The Goodson Blogson

Our Government Documents collection on level 1 contains a variety of federal government publications, including agency decisions, research reports, and even a set of citizenship test flash cards . But we definitely don’t have most of the titles in the University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s new Government Comics Collection . We’ve previously written about online repositories of government films , which covered everything from 1950s nuclear-disaster preparedness to dramatic reenactments of historic Supreme Court trials. The digitized comics (which can be downloaded with a click of any of the book cover images) feature an equally expansive topic list, and some include familiar characters working overtime for the government: Charlie Brown testing his sister Sally for lazy eye (1968) Superman and Wonder Woman on the hidden dangers of land mines (1998) Captain America and the Campbell’s Soup Kids (!) discussing the virtues of energy conservation-- and, presumably, soup (1980) But the real hist...

What do you get the legal eagle who has everything? Just like any other law-related question: “It depends.” When cash seems too impersonal and disaster kits seem too depressing, turn to the Goodson Blogson for legal-themed gift ideas. The Billable Hour is probably the largest collection of gifts aimed squarely at the legal profession. They offer board games like LAWSUIT! , office accessories, and “ survival kits ” for all stages of law careers, including law school and the bar exam. Constitutional law fans and other SCOTUS geeks will find something to love at the Supreme Court Gift Shop , including its popular annual holiday ornament series . There seems no limit to what the Court will lend its official seal, including a ruler , guest room soap , and drinkware . (For the lawyers and judges of tomorrow, also consider the ABA’s Supreme Court Coloring Book , which comes complete with its own crayons.) If money is no object, try some of the gifts and fine art at LawGallery . The most aff...

The end of fall classes will bring some changes to the Goodson Law Library’s service hours and building access. Effective today, Reference Services will be available from Monday-Friday, 8 a.m. – 5 p.m. The Circulation/Reserve Desk will maintain regular hours during the reading and examination period, and will begin operating under winter break hours (Monday-Friday, 8 a.m.-5 p.m.) at 5:00 p.m. on Friday, December 18. The Academic Technologies Help Desk will remain fully staffed during reading and exam period, as well. Regular service hours will resume at the beginning of the Spring 2010 semester. As always, current members of the Duke Law community will retain 24-hour access to the Law School and Law Library with a valid DukeCard. For the latest updates, see the Library's Hours & Directions page.

December 6 marks exactly 144 years since the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution abolished slavery and involuntary servitude. This shameful chapter of American history began in pre-colonial days, and resulted in the development of a surprisingly detailed body of law concerning the rights of slaves, the penal code as it applied to slaves, and the separate “slave court” systems which developed in many U.S. states. Although the contents of the relevant legal treatises and court opinions are appallingly inhumane to a modern reader, they do cast an interesting perspective on a portion of legal practice in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Each slave-holding state (and, previously, colony) maintained its own slave code , which defined the status of slaves, the powers of slave owners, and related legal issues (such as handling claims of emancipation or punishing crimes committed by/against slaves). For example, browse a hand-written copy of the District of Columbia’s 1860 s...

Over the holiday weekend, a CNN affiliate investigated growing consumer complaints about At The Beach, Inc., an area tanning salon chain with some pretty stringent member agreements. Customers claim that they were duped into signing virtually-unbreakable two-year contracts, and then burned by the fine print when attempting to cancel their accounts. Although most—including the news station’s undercover reporter—were assured by friendly employees that the contracts could be canceled “at any time,” consumers say they were not informed of the requirement to either “buy out” 50% of the remaining time on their contracts, or to prove that they had moved at least 25 miles away from the closest location in order to stop the automatic monthly billing. Is your inner lawyer feeling a distinct lack of sympathy for those who signed without reading? As the news video (5:49) shows, even seasoned attorneys can get caught in a contract trap: interview subject Kevin Lanoha is corporate counsel at Qwest...

