Tax Time (with Two Extra Days)

Today marks two months ‘til tax time! Just like last year, the traditional April 15 federal income tax deadline falls on a weekend, and April 16 is an official holiday in the District of Columbia (Emancipation Day). So chronic procrastinators have an extra-long weekend to prepare and file their federal taxes before Tuesday, April 17 – and many states, including North Carolina, are also following the federal government’s lead in order to avoid deadline confusion.

But even with the extra few days, you can certainly get started on your tax preparation now. Although the Goodson Law Library staff cannot answer substantive tax-related questions (such as “what forms do I need to file?” or help with interpreting the form instructions), the Goodson Blogson can recommend some starting places for finding assistance.

Before you pay for a professional tax preparation service, consider whether you qualify for the IRS FreeFile program. This service links qualifying taxpayers to free electronic federal tax preparation service (state tax preparation may also be available in some cases). Note that your adjusted gross income must be $57,000 or less in order to take advantage of the FreeFile program. However, those with higher income can still use Free File Fillable Forms to e-file their federal returns.

You might also qualify for assistance from VITA (Volunteer Income Tax Assistance), a program in which trained volunteers assist with preparation for low- to moderate-income taxpayers, as well as senior citizens. Duke Law’s VITA chapter has posted their calendar for spring 2012; please note that advance appointments are required. For readers outside the Durham area, the IRS maintains a list of VITA sites around the country.

If your taxes turn out to be too complicated, you might need to hire a professional. The IRS has tips for choosing a tax professional as well as instructions for filing complaints against any bad apples out there. Good luck—and for the perpetual procrastinators, there’s always an automatic extension. Keep in mind, though, that filing extensions don’t include an extension of time to pay estimated taxes!

"Tell the Court I Love My Wife"

Tonight, HBO premieres The Loving Story, a 2011 documentary about the fight against miscegenation laws in the 1950s and 1960s. Arrested and convicted in Virginia after returning home from their wedding in Washington, D.C., the interracial couple Richard and Mildred Loving faced either a year in jail or self-imposed exile in exchange for a suspended sentence. With the help of Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy and the American Civil Liberties Union, the Lovings’ motion to vacate their 1958 conviction made it to the U.S. Supreme Court in the spring of 1967.

The oral argument, which can be heard at the OYEZ Project or read in volume 64 of Landmark Briefs and Arguments, included Richard Loving’s simple request to his attorney, Bernard Cohen: “Tell the Court I love my wife, and it’s just unfair that I can’t live with her in Virginia.” The unanimous opinion, published at 388 U.S. 1, agreed that “[t]here can be no doubt that restricting the freedom to marry solely because of racial classifications violates the central meaning of the Equal Protection Clause.” At the time of the Court’s ruling, sixteen states had similar laws on their books.

Preview - The Loving Story

Don’t have premium cable? Never fear; we’re sure that The Loving Story will be added to the library’s DVD collection when it’s released. In the meantime, you can also read more about the Lovings in the 2004 book Virginia Hasn’t Always Been for Lovers: Interracial Marriage Bans and the Story of Richard and Mildred Loving. The Loving case is also explored in the first chapter of Family Law Stories. In addition, you can read the filings from the case at U.S. Supreme Court Records and Briefs and Landmark Briefs and Arguments. For help researching this or any other landmark Supreme Court cases, be sure to Ask a Librarian.

Resources for the February Bar Exam

Taking the February bar exam in a few weeks? Whether you're a December graduate facing down your first examination or making a repeat performance in a new -- or old –- jurisdiction, it never hurts to supplement your study course with additional resources. In our online catalog, try a subject keyword search for "Bar examinations—United States". This will retrieve some helpful resources for any state’s bar exam, including Strategies & Tactics for the MBE (Reserves KF303 .W345 2010) and other titles like The Zen of Passing the Bar Exam (KF303 .N673 2011).

Past exams from North Carolina are available at the NC Board of Law Examiners site. This site offers past exams from 2005-2007 free for download. (Older essay questions are available in the library at the call number KFN7476 .N671, but the latest exam available in print is 2003.) The Young Lawyers Division of the North Carolina Bar Association has also prepared a brief guide to Drafting a Bar Exam Essay Answer (Reserves KFN7476.Z9 D73 2004), with tips and tricks for NC test takers. An updated (2009) version of this pamphlet is available online in PDF.

