How do you research a secret treaty?

Word on the street is that the United States is in negotiations about a treaty entitled, "Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement" or ACTA, for short. It's tough to nail down details because the parties to the treaty have (apparently) agreed to make the negotiation secret.

Can we get official information about such things? Probably not - that's the point of the secrecy. Our usual sources for treaty and other legal information will likely fail us. Since we can't get "official" information, can we at least get reliable information?

We could use Google to search the New York Times. Here's how the search might look: [ site:www.nytimes.com "Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement" ] And it appears they're following the story. But, it appears they've only got a small handful recent articles.

Compare WikiLeaks, a relative newcomer to the world of journalism. We could use Google to search Wikileaks: [ site:http://wikileaks.org/ "Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement" ]. 47 results in many languages -- looks much more like unedited access to primary documents than a couple of New York Times articles.

The differences here between New York Times and WikiLeaks points to the important role that reputation plays in legal research. We rely on legal materials, in part, because we know where they came from. The law itself lays out many of those materials and we can navigate them predictably. But when the law (or, more cynically, politicians) prevent access to primary information, the legal researcher must turn to "shakier" sources. Journalists and news outlets spend much effort to verify what they report because ultimately they're trading on reputation. In turn, the legal researcher has to similarly bring a critical eye.

-- Patrick Flanagan

How to Date a Lawyer

In honor of Valentine's Day, a staffer at Avvo wrote some "half-serious" tips on How to Date a Lawyer. A couple of people who posted comments thought the list was stupid or sexist, but most agreed with me that it was amusing. Hoping that some readers of Gallagher Blogs could use a little amusement, I decided to link to it here.

If you're in no mood for something that's only half serious, take a look at Joint Committee on Taxation, Present Law And Background Data Related To The Individual Income And Social Insurance Taxes As In Effect For 2010 And 2011. That 44-page report should be plenty serious enough for you.

Graphic from University of Oklahoma's Themis clip art, with a little tweaking.

US Government Settles with Black Farmers

Yesterday the USDA and the Department of Justice announced a settlement in a lawsuit by black farmers who claimed discrimination by the USDA. The government -- contingent on appropriation by Congress -- will pay $1.25 billion to claimants in the class.

This is actually the second settlment in the case, Pigford v. Vilsack (originally Pigford v. Glickman): thousands of claims have been adjudicated under a 1999 consent decree. The government paid out over $1 billion to about 16,000 farmers. USDA Reaches New Settlement With Black Farmers, N.Y. Times, Feb. 18, 2010.

The 1999 consent decress established a monitor to (1) report on the implementation of the Consent Decree; (2) attempt to resolve problems that class members may have with respect to the Consent Decree; (3) decide the merits of Petitions for Monitor Review; and (4) set up a toll-free number to respond to the questions of class members. The monitor's website is here.

Remembering Japanese-American Internment

Today is the anniversary of the executive order leading to the internment of Japanese Americans. The legislature marks it as a day of remembrance:

Legislative declaration for civil liberties day of remembrance. The legislature recognizes that on February 19, 1942, the President of the United States issued Executive Order 9066 which authorized military rule over civilian law and lives; that Executive Order 9066 led to the World War II evacuation and internment of more than one hundred twenty thousand Japanese Americans, most of whom were United States citizens by birth; that Japanese Americans lost their homes and livelihoods and suffered physical and psychological damage; and that, despite widespread hostility and discrimination, Japanese Americans served with distinction in the United States military effort as members of the Military Intelligence Service and in the segregated 100th Infantry Battalion and the 442nd Regimental Combat Team. The legislature further recognizes that in the name of "military necessity," Japanese Americans were deprived of their fundamental constitutional rights and civil liberties; and that the Japanese American experience during World War II tragically illuminates the fragile nature of our most cherished national beliefs and values. The legislature declares that an annual day of recognition be observed in remembrance of Japanese Americans interned during World War II as a reminder that, regardless of the provocation, individual rights and freedoms must never be denied. [2003 c 68 § 1.]

RCW 1.16.090 For online exhibits -- with photos and text -- see the University Libraries' Japanese American Exhibit and Access Project. Books in the Law Library include:

• Eric L. Muller, American Inquisition: The Hunt for Japanese American Disloyalty in World War II, D769.8.A6 M85 2007 at Classified Stacks
• Greg Robinson, By Order of the President: FDR and the Internment of Japanese Americans, D769.8.A6 R63 2001 at Classified Stacks
• Brian Masaru Hayashi, Democratizing the Enemy: The Japanese American Internment, D769.8.A6 H39 2004 at Classified Stacks

For more, search the catalog for Japanese Americans -- Evacuation and relocation, 1942-1945.

2010 Olympics debut international law enforcement efforts

Pitched competition on the ski slopes and skating rinks aside, the ongoing 2010 Winter Olympic Games in Vancouver are proving an opportunity for unprecedented international cooperation between traditional sporting rivals Canada and the United States.

A February 3 news release from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security announced the The Olympic Shiprider program, a joint operation of the U.S. Coast Guard and Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) Federal Border Integrity Program, which was launched in waters off the Pacific Northwest coast to enhance law enforcement and security operations during the 2010 Winter Games.

The pilot program permits the two nations to conduct cross-border integrated law enforcement operations in shared waterways during the Olympics. Law enforcement vessels will be jointly crewed by specially trained American and Canadian officers authorized to enforce the law on both sides of the international boundary, while respecting the sovereignty of both nations.

“The [program] will maintain the integrity of the Canada-U.S. border, whether land, air or marine, and also increase officer safety during operations,” said RCMP Superintendent Tom Jones. “The operations centre is now fully operational and will remain so following the conclusion of the Games.”

For additional commentary and analysis on the joint North American law enforcement efforts jump-started by the 2010 Olympics, see a January 23 article by Spencer Hsu of the Washington Post.

