ZiefBrief

Cal. Supreme Court Shares Background on Same-Sex Marriage Cases

As noted in recent ZiefBrief posts (link to post 1, link to post 2) the California Supreme Court recently released a ground-breaking expansion of all Californians' right to marry. In a welcome move, the Court has posted a handy web page designed to provide ready access to many of the case documents and other court information related to the decision. Included is the a link to the actual decision in .pdf format, a link to over 3 hours of audio and video of the oral arguments before the court, the Court's news releases, and briefs submitted by petitioners, respondents, and amici. They even provide docket, disposition, parties and attorneys, and lower court information. For researchers who want to continue to track the case there is a link to a page where you can set up an automatic e-mail notification of any future actions.

Now if we could only see their private notes and the minutes of their in-chamber deliberations...

Putting Today's Same-Sex Marriage Decision in Context

Those looking to build a law review topic out of today's California Supreme Court decision in In re Marriage Cases  (No. S147999, Cal. May 15, 2008) [PDF; 172 pages] (News release [PDF; 7 pages]) might want to explore these research leads:

• Same-Sex Marriage: A Selective Bibliography of the Legal Literature, by Paul Axel-Lute

• Sexual Orientation and the Law: A Research Bibliography, from the Standing Committee on Lesbian and Gay Issues, a special division of the American Association of Law Libraries' Social Responsibilities Special Interest Section. (See especially the section on couples) This bibliography is also available in print. The Zief Library's copy is at: KF 4754.5 .A1 S494 2006 Law Reference.

• Searches for books —

• A quick keyword search to find some useful books in your library would look something like this:

  "same-sex marriage" and law (This link will run a search for scholarly books on same-sex marriage in the Zief Library stacks.)

• You can also search for books worldwide via WorldCat. Try this search:

  "same sex marriage" law

• Or, you can use Google Book Search to search inside the book. Try this search:

  "same sex marriage" law

One in 100 Americans Behind Bars -- Pew Report Released

The Chronicle of Higher Education points out in this article that a new report on the US prison population and spending has just been released. The report is the work of the Pew Center of the States and is titled One in 100: Behind Bars in America 2008 (click here to link directly to a 37 page .pdf file.)  Why the interest by the Chronicle of Higher Education, you may ask? Well, it turns out that there are now 5 states (Vermont, Michigan, Oregon, Connecticut, and Delaware) that spend more on corrections than they do on higher education. California, with an $8.8 Billion budget for corrections is very close to this mark spending 83 cents on correction for every dollar spent on higher education. This report is a treasure trove of statistics and bibliographical information for anyone interested in prisons, policy, or the general population.  

Law Library of Congress Gets a New Look, Maintains Useful Research Tools.

In honor of the 175th anniversary of their creation, the Law Library of Congress unveiled a newly redesigned web page. ZiefBrief would like to take this opportunity to congratulate the LLOC on their anniversary and to remind our readers about what a useful research destination they can be. Two useful resources of special note are:

Guide to Law Online:
This is a very useful list of links maintained by the Law Library of Congress Public Services Division designed to provide a portal of Internet sources of interest to legal researchers. In addition to providing links to the full text of cases, codes, regulations the pages of the Guide provide useful links for lay people interested in the law.

The Global Legal Information Network (GLIN)
GLIN is a searchable online database containing laws, judicial decision, legislative records and legal literature for jurisdictions spanning the globe. Contributors are governmental agencies and international organizations that add original-language, officially published, full text documents in electronic format. Unofficial summaries (generally in English) accompany each document. Full texts of materials in the GLIN are available as PDF files.

Tracking the Reorganized California Rules of Court

As of January 2007, the revised (and completely renumbered and reorganized) California Rules of Court will go into effect.

For a heads-up on what's coming, you can get the text of the rules along with tables to lead you from the old rules to the new, and vice versa, at the California Rules of Court reorganization page. (Print publications from West and LexisNexis should catch up with the changes by the end of 2006.)

For more information, see the news release describing the revisions and reorganization (PDF; 2 pages) or the complete report on the reorganization of the California Rules of Court (PDF; 148 pages).

(Thanks to Peg LaFrance for the tip!) 

You Can't Vote Smart Unless You Know What You Are Voting For -- Cal LAO Posts 9/06 Ballot Proposition Analysis

Thomas Jefferson said: "Whenever the people are well-informed, they can be trusted with their own government..." (for much more on TJ check out the Jefferson Digital Archive maintained by the library at the University of Virginia) California voters rely on the Legislative Analyst's Office for unbiased information on pending ballot propositions. Policy wonks, lobbyists, and the politically impatient can now read the LAO's take on the November 7th, 2006 ballot propositions right now. For the historically minded the LAO also has collected their election-by-election analysis's back to March of 1996. This information is included in the full voter information guide distributed to each and every voter (the pending full guide is available from the California Secretary of States web site.)

