ZiefBrief

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.  

A Flood of Free Federal Appellate Case Law

Suddenly, after years of doing without any decent free source of federal appellate decisions, legal researchers now have least two excellent options:

• The Public Library of Law (from Fastcase)
• US Court of Appeals Cases and Opinions (from Justia)

Both the Public Library of Law and Justia have federal circuit court cases going back to 1950. Their search engines are user-friendly, and each allows you to limit your search to a particular circuit.

(The Public Library of Law and Justia (via its Supreme Court Center) also have all Supreme Court decisions. In addition, Justia has federal district court opinions from 2004 to the present, and the Public Library of Law has state appellate and high court cases from 1997 to the present.)

Why so much new federal case law all of a sudden? As Robert Ambrogi explains it, in mid-February public.resource.org and the Creative Commons jointly released 18 million pages of public domain federal case law. After that, it was just a matter of days before Justia and the Public Library of Law took this raw data and rolled out search engines for the decisions.

[Thanks to Robert Ambrogi's Lawsites  for the tip about the Public Library of Law, and thanks to Bonnie Shucha of WisBlawg for the tip about Justia!]

The US Government Has a Blog

It seems like everybody, but everybody has a blog these days (including Geoffery Chaucer at the ZiefBrief favorite Geoffrey Chaucer Hath a Blog.) Not wanting to be left out of the fun, the US Government is blogging up a storm at Govgab. This new effort is the product of the Office of Citizen Services and Communications out of the U.S. General Services Administration. This rather breezy look at the Federal Government has been around since September of '07 so it looks like it is here to stay. The bloggers state:

In our daily jobs, we encounter a staggering amount of U.S. government information and services that can benefit your life. From saving money and visiting National Parks to finding out about government auctions and the latest recalls, we want to bring these resources to you in a new way—through our blog.

This is not the site to go to conduct a legislative history or to track current regulations but it might be fun to add to your collection of blog feeds -- who knows when you might need to know about the Fed's take on Preparing for a Baby on a Budget or Buying a New Car.

Online Companions to Law Reviews

Most of us have heard of Yale Law Journal's Pocket Part and Harvard Law Review's Forum.  But did you know about Texas Law Review's See Also or Connecticut Law Review's CONNtemplations?  Ken Strutin has compiled a very handy list on LLRX of all of the law reviews that have created some sort of online forum that allows for debate and discussion of the articles published by the law reviews.  These websites can be great resources for students who are researching note or law school paper topics. 

Law Wikis

Robert Ambrogi has an excellent piece on Law.com this week, "Legal Wikis Are Bound to Wow You," which describes how wikis are being used to promote legal scholarship and "lawyer-to-lawyer collaboration."  Ambrogi also supplies a large list of legal wikis, including the Death Penalty Wiki and the Internet Law Treatise sponsored by the Electronic Frontier Foundation.  What's a wiki?  It's a website that allows individuals to edit the content of the site collectively.  Wikis can be open to edits from the entire world, or they can be password-protected so that only particular individuals can contribute content.  What are the origins of the word "wiki"?  It's allegedly derived from the Hawaiian word "wiki," which means "quick."

What's New on GlobaLex

We've posted several times about GlobaLex, the website dedicated to providing research guides on international, comparative, and foreign law.  You can check out GlobaLex research guides by category at these pages:  foreign law research guides; international law research guides; and comparative law research guides. The site has just posted several new and updated guides, including the following:

• Guide to Legal Research in Honduras by José Miguel Álvarez and Jessica Ramos
• Researching Icelandic Law by Rán Tryggvadóttir and Thordis Ingadóttir
• A Guide to the Singapore Legal System and Legal Research by Tzi Yong Sam Sim
• The Law in Zimbabwe by Otto Saki and Tatenda Chiware
• Guide to Caribbean Law Research (updated Feb. 2007) by Yemisi Dina

Thanks to Law Librarian Blog for reminding us to check out the latest on GlobaLex!

