Looking for a concise summary of the Supreme Court's major decisions during the 2007-2008 term? You can find it in American Law Reports on Westlaw at 30 A.L.R. Fed. 2d 637 (Westlaw password required for access). In addition to summarizing all of the Court's major decisions, this document also contains links to the full-text of each opinion and related ALR annotations.
At the start of every semester, I definitely suffer from a bit of information overload, helpfully defined by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (!) as the "provision of information in excess of the cognitive and emotional ability of an individual to process that information." Admittedly, it's not as severe as the information overload that I experienced as a lawyer, when it was not unusual to receive over 500 emails in one day, and now that I'm an "information professional," I've found some helpful tips that keep me sane, organized, and feeling on top of things. Sarah Houghton-Jan has compiled an indispensable list of things that you can do to stay on top of the information avalanche. Here are a few of my favorite snippets from her article:
Want to find out how members of your jury really think? Google them and read their blogs and social networking pages. The National Law Journal reports that increasing numbers of litigators are turning to the Internet in order to get a better handle on how to craft arguments that will win over jurors. Attorneys are also using Internet research to help them select jurors.
In one example discussed in the article, a jury consultant was hired to work for the plaintiff in a products liability case involving a worker who was injured when he was forced to climb inside of a machine. The consultant discovered from a potential juror's MySpace page that he was in a claustrophobe's support group. The jury consultant urged the attorney to keep the juror on the panel, the claustrophobic juror ended up as the jury foreperson, and the plaintiff prevailed.
Of course, some jurors may not take kindly to such tactics, and at least one litigator quoted in the article worried about the ethics of prying into jurors' online lives. Until the profession better defines the parameters of permissible research about jury pools, it's safe to assume that litigants are going to take advantage of search engines and social networking sites to help them prevail at trial.
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:
So check out Capitol Words and the other works of the Sunshine Foundation today. Its worth the trip.
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:
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!
Howard Bashman just posted an announcement on How Appealing to let his readers know that the Fifth Circuit is now making audio files of oral arguments available on its website. Here is a short roundup of some other jurisdictions that furnish audio files of oral arguments on their websites:
United States Supreme Court Audio Files from oyez.org;
Ninth Circuit (case number or date of oral argument required);
Federal Circuit;
Seventh Circuit;
Eighth Circuit;
California Supreme Court (selected high-profile cases only!)
Colorado Supreme Court;
Delaware Supreme Court;
Florida First District Court of Appeal (video and audio);
Florida Fifth District Court of Appeal (video and audio);
Illinois Supreme Court;
Missouri Supreme Court
Nevada Supreme Court;
Texas Supreme Court;
Utah Supreme Court and Utah Court of Appeals;
Wisconsin Supreme Court.
If anyone knows of other appellate courts that make audio files of oral arguments available, let me know, and I'll add to this list!
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:
Or, you can use Google Book Search to search inside the book. Try this search:
Here is a copy of the presentation for students participating in a clinical program: Download ClinicalExternsSpr08.ppt
We're giving a presentation this week on just a few of the Web 2.0 applications that are useful for legal researchers. You can find a copy of our presentation here: Download Web20LegalResearch.ppt
ZiefBrief has noticed that researchers skilled in other aspects of Lexis and Westlaw struggle at times with statute searching.
Diane Murley of Arizona State's Ross-Blakley Law Library must have observed these struggles too, because she's been blogging succinct, invaluable tips for getting the most out of statutes on Lexis and Westlaw.
So far, there are four tips in the series:
