Thursday and Friday the Library is open from 8am - 5pm and the Reference Office is open from 9am - 5pm.

The Library is closed on Saturdays during the Summer quarter.

On Sundays, the Library is open from 12noon - 5pm and the Reference Office is open from 1 - 4pm

Check out the Library Hours page for additional information.

Use Strikingly to Enhance Your Job Search

Have you heard of Strikingly?  Check out this post from the NW Sidebar (the WSBA's Blog) about using it to enhance your job search.

I'm not familiar with Strikingly, so I took a quick look at their website and found this in the FAQs:

 

About Strikingly

Strikingly brings beautiful mobile websites to everyone.

What's so special about a Strikingly site? Simplicity, clarity, and accessibility. The mobile age is upon us, and having a mobile-optimized website is more important than ever. Don't lose your visitors under the weight of a heavy, confusing website. The same goes for editing: don't stress out about micromanaging your page, and don't waste time wondering where to change something. Edit it all on one page, and get it done fast.
 
Do you think that having your own website helps with a job search?  Leave a comment below.

150th Anniversary of Mercer Girls' Arrival in Seattle

If you know anything about Asa S. Mercer, it is probably that he was the first President of the Territorial University of Washington.  While that is an interesting factoid, perhaps more interesting is his so-called "Mercer Girls" or "Mercer's Belles" project. 

Asa Mercer, First President of the Territorial University of Washington. Image courtesy of Wikipedia.

Because of the ravages of the U.S. Civil War, in the mid-1860's the East Coast was left with a gender imbalance where women outnumbered men.  And because the Pacific Northwest was still being settled primarily by loggers and fishermen during that time, there was a gender imbalance where men far outnumbered women.  Asa Mercer decided to do something about this, and undertook a project to bring eligible women to Seattle.  The men of Seattle would pay Mercer a fee, and the women of the East Coast would get a free ride through the Panama Canal and to the great Northwest (and a husband, for whatever that's worth).  Whether this was the 1860's equivalent of mail-order brides or a practically-minded attempt at population planning is still a topic for debate.

Mercer made two trips, and the first batch of "Mercer Girls" arrived in Seattle 150 years ago this month, on May 16, 1864, to a grand welcome on the grounds of the University.  Mercer even married one of the Mercer Girls himself!  You can learn more by checking out Mercer's Belles: The Journal of a Reporter from Suzzallo Library or an article entitled "The Story of the Mercer Expeditions" from the Washington Historical Quarterly.

It's World Goth Day!

Thanks to John Richards over at KEXP, this morning I learned that today is World Goth Day!  Time to cue up some Siouxsie and the Banshees (fun fact: Cities in the Dust was the first song I purchased from iTunes many moons ago). 

Although we don’t seem to have any goth-related materials in the law library, now’s your chance to hone your catalog searching skills and find out what’s available on the subject in other libraries on campus.  A quick search for “goth” turns up these interesting titles:

Goth : identity, style, and subculture by Paul Hodkinson

 

Goth culture : gender, sexuality and style by Dunja Brill

 

Goths : a guide to an American subculture by Micah L Issitt

 

You could also pick up a gothic novel and spend some time with the undead and possibly a fainting heroine.  Are you confused by this blog post because it has nothing to do with the law library and you don’t know what a gothic novel is?  In that case, consider consulting the Guardian’s handy infographic about how to tell if you’re reading a gothic novel (hat tip to Mary Whisner for spotting this).   

And although it’s an amazing coincidence, three of your friendly reference librarians are wearing black today.  We’ll be back to smiling tomorrow.