Be Careful Where You Step - Dogs on the Beach

What is one of the most contentious, litigious, down-right nasty issues facing politicians today? Ask around and you might find out it is dogs. Well, actually the dogs are OK, it's the dog owners who can raise an unholy stink if public policy gets in the way of their self-proclaimed, god-given right to do whatever they want with their canine companions. Recently a state Assemblymember charged the California Research Bureau  to produce a report on the current status of dogs on the beach (ZiefBrief has tried mightily to find a link between "Dogs on the Beach" and the current hot media meme "Snakes on a Plane", without success.)

The CRB has produced an excellent report that not only supplies a guide to which beaches allow access by dogs (both on- and off-leash) but also a discussion of state and federal law and regulations that restrict such access. For a complete copy of the report in .pdf format check Dogs on the Beach: A Review of Regulations and Issues Affecting Dog Beaches in California.

"There's a sucker born every minute..." - Gambling in California

When California Attorney General Bill Lockyer wanted an overview of gambling in California he turned to the California Research Bureau for an unbiased report on the gambling industry. The report discusses such issues as: Indian casinos, the state lottery, horse racing, card rooms and Internet gambling. The full text of the report is available in .pdf form in a report titled Gambling in the Golden State.

Oh, and the august visage attached to this posting is none other that great showman and expert on the human condition, P.T. Barnum, courtesy of the Wikipedia.

Policy Wonks Rejoice! Read All About the California Research Bureau.

We here at the ZiefBrief have made frequent mention of the wonders of the Congressional Research service (if you want to check how frequently run this Google search). the CRS supplies high quality information, research and reports to the US House and Senate on a wealth of policy topics (for more of our take on  the CRS, check this link). "Wouldn't it be great," we have frequently opined, "if there were something like the CRS on the state level?" While it is not an exact analogue to the CRS the The California Research Bureau (CRB) does do a good job of producing great reports on different policy issues facing California today.

According to their web site: "The California Research Bureau (CRB) provides nonpartisan research services to the Governor and his staff, to both houses of the legislature, and to other state elected officials. These services include preparation of reports and memoranda (both confidential and public) on current policy issues, which might cover topics such as the history of the issue, experiences and proposals in other states, case studies and examples, data analysis, and development of legislative proposals." This is the stuff that policy wonks (and the ZiefBrief) dream about.

For a complete list of all the reports currently available see the California Research Bureau website.

Keeping Track of the Scoundrels in Sacramento Just Got Easier With the Free Online California Code of Regulations

While still a law professor, California Supreme Court Justice Frank C. Newman paraphrased a US Supreme Court Justice to the effect that "...if the average farmer, in order to protect his rights under laws like the Crop Insurance Act, had to read the Federal Register as he reads his daily newspaper, we probably would not need crop insurance acts because there would no longer be any time to plant crops."*
Farmers and other citizens here in California face an additional burden of keeping track of the myriad state regulations that issue out of Sacramento on an almost daily basis. It is the duty of the state Office of Administrative Law to compile all state regulations  and make them available to all interested parties through the California Code of Regulations.
Of special interest to researchers is the electronic version of the California Code of Regulations. Recently upgraded, the site allows paging through the entirety of Code section by section as well as adding the following search options:

Search for Words With the Code   
Search within Specific Title(s) of the Code   
Search for a Specific Regulatory Section of the Code   
Find a Specific California Regulatory Agency (including direct links to the Code sections that discuss the powers and responsibilities of each Agency)   

Best of all, the search engine appears to allow authentic words and connector searching using the same techniques you know and love from Westlaw. Searching by word for:

pr(parole) and gang w/s color or tattoo or insignia

locates the  relevant code sections that have the word parole in the preliminary section of the code and include the word gang in the same sentence as color or tattoo or insignia. This means all the power of Westlaw searching at no cost.

Important Downside: It is worth noting that with all the power of true Westlaw searching comes one major headache: if you search for a phrase of more than one word the search engine for the Code will read the space as an automatic OR connector. For example, if you run the following search:

parole violation

you will get 2810 "hits", many of which only include the word violation but not the word parole. The solution is to put all multiword phrases within quotation marks. So if your search is:

"parole violation"

you find a much more reasonable 55 hits, all of which deal with parole violation.

* see: 63 Harv. L. Rev. 929 at page 953, quoting Justice Jackson's dissenting opinion in  Federal Crop Ins. Corp. v. Merrill, 332 U.S. 380, 386 (1947)