Law School Search Engine

John Doyle of Washington & Lee Law Library has created a very handy custom Google search that allows you to search just the content of law school websites.  The page includes a list of each law school site that's included in the search, and yes, USF is included!  Searching law school websites is a quick and easy way to find legal research guides.  For example, let's say that you would like to find a research guide on art law.  Type the words, "art law guide," into the search box without quotations, and you'll find a few research guides right on point.  Looking for some handy guides to applying for judicial clerkships?  Just type "judicial clerkships" in the search box, and you can take advantage of all of the other law schools' online guides about this topic.  Thanks to beSpacific for the tip!

Pick a Patent with Google

IP practitioners love to carp about the free patent search site offered by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (PTO). The search engine is clunky, the .pdf files don't load, it takes forever. But its free (a.i.b.) so you couldn't complain too much.

Now there is a new player in town -- the Google Patent Search (beta). It claims to cover the entire collection of patents made available by the USPTO. That would be all patents issued in the 1790s through those issued in the middle of 2006 -- approximately 7 million patents. It is said to use the same algorithms used by the very popular Google Book Search. The results are fast and easy to read and open on just about every browser on the block.

Needless to say, this opens up a wealth of entirely frivolous searches, such as patents granted to Michael Jackson (for a collection of 17 other "celebrity patents" check out this link) and "an apparatus for facilitating the birth of a child by centrifugal force".

50-State Statute Surveys - Making an Onerous Research Task a Little Easier

This fall, ZiefBrief worked with several students who were helping a professor find the laws of all 50 states on a specific topic. They came to the reference desk downcast at the thought of searching state by state by state…. They went away encouraged, having learned of three tools that can cut hours - or days - off of 50-state research projects.

The lifesavers:

• Subject Compilations of State Laws - Initially the work of Lynn Foster and Carol Boast, Subject Compilations is now carried on by the incomparable Cheryl Rae Nyberg. Each annual volume is organized by topic, and lists books, web sites, articles, and other documents that cite to (or reproduce) state laws on the topic in question. Even though Subject Compilations is not available online, it's our favorite tool for answering those "what are all of the state laws on X subject" questions. In the Zief Library, you'll find Subject Compilations at KF 1 .F67 Law Reference.
• National Survey of State Laws, edited by Richard A. Leiter - A one-volume set that summarizes (and cites to) state statutes on 45 topics in 8 broad categories. National Survey doesn't have the depth of coverage of Subject Compilations, but if you're dealing with a major topic like capital punishment, minimum wages, or child custody, you'll probably find the answer faster in National Survey. Zief's copy is at KF 386 .N38 2003 Law Reference.
• Westlaw’s 50 State Surveys (SURVEYS) database - Combines the National Survey of State Laws with Legal Research Center's Multijurisdictional Surveys. Researchers can browse by topic or search by key word.

If your research problem involves regulations rather than statutes, you'll find helpful citations in Subject Compilations of State Laws. If you are a Westlaw subscriber, you can also try the REG-SURVEYS database. For more information, See our post Westlaw's 50 State Regulatory Surveys - Relieving (Some of) the Pain of Multi-State Regulatory Research.

[Update, 1.30.2007] Our colleagues at Heafey Headnotes point out that Harvard Law Library has an excellent guide to Multi-State Legal Research listing dozens of tools to alleviate the pain of 50-state research projects. Though the guide is geared to researchers at Harvard, academic law libraries will have most of the tools it mentions. (Thanks, Prano!)

 

The Numbers Game

Are you writing a term paper that requires you to track down some statistical information, but you're not sure how to go about finding the statistics that you need?  If so, you should know about FedStats, a page sponsored by the federal government that provides free access to the "full range of official statistical information available to the public from the Federal Government."  FedStats offers an easy-to-navigate home page, which allows you to look up government statistics by subject, agency, or geographical region.  If you're not sure which agency's statistics you need to examine, FedStats even offers a handy description of the kinds of statistics kept by each federal agency.  For even more help with statistical research, check out this statistics research guide from the librarians at Harvard Business School's Baker Library.