« July 2005 | Main | September 2005 »
Georgetown's Edward Bennett Williams Law Library has an excellent new guide, U.S. Supreme Court Nominations: In-Depth Research, on the Supreme Court nominations process. The guide includes detailed information on the process itself, on the current nominee, John Roberts, on lobbying groups, and on past confirmation failures.
[Thanks to the folks at slaw for the tip!]
The University of Michigan Law Library has created a particularly thorough collection of links to documents by and about Supreme Court nominee John G. Roberts. The collection, Hot Topics: Information on John Glover Roberts, Jr., Supreme Court Nominee, includes biographical information, papers from Roberts's time in the DOJ and the White House Records, opinions, briefs, and articles written by Roberts, transcripts of his arguments before the Supreme Court, recent New York Times and Slate articles about Roberts, and general information about the Supreme Court nomination process.
[Thanks to the folks at the University of San Diego Law Library's lrc-orbit for the tip!]
The Judicial Council of California has just approved new, "plain-English" criminal jury instructions. These new jury instructions will be available for use starting in January of 2006. Although their use is not mandatory, pundits expect that they will eventually replace the venerable CALJIC instructions in most instances.
Drafts of the new California criminal jury instructions are available on the California Courts' web site. The final, approved instructions will be available for free on the California Courts' web site by January. LexisNexis and Thomson⁄West are also expected to offer versions in print and on their respective online services.
A press release announcing the approval of the new instructions is available in PDF format.
Have you taken some time off from school or changed your name? If so, your access to Lexis and Westlaw could be rudely interrupted when you least expect it.
To avoid this terrible fate, USF law students can get in touch with the Zief Law Library reference librarians and give them their new last names or updated graduation dates. Just visit the reference desk next time you're in the library, or call 415.422.6773.
In the last few days the Zief law library has practically doubled the size of our collection of popular law-related films. While many of the titles are used by professors and students to illustrate points of law or practice in the classroom, they also serve the important function of providing an entertaining outlet for law students seeking a respite from the rigors of study.
You can browse the collection in the bookshelves next to the Reference Desk or you can browse electronically by going to Ignacio, the USF Library Catalog and doing a Title search for zief library film collection.
If you haven't checked out the CALI (that's Computer Assisted Legal Instruction, to those in the know) exercises at the CALI web site (http://www.cali.org), you don't know what you are missing. Over 600 of the most interactive, computer-based lessons and tutorials you could ever hope to find. Great for review and a way to test your legal knowlege. And now, for a limited time, we have 75 copies of the CALI exercises on CD-ROM for USF Law Students. These are available on a first-come-first-served basis and usually cost $39.95 plus shipping.
Act Now! Don't Wait! Trained Reference Librarians are waiting at the Zief Library Reference Desk, anxious to give the lucky 75 their own CALI disk! You won't be sorry!
Professor Michael J. Madison of the University of Pittsburgh is running a series of law school survival tips. In his first tip, he stresses the importance of legal research and writing classes. Prof. Madison says:
Law school isn't so much about memorizing rules of law. It's much more about learning how to write and speak about law and about different legal disciplines.
For more survival tips, check the "Law School" category of Professor Madison's blog, madisonian.net.
[Thanks to Jim Milles of ublaw phoenix for the tip!]
The blawgosphere has been buzzing over a new study by Professor Tom Smith of USD that suggests that many law review articles are never cited at all. In his own post on the study, A voice, crying in the wilderness, and then just crying, Professor Smith summarizes his preliminary results as follows:
…the top .5% of law review articles gets 18% of all citations (yes, I know that is very different from what I said before, but it is still a very skewed distribution); the top 5.2% gets about 50% of all citations; and the top 17% of articles gets 79% of all citations. And about 40% of articles never get cited at all.
For the gory details, you can download the working-paper version of the full study, The Web of Law, from SSRN at http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=642863.
[Thanks to the folks at BoleyBlogs! and Slaw for the tip!]
LexisNexis has given the new name "Lexis Alerts" to its classic "Eclipse" service. Under any name, the Lexis Alerts feature is very useful, because it lets you request that Lexis run searches for you automatically at regular intervals. All you need to do is set up the search, tell Lexis how often you want it run, and choose a format for your results. Lexis does the rest for you. For more information on how to set up a Lexis Alert, drop by the Zief Law Library reference desk and ask for the handout "Lexis Alert and WestClip Instructions."
As part of the roll-out of the new Lexis Alerts name, Lexis has also expanded the service to Shepard's. By choosing "Shepards Alerts," you can have Shepard's automatically check on the status of any case and alert you whenever there are changes.
If you are a provider or consumer of health care in America you need to know about the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) of 1996. Originally enacted to stem the misuse of sensitive private health information, the Act will require a slew of new administrative burdens for the US health care and insurance industry. The Zief library just added a new one volume loose-leaf treatise on the subject titled HIPAA: A Guide to Health Care Privacy and Security Law. This research tool covers both state and federal privacy laws laws, as well as exploring how and when the federal rules preempt the state. The Appendixes provide a veritable cookbook for assembling a HIPAA compliant policy manual for a business that handles protected health information.
* a tip o' the hat to LR for providing the pun for the title of this posting.
