The Goodson Blogson

Where did the semester go? While the fall semester may have disappeared quickly, there’s still plenty of time to prepare for a successful exam season. First, fill in those outline gaps with study aids , available in print and online via the Law Library. The West Academic Study Aids Library includes Acing, Concepts and Insights, Hornbooks, Nutshells, Black Letter Outlines, Legalines, and Sum and Substance audio. The Aspen Learning Library includes Examples & Explanations, Glannon Guides, and Emanuel Law Outlines. Elgar Advanced Introductions to Law provides accessible yet comprehensive overviews of more than two dozen legal topics, particularly strong in comparative and international areas of law. All three study aid databases can be accessed quickly from the Law Library’s Legal Databases & Links page. First-semester students might also want to take a look at general exam preparation guides , like those listed on the library orientation guide to Law School Success . Titles...

The Goodson Blogson has been in the holiday gift guide game since 2009 , but we are hardly the first. Last year, we featured excerpts from the Duke Law student newspaper Devil's Advocate containing humorous legal gift suggestions from the 1960s. This year, we stumbled across a legal gift guide with wider reach in the library stacks. Nearly 50 years ago, Juris Doctor , a lifestyle magazine for lawyers published in the 1970s, featured an irreverent last-minute holiday gift guide in its December 1975 issue. Credited to freelance journalist Regina Nadelson (who, best we can tell, went on to greater fame as mystery novelist and nonfiction author Reggie Nadelson ), "Gifts No One Else Will Think Of" featured a grab bag of shopping suggestions, from the thoughtful (vintage bottles of wine, fancy chocolates, autographs of favorite historical figures), to the practical (a "booklite" for reading in bed, a white-noise machine, fine linens), to the aspirational (trips aro...

As most of the United States prepares to set its clocks an hour earlier overnight on Saturday, it’s time again for frequently asked questions like "Is it better to wake up in the dark, or to go home in the dark?" and "Why are we doing this, again?" Daylight Saving Time ends at 2 a.m. Sunday, November 3, as outlined in 15 U.S.C. § 260a . DST will resume with a "spring forward" on the second Sunday of March. In 2020, the Congressional Research Service issued a helpful report on Daylight Saving Time . The CRS report details the history of DST in the U.S. and congressional action related to it. DST was first adopted in the United States during World War I, with the Standard Time Act of 1918 (also called the Calder Act). This act created standardized time zones for the United States and set a DST, which was already in place in parts of Europe to help conserve fuel during the war. (Temporary year-round DST, also known as "War Time," reappeared in t...