On Wednesday, President Barack Obama will grant a “ pardon ” to two otherwise-doomed Thanksgiving turkeys, Courage and Carolina ( official video preview ). These Princeton, NC natives ( story at WRAL ) will be honored in a ceremony on the White House lawn before boarding a plane to California, where Courage will serve as honorary grand marshal for Disney’s Thanksgiving Parade. (Carolina, as the Alternate National Turkey, will be ready to step in should Courage be unable to perform his duties.) Following the parade, the pair will settle into a stuffing-free life at Disneyland’s Frontierland theme park. The WRAL article and many other news sources credit the annual Thanksgiving tradition as originating with President Harry Truman in 1947. However, the popular myth-busting website Snopes.com provides a detailed analysis of the annual turkey pardon , tracing the tradition back only to President George H.W. Bush in 1989. (Anecdotal stories involving Lincoln, Kennedy, and Reagan do not pass...

The blogosphere was abuzz this morning about Google Scholar ’s quiet addition of federal case law, state case law, and legal journal articles to its already-large full-text index of academic journal literature. Official details remain sketchy, but it appears that the legal content includes Supreme Court case law back to volume 1 of the U.S. Reports , federal appellate cases back to the 1920s, and state cases back to the 1950s. Law journal literature is also included. So you think Lexis and Westlaw are now yesterday’s news? Well, not so fast. Gone is the precision searching of Terms & Connectors-- search results are closer to Natural Language, and in some cases maybe not even that sophisticated. There also seems little opportunity to refine search results which are too broad, making Google Scholar perhaps better suited to retrieving known citations than attempting to retrieve a useful list of all the relevant cases on a particular topic. Like much of the social science literature i...

Cite-checkers, rejoice: HeinOnline has added an online archive of more than 50 state and regional bar association journals. The library receives many of these titles in print, but maintains the archive in microfiche rather than print (meaning that generally only the current year is available in the Periodicals collection, and researchers must access older issues in the Microforms Room). To access the bar journals, choose “ Bar Journal Library ” from the HeinOnline start page (a link to HeinOnline will also be included in the library’s catalog and e-journal records for an individual journal title). All bar journals date back to volume 1, and are available in PDF. The title list includes ABA Journal as well as state bar association publications ( Alaska Bar Rag , New York State Bar Association Journal ), city bar journals ( Boston Bar Journal , Los Angeles Lawyer ), and even international publications ( International Bar Journal ). Also of interest is the addition of the Duke Bar Ass...

Political cartoons do more than amuse (and occasionally confuse)—they can express, as well as shape, public opinion. Most American high school students learn of the medium’s historical influence through the story of William "Boss" Tweed , a 19th-century New York City politician who was assailed for corruption in a series of Harper’s Weekly cartoons (in addition to a number of articles). Furious over the cartoons’ persuasive power, Tweed reportedly said, “I don't care a straw for your newspaper articles; my constituents don't know how to read. But they can't help seeing them damned pictures!” There are a variety of reasons why you might search for a particular political cartoon—from as complex as exploring the development of public opinion on a particular topic over time, to as simple as jazzing up a presentation. But where do you go when search engines fail? The Goodson Blogson has some ideas. Published collections of cartoons from a particular time period or ...

Has a library book ever fallen apart in your hands? Or have you ever found an unpleasant surprise stuck between some pages? Recently, the Goodson Law Library was visited by Beth Doyle of the Preservation Department at Perkins Library, which repairs damaged library materials and helps to prevent future damage by educating staff and users about the proper handling of materials. Beth’s presentation to our staff was a valuable reminder of three simple things everyone can do to help maintain the Law Library’s excellent collection for many years to come. First, food and drink should stay far away from library materials. Of course, the Goodson Law Library’s official policy prohibits any food as well as drinks in uncovered containers, but ou r trash cans tell a different story. For a cautionary tale on why food and books don’t mix, check out the Preservation Department’s infamous “ Banana Book ” (click to enlarge). The unexpected enclosure is now permanently fused into the pages of this the...