Older bar examinations from 31 other states can be found in our Microforms Room on Level 1 of the library (cabinet # 35, top drawer). Available dates vary by state, although generally exams from 2010 or early 2011 are included. Note that many other states also make past exams available for free on their bar exam websites, such as New York’s page of Past Exam Questions, which may be more up-to-date than our microfiche collection. Visit http://www.ncbex.org/bar-admissions/offices/ to locate the Board of Law Examiners site for your state.

Good luck to all of our February 2012 test takers!

Pocket Constitutions: Democracy in Action

Do you miss the pocket-sized U.S. Constitutions which used to be free for the taking at the Goodson Law Library’s service desk? You're not alone: the handy text of the Constitution and Declaration of Independence proved popular with 1Ls in constitutional law classes, new international scholars, and even Duke Law faculty, who handed them out in some courses at the Law School's Summer Institutes in Hong Kong and Geneva. But the U.S. Government Printing Office, which supplied the pocket Constitutions free to federal depository libraries, has not had them in stock since late 2011 -- and as disappointed recent visitors know, the library's supplies have dwindled down to nothing.

There’s hope on the horizon, though - Congress misses them, too. House Concurrent Resolution 90, Authorizing the Printing of the 25th Edition of the Pocket Version of the United States Constitution, was introduced in November and just this Thursday moved to a Senate committee for consideration after passing the House without objection. The resolution would provide for the printing of “235,500 copies of the document, of which 220,500 copies shall be for the use of the House of Representatives, 10,000 copies shall be for the use of the Senate, and 5,000 copies shall be for the use of the Joint Committee on Printing,” or as many copies as a budget of $114,849 will produce. This is about half the budget which was allotted to the last printing in 2009 (S. Con. Res. 111-35), so it’s possible that the reprint still won’t result in an avalanche of freebies on our service desk. But it's a good reminder of the usefulness of THOMAS, the Library of Congress’s free federal legislation service, which provides bill text and status back to 1989. (Other free and premium bill tracking resources can be found in a prior blog post).

In the meantime, the 2009 printing can still be found online with its official citation, S. Doc. 111-4 (here’s a printable PDF version courtesy of the GPO’s FDsys site - be careful to choose “booklet” format when printing!). And of course, there are handy online transcripts from reputable sites like the National Archives. But if you’d still prefer to have a pocket copy of your very own, keep an eye on the resolution’s status page and Ask a Librarian once the printing is official.

Is Your Password (Still) 123456?

The Goodson Blogson has written before on the topic of weak passwords, which are sadly common in cyberspace. Back then, our post on the topic cited a 2007 study of the most popular—and vulnerable-- online passwords, including 123456, password, qwerty, and abc123. In November, the password-management outfit SplashData released a list of the "25 Worst Passwords of 2011", which revealed that those laughably bad passwords remain at the top of the list more than four years later (and no, "passw0rd" – which also made the 2011 list – isn't really an improvement).

To help combat this crummy-password epidemic, gadget blog Gizmodo has declared Wednesday, February 1st to be “Change Your Password Day”. Their site explains the vulnerabilities in common passwords, and offers tips for strengthening them, including strategies for creating a memorable “pass phrase” which incorporates more difficult-to-crack length and a variety of letters, numbers and symbols. Duke’s own IT Security Office also maintains a page of helpful tips for selecting passwords that are both strong and memorable.

Gizmodo has also created a helpful list of “The Best Times to Change Your Passwords”, which depends upon the sensitivity of the information stored in the account. But for many readers, it’s obvious that the correct answer is “right now.” For assistance with your email and account security, visit the Academic Technologies Help Desk.

Death Index, Be Not Proud

It has been said (by several people, according to the editor of the Yale Book of Quotations) that nothing is certain but death and taxes. But someone has to keep track of such inevitabilities, and for death in the United States, that’s the Social Security Administration. Their ominously-named Death Master File may not be perfect (the Scripps Howard News Service investigative report Grave Mistakes estimated that more than 1,000 names per month are erroneously added), but the records are invaluable for the confirmation of birth and death dates as well as the prevention of identity theft and insurance fraud, among other purposes.