Slavery by Another Name

Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II is at times hard to read -- and yet so compelling that it's hard to put down.

Douglas Blackmon, a reporter for the Wall Street Journal discovered the untold story of convict laborers in Birmingham's steel industry. His work on a newspaper article grew through painstaking research in the National Archives, local court records, newspaper archives, and piles of data, resulting in this impressive book.

For decades after the official end of slavery, African Americans were subject to arrest (for vagrancy, leaving a farm before one's employment contract was up, carrying a weapon, and other crimes), perfunctory trials, fines they could not pay, and subsequent "sale" to employers who had them labor in execreble conditions, spending their days and nights in shackles.

Around 1903 a U.S. Attorney in Alabama (with the blessing of Teddy Roosevelt's administration) prosecuted a few of the men involved in this dirty business. Despite convictions, the practice continued for decades.

An important look into U.S. history -- and legal history.

Check it out: E185.2 .B545 2009 at Good Reads.

Student Writing Competitions - Race, Reproduction, More

Student writing competitions can do lots of things for you:

• help you win prizes
• help you gain recognition for your writing
• give you a nice line on your resume
• motivate you to finish or polish up a paper

Two writing competitions I've come across recently:

• Third National People of Color Scholarship Conference (Newark, Sept. 9-12, 2010). Papers "may, but need not, be related to our broad conference theme, Our Country, Our World in a “Post-Racial” Era." Deadline is June 15, 2010.
• National Advocates for Pregnant Women. "This contest asks for a critical analysis of the absence of birthing rights issues from gender discrimination and feminist jurisprudence textbooks and curricula." Deadline is Dec. 15, 2010.
  

Lewis & Clark Law School has a long list of student writing competitions. Business law, health law, intellectual property law -- there's a competition on almost any topic you're interested in!

Law Library Changes Convict's Life

Adam Liptak profiles Shon Hopwood, a convicted bank robber who spent most of his time in prison in the prison's law library and became an accomplished appellate advocate. For instance, he drafted a cert. petition for an inmate named Fellers.

The court received 7,209 petitions that year from prisoners and others too poor to pay the filing fee, and it agreed to hear just eight of them. One was Fellers v. United States.

“It was probably one of the best cert. petitions I have ever read,” said Seth P. Waxman, a former United States solicitor general who has argued more than 50 cases in the Supreme Court. “It was just terrific.”

A Mediocre Criminal, but an Unmatched Jailhouse Lawyer, N.Y. Times, Feb. 8, 2010. The Court ruled for Fellers, 9-0.

Hopwood has since had another cert. petition granted and has helped inmates with lower court cases too. After his release from prison, he became a paralegal at a printer that prepares Supreme Court briefs. Seth Waxman is still a strong supporter, and Hopwood is considering law school.

The law library changed Mr. Hopwood’s life.

“I kind of flourished there,” he said. “I didn’t want prison to be my destiny. When your life gets tipped over and spilled out, you have to make some changes.”

Id.

~~~~~~~~~~

Are you surprised that someone convicted of bank robbery would consider law school because he'd never be admitted to the bar? Don't jump to conclusions.

Applicants for the bar must show good moral character, true, but a criminal record isn't necessarily a deal breaker. If the applicant shows rehabilitation, then many jurisdictions allow bar admission. See George L. Blum, Annot., Criminal Record as Affecting Applicant's Moral Character for Purposes of Admission to the Bar, 3 A.L.R.6th 49 (2005).

State of the Sound 2009

The Puget Sound Partnership has issued its first State of the Sound report noting the current condition of Puget Sound, funding allocated to clean up efforts, and accomplishments and challenges in the effort to clean up the Sound for the 2007-2009 biennium.

For media coverage, see:

Reports: Puget Sound Getting Sicker; Obama Budget Slashes Money for Sound Cleanup by 60%, from the SeattlePostGlobe, and
Puget Sound Ecosystem Gets Mixed Reviews, from the Seattle Times.

Read More about Westlaw Next

The Law Librarian Blog (yes Virginia, there is such a thing!) posted links to several sources describing and analyzing Westlaw Next.

Check them out if you want to be the first kid on your block to be up on Next.

The Art of Racing in the Rain

Law and literature can encompass a lot more than To Kill a Mockingbird, Bleak House, and a stack of thrillers and mysteries.

Consider The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein (PS3569.T3655 A88 2009 at Good Reads). (See the Author's website.) In this bestselling novel, set in Seattle, we see the progress of a child custody battle. The narrator observes all the family members and sees the dispute develop. He's even present for some of the father's meetings with his lawyer, since they take place at the sidewalk tables of a coffee house on Capitol Hill. It's unusual for the narrator of a courtroom drama not to be allowed in the courthouse (did I mention the narrator is a dog?), but he is otherwise an amazingly astute observer and he does a good job putting together the missing pieces.

Firefox Plugin for Gallagher Catalog

Suppose you're reading an article and it cites a book you'd like to see. You wonder whether your favorite law library has it.


Of course you could open up another tab and run a search in our catalog. But wouldn't it be slick if you could save a step?

Now you can! Thanks to law student David Rubenstein, you can download a Firefox plugin that will put the Gallagher Law Library catalog as close as Google or Wikipedia.


Once you have the plugin, your search window's pull-down menu will include an option for University of Washington Law Library:




And then, wherever you are on the web, you can run a search in our catalog:



And find out that we do indeed have the work cited:



To get this plugin, just go here.


The sample footnote above is from Chelsea Peters, MySpace or Yours? The Impact of the MySpace-Attorneys General Agreement on Online Businesses, 5 Shidler J. L. Com. & Tech. 10 (2008). Have you taken a look at the Shidler Journal lately?

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.