Earlier this month, Microsoft announced that more than 10,000 Hotmail email accounts had been compromised, and their passwords posted to underground hacking websites. An analysis of the posted account information revealed that the majority of the affected accounts used weak passwords which could be easily guessed. The most popular password was 123456 (with 123456789 a close second). As we reported in the spring , weak passwords are commonplace in cyberspace. A 2007 list of the most frequently-used online passwords included 123456 as well as perennial favorites password , qwerty , and abc123 . But the Hotmail story underscores the dangers of ignoring online security. As a result, many websites are getting tough on wimpy passwords, and requiring users to create strong passwords (a combination of letters, numbers, and symbols) which are harder for hackers to decipher. One such site is Westlaw , which will begin encouraging the creation of OnePass usernames and passwords in November 20...

Hollywood has always had a strange relationship with the law. Throughout history, the film industry has used self-regulation as a way to avoid excessive government interference. This summer marked the seventy-fifth anniversary of the notorious Hays Code , a set of internal moral guidelines for the film industry whose brevity belied its nearly four-decade impact. The Hays Code was inspired by public outrage over several sex- and drug-related scandals involving 1920s film stars, the most famous being the death of actress Virginia Rappe at the hands of Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle. In response, Congress entertained the idea of creating a Federal Motion Picture Commission , whose members would have reviewed and banned films which were “obscene, indecent, immoral, inhuman, or […] of such a character that [their] exhibition would tend to corrupt morals and incite to crime.” (Source: Proposed Federal Motion Picture Commission: Hearings before the Committee on Education, House of Representatives , ...

When researching the law of other countries, yearbooks are frequently helpful. The articles in law yearbooks provide an annual survey of a particular country or region’s activities in the last year, and often reprint cases, legislation or other important documents. International law researchers often consult yearbooks to gain an understanding of state practice. Duke’s International Legal Research Tutorial contains a section on the major international law yearbook titles and strategies for locating them in a library. In the Duke Libraries catalog , the best approach is to perform a title keyword search for [country name] and yearbook ; e.g. new zealand and yearbook . Most law yearbooks will be available in the Periodicals collection on Level 4 of the library. Electronic versions of yearbooks, where available, will be linked in the catalog search results. For example, HeinOnline offers a variety of yearbooks in its Foreign & International Law Resources library. Although most ar...

Last year, the Goodson Law Library celebrated Open Access Day , the first-ever international celebration of the Open Access (OA) movement, which encourages the use of the Internet to freely distribute scholarship which is normally locked behind online subscription databases or published in costly print resources. Although the Open Access movement is rooted in the hard sciences, as a reaction to publicly-funded scientific research results being published in prohibitively expensive journals, the principles of Open Access have spread to other disciplines, including the social sciences. This year, the success of 2008’s Open Access Day has resulted in 2009’s Open Access Week (October 19-23) . Duke University will celebrate with several events, including a panel on Friday, October 23 about open access to health information around the world. For a complete listing of Duke events, see Open Access Week at Duke . For a fuller listing of events beyond Duke, check out http://www.openaccessweek.org...

The Multistate Professional Responsibility Examination (MPRE) is a multiple-choice test of legal ethics, which is required for admission to the bars of most U.S. jurisdictions. (Feel like skipping it? You’ll be limited to practicing law in Maryland, Washington, Wisconsin, or Puerto Rico. See 2009 Comprehensive Guide to Bar Admission Requirements for more information.) The good news is that the MPRE can be taken at any time during law school, giving students a chance to get it out of the way long before the rest of the bar exam. The test is offered three times per year (March, August, and November). Judging by the increasing amount of questions at the Goodson Law Library about resources to study for the MPRE, we could tell that the next test is quickly approaching. A search of the libraries’ online catalog for mpre reveals only one title, Kimm Walton’s Strategies and Tactics for the MPRE 2009 edition . The catalog record notes that the title is still “On Order”, and not yet publishe...