Unfortunately, the public version of the Death Master File has also been misused in some of the same activities that it was intended to prevent. The Public DMF, more commonly known as the Social Security Death Index (SSDI), was created in 1980 as the result of a federal court order from a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit. It was made available to the public as a subscription service through a partnership with the National Technical Information Service (NTIS), which sells subscriptions and updates to third parties, including for free at the popular genealogy research site Ancestry.com as well as premium legal research services like LexisNexis (Public Records > Find a Person > Social Security Death Master) and Westlaw (database short name: DEATH). Following some high-profile incidents of tax fraud using the Social Security numbers of the recently deceased, even the plaintiff in the original FOIA lawsuit has since spoken publicly about restricting access to the sensitive information contained in the SSDI.

In November 2011, the Social Security Administration amended its policies regarding access to “protected state records,” or “death records we receive through our contracts with the States.” The Death Master File FAQ on SSA's website points out that their death reports are received from a variety of sources, including “family members, funeral homes, hospitals, States, Federal agencies, postal authorities and financial institutions.” Although the change affects only the state government records, the Administration estimates that the average number of deaths disclosed in the public DMF will be cut by almost one-third going forward. In addition, the Administration plans to remove more than 4 million historic records which fall into the "protected state records" category.

In response, last month Ancestry.com moved its formerly-free version of the SSDI behind a paywall (although initial searches and preliminary result lists are still free). Other providers (including LexisNexis and Westlaw) have also scrambled to make their users aware of the new policies. This change to the SSDI serves as a valuable reminder for researchers to always check the "scope note" for information about coverage in a particular database, since contents may change unexpectedly. On LexisNexis and Westlaw, these can be found by clicking the "i" icons next to a database name. For help deciphering database coverage, or for assistance with researching public records, be sure to Ask a Librarian.

Secrets of a Successful Semester

It's only a few weeks into the new semester, but maybe you’re already feeling confused by a tricky legal concept or a hard-to-parse holding. Don’t ignore it until you’re making your final-exam outlines - take a look at some study aids! Before you drop a fortune on flash cards and commercial outlines, visit the Goodson Law Library for some of the most popular study aids around:

• Examples and Explanations Series: Titles in this series are written by law professors who give a narrative overview of the key concepts and rules for a particular subject, followed by "examples" (hypothetical questions) and “explanations” of the answers. Search the catalog for title keywords "examples and explanations" to retrieve a list of all available titles. Current editions are available on Reserve, with older editions available for longer checkout in the Stacks. (Did a classmate beat you to the title you needed? Note that many of these titles are also available in “Preview” mode on Google Books.)
• Hornbooks: These one-volume books are written especially for law students and summarize specific areas of law in a narrative form. Most hornbooks are available in two editions: Practitioner's and Student's. The practitioner's edition usually contains additional chapters which discuss practical issues, such as preparing for trial. The library usually has the current edition of both versions in the Reserves collection; previous editions are available in the Stacks.
• Mastering... Series: These slim volumes provide a basic overview of a specific area of law, with minimal footnotes. They are available on most law school course subjects, shelved in the Stacks alongside other works on the topic, and their locations can be found in the catalog with a title keyword search for “mastering [subject]”.
• Nutshell Series: These pocket-sized books contain a comprehensive outline of a specific subject, usually written by a noted authority. Nutshells provide a big-picture look at the law and avoid in-depth analysis. They contain fewer footnotes and references than hornbooks, but generally give greater coverage of a subject than commercial study outlines. The most current Nutshells are in the Reserves collection.
• Q&A series: Books in this series provide a review of legal subjects using a multiple-choice and short-answer question format. The library owns selected titles, particularly in subject areas where multiple-choice exams are commonplace. To locate available titles, conduct a title keyword search for "questions and answers and [subject]". (A similar multiple-choice approach is taken in the Glannon Guides, which are also available in the library’s collection for selected subjects.)
• Understanding... Series: Published by LexisNexis on a variety of legal topics, this series can be found with a title keyword search of the catalog for "understanding [subject]". The Understanding series contain an overview of an area of law, with footnotes to primary sources for further reading.

For those who prefer a more interactive approach to studying, don’t forget about CALI lessons – the Center for Computer-Assisted Legal Instruction offers online tutorials on more than 800 legal topics. You can pick up a CALI CD at the library service desk, or request a registration code for the online versions from the Reference Desk or online with your NetID. Beginning this semester, students are able to save their progress in online lessons in order to resume them later. See the CALI FAQ for details, or Ask a Librarian to recommend study aids for your topic.