ZiefBrief

Read Law Professor Barack Obama’s Final Exams

There has been a lot of commentary about an article in the New York Times that discussed Barack Obama’s 12 years as a law professor at University of Chicago (click here to see article). Turns out he was generally considered brilliant by most students but enigmatic by some fellow professors. What the readers of the print version of the article didn't get to see is a collection of Professor Obama's final exams and the syllabus to his class Current Issues in Racism and the Law.

Links to the materials:

Syllabus: Current Issues in Racism and the Law

2003 Final Exam
2002 Final Exam
2001 Final Exam
2000 Final Exam
1999 Final Exam
1998 Exam
1997 Final Exam | Answer Memo
1996 Final Exam | Answer Memo

Monica Goodling -- Poor Lexis Researcher?

The release of  "An Investigation of Allegations of Politicized Hiring by Monica Goodling and Other Staff in the Office of the Attorney General" (click here for the 524 KB .pdf file from the DOJ site) has been all over the news and blogosphere ever since it was released on the 28th of July. For those of you who haven't read the 150 page document we offer the following condensed version: allegations confirmed. What caught Ziefbrief's eye was the discussion of the techniques Ms. Goodling used to determine the political leanings of applicants. According to the report: "We found that Goodling’s Internet research on candidates for Department positions was extensive and designed to obtain their political and ideological affiliations." In a footnote the report noted " It does not violate federal law or Department policy to search for and consider  political information concerning candidates for political positions.  However, Goodling  also conducted such searches, and considered the results of those searches, for  candidates for career positions, including IJs and career candidates for temporary details."
The report also includes the actual lexis/nexis search that Jan Williams, her predecessor as the Department’s White House Liaison, passed on to her to use in screening applicants:

"[First name of a candidate]! and pre/2 [last name of a  candidate] w/7 bush or gore or republican! or democrat! or  charg! or accus! or criticiz! or blam! or defend! or iran contra  or clinton or spotted owl or florida recount or sex! or  controvers! or racis! or fraud! or investigat! or bankrupt! or  layoff! or downsiz! or PNTR or NAFTA or outsourc! or indict!  or enron or kerry or iraq or wmd! or arrest! or intox! or fired  or sex! or racis! or intox! or slur! or arrest! or fired or  controvers! or abortion! or gay! or homosexual! or gun! or  firearm!"

We note a number of problems with the search technique in the above search. Ignoring the redundant search term "fired", we note that the search is incredibly broad -- especially if the search is run in one of the general news collections on Nexis. We challenge all ZiefBrief readers to come up with a better search to identify the political inclinations of potential members of the AG's staff. Submit your suggestion as a comment to this posting.

Monday Buzz: Cuil Takes On Google

Well! I was all set to blog today about the new search engine that everybody is talking about, Cuil (pronounced "cool"), but Shawn, my colleague at Gleeson, has beat me to it!  Check out Shawn's informative post about Cuil on Gleeson Gleanings, including a link to a librarian blogger's detailed review of Cuil.

Google Tackles Wikipedia

Google's latest is a new site, Knol, which is basically a rival of Wikipedia.  According to Google, a "knol" is a unit of knowledge written about a subject.  If you write a knol, you get to take author credit for it, post your credentials, and seek feedback about your knol.  Knol readers can comment on a knol, but they can't change its content.  Instead of allowing anyone to edit a knol, Google allows multiple knols on the same topic.  Google explains that the "Knol project is a forum for encouraging individual voices and perspectives on topics," so readers are free to write their own knol to counter the information presented in another knol. 

If you visit the Knol page, you can see that the site is very much in its infancy.  There aren't many knols available right now.  But it's an interesting concept and, as always, we will be watching to see if Knol's popularity begins to rival Wikipedia anytime soon.

And a small rant:  When I was at AALL last week, a vendor who shall remain nameless denounced Wikipedia as useless during his presentation, apparently thinking he would score points with librarians by doing so.  Here's what I have to say to that:  There is nothing wrong with using Wikipedia as one tool in an arsenal of research tools.  In fact, I often find it to be a huge time-saver. When I'm starting research on a topic on which I know nothing, I often find Wikipedia articles to be an extremely useful introduction to a topic, especially the links to related websites that address the topic.  For an example of a Wikipedia article on a hot legal topic, check out the article, "Guantanamo Bay detention camp."  Here's the key -- I never stop searching after I find a relevant Wikipedia article.  I glean information from it, then use that information to help me create searches within reputable sources that I know I can cite to.  Treat Wikipedia articles with some caution, sure, and don't cite them in scholarly papers, but don't avoid Wikipedia like the plague, especially when you're trying to conduct cost-effective, efficient legal research.