Oyez! Oyez! Oyez! All persons having business before the Honorable, the Supreme Court of the United States, are admonished to draw near and give their attention, for the Court is now sitting. Or at least they will be at 10:00 a.m. today, which marks the official beginning of the Supreme Court’s October Term 2009-2010 ("OT2009"). Of course, Court-watchers will be most eager to analyze the new dynamic that new Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who replaced retiring Justice David Souter over the summer, might bring to oral arguments and to voting. (They had a head start last month, when the Court heard re-arguments in an OT2008 case, Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission : transcript .) The first case on today’s calendar involves a dispute between South Carolina and North Carolina over the equitable use of the Catawba River (briefs at ABA Merits Briefs page). This “water war” has dragged on for several years; today the High Court will consider whether the city of Charlotte, D...

During library tours, there's usually a collective chuckle on Level 2 when groups pass by the call numbers beginning with KFC—the prefix for library materials about the law of California, Connecticut and Colorado. Blame the Library of Congress, whose classification system has forever linked the law of these states with the popular fast-food restaurant. But as the Goodson Blogson recently discovered, there’s another KFC connection buried in the Archives on Level 1—a mysterious box full of files about Kentucky Fried Chicken trademarks and service marks (click for enlarged image). As the catalog record suggests, these folders contain copies of file wrappers , the contents of files at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office related to a particular patent, trademark or service mark. The file wrappers contain the original application, as well as any subsequent correspondence about the application. Although some of these same documents are available online through the USPTO (search TESS...

Last night, 60 Minutes aired a fascinating segment about Mark Roesler, an intellectual property lawyer who made his career by representing dead celebrities (or as correspondent Steve Kroft rather tastelessly calls them, "working stiffs"). Roesler’s Indianapolis-based company CMG Worldwide manages and licenses the likenesses of Marilyn Monroe, James Dean, Bettie Page, and Babe Ruth, to name just a few. ( read transcript ) Roesler’s work falls under a section of intellectual property law called the postmortem right of publicity . It’s an area of law that can elicit strong emotions from fans, particularly when dead celebrities’ images are used to endorse products that the celebrity would likely have not endorsed during life. (Sure, manly-man Steve McQueen might not mind starring in a postmortem ad for Ford Mustangs , but would he really have wanted his face adorning a $200 t-shirt from Dolce & Gabbana ?) There has been a wealth of interesting case law on the topic, involv...

Earlier this month, the White House announced that for the first time in history, its visitor log will be made available to the public on a rolling 90-day delay. The automatic publication will begin with visits after September 15, which will be published by December 31, 2009; records of visits dating from the Obama inauguration to September 15 may now be requested on a case-by-case basis at http://www.whitehouse.gov/RequestVisitorRecords/ . The reversal comes after several lawsuits from advocacy groups, which sought information on visits by a number of health care industry executives. The Obama administration agreed to the “voluntary” disclosure policy in order to settle the lawsuits, but maintains the historical White House position that release of the visitor logs is not actually required under the Freedom of Information Act. (Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush also resisted the release of visitor records during their time in office, and both relented only after legal pressu...

What did the Facebook page say to the bar examiner? Maybe more than you intended. Earlier this month, the Florida Board of Bar Examiners made waves by announcing that it will investigate the social networking profiles of applicants on a case-by-case basis . (This policy replaced a previous recommendation, which would have required all Florida bar applicants to submit a list of their social networking pages for review.) Will this policy lead other state bar examiners to follow suit? Only time will tell; for now, set those photo albums and status updates to "private". Don't be lulled into a false sense of security after the character & fitness review is complete. Yesterday the New York Times ran a fascinating story about practicing attorneys who have been disciplined for the content of their Facebook profiles and blog posts , including a Florida attorney who was sanctioned for referring to the judge in his case as an "Evil, Unfair Witch." Another attorney in...

