ZiefBrief

Feeling the Need For Some Presidential Clemency? This Is the Web Site For You!

While it is doubtful that any of the upright citizens that make up the readership of our fine blog will ever need the services of the Pardon Attorney, it is good to now where to go if you need an Executive Branch "Get Out of Jail Free" card.

According to the official web site (click here to open in a new browser window) "The Office of the Pardon Attorney, in consultation with the Attorney General or his designee, assists the President in the exercise of executive clemency as authorized under Article II, Section 2, of the Constitution. Under the Constitution, the President's clemency power extends only to federal criminal offenses. All requests for executive clemency for federal offenses are directed to the Pardon Attorney for investigation and review. The Pardon Attorney prepares the Department's recommendation to the President for final disposition of each application. Executive clemency may take several forms, including pardon, commutation of sentence, remission of fine or restitution, and reprieve."

This site is truly a one-stop-shopping source the forms and regulations you will need to get the ball rolling on your personal pardon. In addition, there are fascinating statistics on the forgiveness of past and current presidents. For example: of the 6 cases commuted by George W. Bush as of today, 5 were for drug related offenses -- the sixth was for Lewis "Scooter" Libby's conviction for obstruction of justice, false statements, and perjury. Go figure.

Election Day 2008 and Beyond - Following the Legal Issues

While ZiefBrief hopes for an election which all sides will acknowledge as fair and well-run, ZiefBrief has prepared for any contingency by bookmarking Election Law @ Moritz, the place to go for breaking news, analysis, commentary, and actual litigation documents.

Election Law @ Moritz "covers developments in the law of election administration — laws dealing with voter registration, voter ID, early and absentee voting, provisional balloting, poll workers and polling place procedures, recounts and election contests, and other related issues." It's built upon the expertise of the  faculty of Ohio State University's Moritz College of Law, many of whom specialize in election law or related topics.

Particularly useful features include the "Election '08 Top Issues"; the up-to-the-minute "Information and Analysis" (available as an RSS feed); the Major Pending Cases chart; the State-by-State and Topic-by-Topic coverage; the side-by-side comparison of state election laws; and links to other useful blogs and web sites.

[Thanks to the Moritz Legal Information Blog for the tip!]

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.

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

Learn How to Find U.S. Congressional Materials

A pair of librarians at U.C. Berkeley have put together a short series of informative tutorials to help you figure out how to find U.S. Congressional materials both on-line and in print. It is pretty basic stuff but it could help any researcher get up to speed on finding essential government documents. The bottom half of the tutorial screen opens up an active LexisNexis Congressional connection. Luckily, the USF Gleeson/Geschke library subscribes to this service and all USF students and staff should be able to follow along without any trouble.

Thanks to the Librarian's Internet Index for this tip.

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.

Life Without Parole for Juvenile Offenders: A Human Rights Report

Today ZiefBrief celebrates Human Rights Day by featuring Sentencing our Children to Die in Prison: Global Law and Practice [PDF; 51 pages], a newly-released report from the Center for Law and Global Justice here at USF.

The report, co-authored by Professor Connie de la Vega and Michelle Leighton, the Center's Director for Human Rights Programs, deals with the practice of sentencing juvenile offenders to life without the possibility of parole ("LWOP"). It surveys the countries where juvenile LWOP sentences are or may be imposed, argues that international law prohibits such sentences, and explores alternative juvenile justice and rehabilitation models. And for legal researchers, the report's appendix contains a 50-state survey, complete with citations and annotations, on juvenile LWOP laws.

Guantanamo Bay Detainees Cases Heard by the Supreme Court

Intense interest in the Guantanamo detainees' cases of Boumediene v. Bush (06-1195) and Al Odah v. U.S. (06-1196) has led the United States Supreme Court to take the rare step of releasing the audio file of today’s oral argument immediately after the argument.

You’ll find the Boumediene/al-Odah oral argument audio  [RealPlayer required] on C-SPAN's Supreme Court page. Look for the link "Supreme Court Oral Arguments: Boumediene v. Bush & Al Odah v. United States." You can also follow along in the written transcript of the argument [PDF; 92 pages].

For more background on these cases, take a look at the SCOTUSWiki page on Boumediene and al-Odah. This page analyzes the case in detail, and links to key documents, selected news reports, and posts from SCOTUSblog. It will include a recap of the oral argument as soon as the authors pull one together - probably sometime later today.

[Update] SCOTUSblog has posted a round-up of news reports on the Boumediene/al-Odah argument, and Oyez.org now has an MP3 file of the oral argument.