Louisiana Seeks Reconsideration of SCOTUS Ruling

The SCOTUS Blog is reporting that Louisiana has asked the Supreme Court to reconsider its ruling in Kennedy v. Louisiana, basing its request on the Court's omission of any discussion of the federal statute that permits the death penalty for child rape committed by a member of the armed forces.  We posted earlier this month about the case, noting that none of the parties involved had encountered this statute while conducting legal research. SCOTUS Blog has links to Louisiana's petition and a discussion of the rules for granting rehearing.  We'll report back when the Court responds to Louisiana's petition.

Tips for First-Year Law Students

Over at Ms. JD, Carlie Boos has a great post about surviving the first-year of law school.  I love her emphasis on the importance of networking and learning to explore the social aspects of law school -- topics that usually get short shrift in the usual "how to survive first-year" posts.  My spouse started business school immediately after I finished law school, and I remember being incredibly jealous of his experience as a first-year business school student.  Business school seemed so much more collaborative and fun than my first year of law school, but as this post points out, there is absolutely no reason why law school can't be the same way.  Just don't buy into the competitive myths surrounding law school, network with your fellow classmates and with alums as much as possible, and team up whenever the honor code allows you do so to get you through the tough classes. 

Neat Research Tools -- Capitol Words and LOUIS

Just so we are clear on this, ZiefBrief is the alter ego for a crew of dedicated law librarians here at the Dorraine Zief Law Library. After surfing the web for a while, some of the members of the team feel like a spider on Benzedrine. We find cool stuff, which leads to more cool stuff, that links to more… you  get the picture – there_is_SO_MUCH_STUFF!! So we find a little item, you might call it “web candy.” But on closer examination it is so much more.

Take for example a recent discovery, Capitol Words. To quote the web site: “Capitol Words gives you an at-a-glance view into the daily proceedings of the United States Congress through the simplest lens available-a single word. For every day that Congress is in session, Capitol Words displays the most frequently used word in the Congressional Record.” Here is the latest example:

Fun, not earth shattering and you can add the site to your RSS aggregator and get a daily heads-up on what they are saying in the halls of congress.

"But Wait! (as they say on all the infomercials) There's More!!" Capitol Words is just one project of a group called the Sunshine Foundation (named after the Brandeis quote that "Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants.") Another interest project they are working on is LOUIS (click here to visit), an acronym for the Library Of Unified Information Sources. Through LOUIS their "ultimate goal is to create a comprehensive, completely indexed and cross-referenced depository of federal documents from the executive and legislative branches of government.... LOUIS currently contains, in fully searchable format, seven sets of federal documents:

• Congressional Reports
• Congressional Record
• Congressional Hearings
• Federal Register
• Presidential Documents
• GAO Reports
• Congressional Bills & Resolutions"

So check out Capitol Words and the other works of the Sunshine Foundation today. Its worth the trip.

Exciting New Features on HeinOnline

Starting this week, HeinOnline allows you to create and organize bookmarks and save search queries.  All you need to do is use the MyHein tab when you sign into HeinOnline, create your own user account, and you're ready to start creating bookmarks and saving search queries.  (If you're wondering, "what the heck is HeinOnline, see our earlier post or the HeinOnline "About Us" page.

I think it's fairly obvious why you would want to save a search query, but why would you want to bookmark articles?  Here are a few reasons why you might want to organize the articles that you find on HeinOnline with various labels: 

• If you're working on a citation-checking project for law review, and you have lots of cites to several law review articles, bookmarking those articles allows you to access them again quickly and easily without running another search for the item. 

• If you're working on cite-checks for multiple draft articles, you can label or "tag" the articles that you look up on HeinOnline with each author's name so that you don't get mixed up about which HeinOnline articles were cited by the authors.

• If you're working on research for a large paper, you can use the tagging feature to label articles that address different arguments in your paper.
  
  

I've tried them out, and I'm happy to say that the bookmarking and search query saving features are really easy to use.  Hein has already released a handy user guide and video tutorial that explains how to use these new features.  If you need additional assistance with HeinOnline or any other online resources,  contact the reference librarians!

 

Oops...We Missed a Law!

Most readers have heard about the US Supreme Court's recent decision, Kennedy v. Louisiana, a 5-4 decision concluding that the United States Constitution prohibits imposing the death penalty for child rape.  According to the NY Times, one of the rationales for the Court's holding is that child rape is a death penalty offense in only six states and not under federal law.

But that's not correct.  A military law blogger, Dwight Sullivan, noted that Congress made child rape a capital offense for members of the armed forces in 2006, and Linda Greenhouse at NYT picked up on the story a few days ago.  One of the lawyers involved in arguing the Louisiana position stated that the 2006 law "simply 'eluded everyone’s research.'”  Now Justice Department lawyers are issuing a mea culpa, admitting that they should have found the 2006 law and mentioned it in their briefs.  And the state of Louisiana is weighing whether they will ask the Court to reconsider the case.   It just goes to show you....legal research errors can have big, big consequences.