Without a doubt, the most eye-catching title to arrive at the Goodson Law Library this summer was Killer Robots: Legality and Ethicality of Autonomous Weapons (UG479 .K75 2009). Author Armin Krishnan assures us in his introduction that autonomous killing machines imagined by films like the Terminator franchise do not exist. For the next six chapters, though, he explores what would happen if they did. Far-fetched? Perhaps-- but as a result of the astonishing growth in remote-controlled military robots over the last decade, some researchers suggest that truly autonomous weapons could be developed by as early as 2025. Krishnan’s text focuses mostly on the historical development of robotics in the military and the ethical implications of using autonomous weaponry. Chapter 4, however, examines “The Legality of Autonomous Weapons,” considering possible implications on the field of international law. Although Killer Robots looks a bit lonely on the Goodson Law Library’s shelf, it turns out...

If you can read the title of this blog post, you can research on LAWnB Legal Information Service , a Korean-language portal to legal information which is now available to the Duke University community. LAWnB indexes more than 50 law-related topics, including statutes, precedents, administrative documents, and legal articles. For assistance using LAWnB, contact Miree Ku, Korean Studies Librarian at Perkins/Bostock Library ( miree.ku@duke.edu ). If you require your Korean law in translation, though, you’re still in luck. Translated, historical versions of the constitutions for both the Republic of Korea (South Korea) and the People’s Democratic Republic of Korea (North Korea) can be found in Constitutions of the Countries and Territories of the World , while other sources can be found in print in the Goodson Law Library. Statutes of the Republic of Korea , a 20-volume set kept up to date by looseleaf pages, is available on Level 1 at the call number KPA13 1997. Historical statutes as wel...

We recently blogged about the UMKC Law Review 1L Story contest, which offers one lucky law student or recent grad a $500 prize and publication, simply for recounting a true story about your 1L experience. Interested students still have until October 23 to submit an entry ( details ), but perhaps autobiography doesn’t appeal to everyone. Would you rather put some of your law school research papers to work double-duty, and earn prizes including cash, publication, and/or bragging rights? Legal writing competitions are plentiful, and offer law students many opportunities to sharpen research and writing skills. Many students already have worthy entries left over from law school classes—the trick is discovering the contests themselves. Fortunately, there are a number of useful resources which compile contest announcements. Here are some of the Goodson Blogson’s favorites: Legal Writing Competitions Blog ( http://legalwritingcompetitions.blogspot.com ): A great place for the latest annou...

If you’ve visited the Goodson Law Library recently, you may have noticed a mysterious box of DVDs on the service desk. These discs contain more than 800 interactive legal tutorials from CALI, the Center for Computer-Assisted Legal Instruction ( http://www.cali.org ). First-year students will use CALI later this semester to complete a Bluebook exercise in LARW class. However, your experience with CALI shouldn’t stop there. CALI lessons are available for all of the major areas of law school study, and range from 10-minute reviews of a single concept ( Defenses ) to multi-part tutorials to be completed over several days ( a sprawling Contracts review ). Most tutorials will take between 30-60 minutes, and their target completion time is clearly indicated before you begin. Each lesson is authored by a law school instructor or librarian, and is carefully reviewed before publication in order to ensure clarity and helpfulness. For the most current versions of the tutorials on the CALI DVD (o...

Legal terminology is full of confusing Latin phrases; even everyday English words can take on a different meaning in the legal context (such as willful or consideration ). Legal dictionaries such as Black’s Law Dictionary (Ref KF156 .B53 and on Westlaw) provide some help, but often the definitions themselves contain more confusing terms to be looked up. When you just need a quick, simple translation from legalese to English, there are a few web-based resources that can help. Cornell’s Legal Information Institute offers Wex , a free legal dictionary/encyclopedia (definitions linked at http://topics.law.cornell.edu/wex/category/wex_definitions ). Everybody’s Legal Glossary ( http://www.nolo.com/glossary.cfm ) is maintained by Nolo Press, a publisher known for its legal self-help books. For iPhone users, Nolo also offers a free app containing its new Plain-English Law Dictionary (check out a recent review with download link at the iPhone J.D. blog ). The Goodson Law Library owns many ...

