The Goodson Blogson

Congratulations to our newest class of graduates! If you plan to remain in the Triangle area this summer for bar exam study, please note the following information about Duke Law building access, library services, and access to electronic resources. Building Access: Although your law student IDs (which provide 24-hour access to the Law School and Law Library) are deactivated shortly after graduation, you are eligible for a free alumni card from the DukeCard Office . You may pick up your alumni card as early as May 3rd; however, the DukeCard Office recommends waiting until you no longer need access with your student ID card (immediately post-graduation is the preferred time frame). E-mail your alumni card number to the Law School's Building Manager, Catherine Hall , in order to activate 24-hour access for the summer. The access will continue until August 15. Borrowing privileges for Law Library materials generally expire upon graduation, although exceptions can be made for recent g...

Our subscription to HeinOnline now includes the new World Constitutions Illustrated library. Like Constitutions of the Countries & Territories of the World , the Hein library offers current and historical constitutions for foreign countries. The Hein database is unique, though, for a few reasons: Where available, constitutions are provided in their original language as well as in English translation; Constitutions are scanned PDFs from their sources, rather than HTML transcriptions; Country pages include links to relevant commentary in classic constitutional texts and selected scholarly articles. Constitutions of the Countries & Territories of the World is still useful for locating constitutional documents from provincial governments (which are not yet included in HeinOnline ), and its sister database Constitutions of the United States: National & State also includes U.S. state government constitutions. For more information on researching foreign constitutions, check ou...

The end of spring semester classes will bring some changes to the Law Library’s service desk hours. Reference services will be available from 8 am to 9 pm until Thursday, April 22. Beginning Friday, April 23, reference services will be available Monday-Friday, 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m . Evening and weekend reference service will resume at the beginning of the fall semester. Circulation/Reserve services and the Academic Technologies Help Desk will continue to be available on weekends and in the evenings during the reading and exam period. Effective the last day of exams (Friday, May 7), all library service points will change hours to Monday-Friday, 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., and will resume evening/weekend service at the start of the fall semester. Over the summer, current members of the Duke Law community will retain 24-hour access to the Law School and Law Library.

Over the summer, LexisNexis and Westlaw traditionally cut off access to student passwords, since summer associates will use their firm’s accounts for client research. However, students with academic research needs (summer classes, moot court/journal work, a research assistant job, etc.) may request an automatic extension of their passwords for the summer months. LexisNexis passwords may be extended from June 1 - August 1 for the following "academic purposes": Research skill improvement, such as improving research efficiency and sharpening your area of law research skills as you prepare for practice Summer classes or course work Moot court, law review, or journal research Work as a professor's research assistant Internship or externship for school credit Study for the bar exam Request a summer extension for LexisNexis at http://www.lexisnexis.com/lawschool/StartingLawSchool.aspx?articleid=583 . Students who do not request an extension of their summer passwords will st...

Over the weekend, the N.Y. Daily News published an exposé of what must be a world record for library late fees, from a most unlikely scofflaw: the first President of the United States. In October of 1789, President George Washington borrowed the treatise Law of Nations , along with a volume of British parliamentary debates, from the New York Society Library . A handwritten ledger, unearthed in 1934, seemed to prove that the books were never returned. Earlier this week, librarians stumbled upon the rest of the British parliamentary debates, and sure enough, the volume Washington borrowed was still missing from the set. Adjusted for inflation over the last 220 years, the current fines for these two books would be a whopping $300,000. Washington’s death in 1799 may provide the ultimate affirmative defense, but current residents of Earth cannot so easily side-step the library due date. For Duke students, the end of the semester is an excellent time to double-check your library account (...

Duke Law School is like a small town, where the doors are always unlocked (albeit with a DukeCard after 5 p.m.) and almost nobody needs an introduction. So it can be a culture shock to students who spend summer away from Durham that many law schools more closely resemble an exclusive nightclub, at least with regard to their access policies. In fact, some law school libraries are not even open to the undergraduates of their affiliated university! What does this mean for Duke Law students who might need access to another law school library over the summer ? Whether you’re hoping to research a journal note while spending the summer in NYC, or you just feel most comfortable studying for the California bar in a familiar-looking setting, it can still be possible to obtain guest access to private law libraries over the summer. However, advance planning will make the process much smoother. First, identify the closest law library (or libraries). The American Bar Association offers a helpful map...

On Sunday, the Durham Herald-Sun reported a new source for mapping crime data in the city of Durham. The new map, a component of the larger law enforcement search tool RAIDS Online , complements the Durham Police Department’s existing Crime Mapper , but offers enhanced search capability and data about a wider range of crimes, such as vandalism and drug-related offenses. RAIDS also offers additional detail about each mapped incident, although for privacy’s sake, exact addresses are not revealed. Currently, RAIDS provides police data from Durham and Raleigh, in addition to several other U.S. cities (e.g. Cincinnati and Topeka). For other Triangle-area crime mapping, check out the News & Observer database , which also includes data from various Wake County police precincts. These types of crime maps can be invaluable to area house-hunters who are unfamiliar with particular neighborhoods (as well as fun for the morbidly curious). But what if your local police department doesn’t provi...

Did you ignore us back in February when we pointed you to sources for income tax help ? Now there’s only a week left to finish your federal and NC income tax returns! Taxes are never convenient, but maybe you could really use more time to file. Fortunately, automatic extensions are available, and just a little bit of paperwork up front could buy you six extra months to file. Check these links for more information: Federal : http://www.irs.gov/taxtopics/tc304.html North Carolina : http://www.dornc.com/taxes/individual/extension.html Other states : Visit your state’s Department of Revenue, linked from the IRS website at http://www.irs.gov/businesses/small/article/0,,id=99021,00.html Please note that in all cases, an extension of time to file does NOT equal an extension of time to pay taxes owed! You’ll need to submit at least a preliminary payment for what you estimate is owed, along with your request for an extension. Failure to pay at least the estimated tax could result in penalties...

Everyone, at some point in their lives, has played "devil’s advocate." Hopefully, Duke Law students also read The Devil’s Advocate . You may have even borrowed The Devil’s Advocate from our Legal DVDs collection. But do you know the origin of this famous phrase? A segment of CBS’s Sunday Morning Easter broadcast explored the process of canonization in the Roman Catholic Church ( transcript ). Two hagiographers (biographers of the saints) described some of the most memorable paths to sainthood in Church history (such as the patron saint of chefs being grilled over hot coals), while a Vatican official described the canonization process: There's no getting around the rule that you have to be responsible for at least two miracles. This (surprise, surprise) is hard for investigators to prove. "Sometimes you know, we're called upon to do a CSI investigation," said Sarno, "especially in cases, for example, of miracles, where you actually have to put down o...