AAA Digest of Motor Laws Online

Driving to Grandma’s house for Thanksgiving dinner? There’s no better time to check out the AAA Digest of Motor Laws, a free compilation of state laws related to motor vehicle ownership and operation. The source is browseable by individual state, as well as by category: Is your window tint too dark for a neighboring state’s comfort? Do you need to put away that radar detector when you cross state lines? And even though you know you shouldn’t, can you legally use a cell phone or send a text message behind the wheel, wherever you may roam?

The American Automobile Association added this long-running 50-state survey of vehicle laws to its website this summer (once upon a time, we received print editions in the libraries), and plans to expand the online service in the future with Canadian law and also comparative search tools. Note that the site links to undated summaries of the relevant state law, rather than the text of the actual statutes: to confirm the accuracy of the information, start at Cornell’s State Legal Links to access primary sources of law for each state (such as North Carolina’s online General Statutes).

For more help with locating 50-state surveys on other research topics, check out the Subject Compilations of State Laws (in print or in HeinOnline) or Ask a Librarian. No matter where your travels take you, the Goodson Blogson wishes all its readers a safe and happy Thanksgiving break.

Black's Law Dictionary 12th Edition Now Online

A new 12th edition of Black's Law Dictionary was published in June. Once the library's hard copies arrive and are processed, you will find a print copy at the Reserve Desk and on the dictionary stand in the library Reading Room. Online, the Black's Law Dictionary database on Westlaw has already incorporated the 12th edition changes. (To access it on Westlaw Precision, type BLACKS into the main search bar and select the source from the drop-down suggestions, or retrieve it from the Secondary Sources content menu.) What's new in the 2024 edition? As with the 2019 update, the publisher promises a revision to every single page . More than 2,500 new terms (such as ghost gun and shadow docket ) have been added, bringing the total number of definitions higher than 70,000. Last month, longtime editor Bryan A. Garner joined David Lat's Original Jurisdiction podcast to discuss the new edition and his editorial process for revising the much-cited source. Of course, w

Free Access to US Case Law

Last month marked a milestone for the Caselaw Access Project (CAP) , an ambitious project from the Harvard Law Library Innovation Lab to digitize centuries of U.S. federal and state case law for free public access. Launched in 2016 with the financial backing of online legal research company Ravel Law (now owned by LexisNexis ), the Caselaw Access Project involved the digitization of more than 36 million pages of printed case reporters. The original agreement contained a commercial use restriction for eight years, which has now expired. The Innovation Lab commemorated the occasion with a conference on March 8 , highlighting the history of the project and use cases for the future. For more information on the history of the project, see Adam Ziegler's guest post at Bob Ambrogi's Law Sites . The Search feature on the legacy version of the CAP website links to CourtListener's Advanced Case Law Search , which has incorporated the CAP content. The beta version of the CAP websit

Winter Break Reading Recommendations

The end of the semester is almost here! Amid the flurry of final exams and the holiday rush, it might be hard to find time for your perfect winter break book. But a good read can help pass the time on long flights or airport delays, as well as give you a great way to wind down for the night at the end of busy holiday festivities. To help you find something appealing to read before you go, here are seven recommended titles that the Goodson Law Library staff have enjoyed recently. Number Go Up: Inside Crypto's Wild Rise and Staggering Fall , by Zeke Faux ( Request a print copy or put a hold on the e-book !) "In this up-close-and-personal account, Faux reveals the highly entertaining and, frankly, horrifying (for human beings and the environment) worlds behind the current crypto scandals. An investigative reporter for Bloomberg, Faux also manages to make abstruse cryptocurrency concepts digestible here. For my fellow legal news junkies looking for a deep dive beyond the FTX/

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