“Legal storytelling” has become an increasingly popular method for discussing legal cases and concepts. Since 2003, Foundation Press has published a series of popular “ Law Stories ” books, in which contributors flesh out major cases on a particular topic with biographical and historical context. (Check out a list of the titles in the Goodson Law Library .) Undoubtedly buoyed by the success of the “Law Stories” books, the UMKC Law Review introduced its own “Law Stories” series in 2007. For the last few years the review has devoted an entire issue to real-life “tales from legal practice, experience and education.” The UMKC Law Review is preparing its next “Law Stories” issue (scheduled for Spring 2010) and is offering a $500 prize and publication to one lucky law student or recent grad! Submit your true story about the 1L experience by October 23, and you might find yourself published with the likes of Scott Turow ( One-L ) and Saira Rao ( Chambermaid: A Novel ). Full contest details ...

Recent users of the CCH Business & Finance Library , Medicare and Medicaid Guide , and Tax Research Network may have noticed a message prompting them to register with a new database called IntelliConnect . On August 17, IntelliConnect will replace all prior CCH databases, combining the various topical libraries into one comprehensive research system. You can already get a head start on using IntelliConnect by setting up your username and password in order to access the new system. The site offers a number of Flash tutorials for first-time users (although these will not pop up automatically after the second login, they are always accessible from the “Help/Getting Started” link on the left-hand column). IntelliConnect offers the ability to search content across the various topical libraries, or to browse available content by type (such as “news” or “treatises”). The search box allows you to limit your search words to “citations”, making it easy to quickly retrieve cites such as I...

Summertime usually brings a facelift to both LexisNexis and Westlaw, and this year is no exception. Here are some important changes to note about both services. Changes to Westlaw are immediately apparent from the sign-on screen. Although they are mostly cosmetic in nature, there is one substantial upcoming change: beginning in the fall, Westlaw users will be prompted to create a custom “OnePass” username and password for additional account security. Previously, users had the choice to create a username or to log in only with the numeric password on the original Westlaw registration card. LexisNexis has required a customized username and password for several years, and its overall design remains the same (for now). But the makers of Lexis have been working on interesting new features: effective August 1, Lexis presents a new enhancement to case law research called “Related Content”. Similar to the “ResultsPlus” feature on Westlaw, the “Related Content” sidebar offers quick links to v...

You read all the assigned chapters of Legal Research in a Nutshell during LARW. You collected thousands of reward points at Lexis and Westlaw trainings. You even attended the library’s annual “Research Refresher” classes to help prepare for your summer job. So why can this research stuff still be so hard sometimes? The landscape of legal information is constantly changing—materials may be available online in some sources but not others; or they may not be online at all. Different online sources offer different search technologies, from the simple keyword approach of Google Scholar to the algebraic field and connector searching in Lexis and Westlaw. As a result, successful search strategies in one database may not work in another…assuming that you are able to access a particular database at all! Fortunately, the Goodson Law Library has prepared a list of recommended Research Tutorials ( http://www.law.duke.edu/lib/tutorials/index ) to help you resolve common research issues, includin...

As most bar exam takers already know, songs can be effective ways to reinforce and retain important legal concepts. (BAR/BRI’s property instructor Paula Franzese, in particular, is well-known for her musical interludes during video lectures.) We’ve previously blogged about AudioCaseFiles , a source for auditory learners to hear, rather than read, the text of their casebooks. We’ve also recently covered the text-to-speech feature of Index to Legal Periodicals , which allows users to convert legal journal and newspaper articles into downloadable MP3 format. But the Goodson Blogson has never covered a legal source that sings to you— until now. The Law School Academic Support Blog recently pointed to Law Lessongs , a project of UConn Law School professor/musician/obvious They Might Be Giants fan Mark DeAngelis. DeAngelis has put some of the most fundamental legal concepts to the tune of adult contemporary hits, folk songs, and some original compositions. Check out the bouncy ode to “Due...