The Goodson Blogson

We don’t mean to be a Debbie Downer this holiday season, but thefts of artwork and cultural property are part of a billion-dollar black market. Collectors of art and antiques should protect their own treasures from theft, as well as educate themselves to prevent unknowingly acquiring stolen pieces from unscrupulous dealers. The FBI makes it easy with a searchable National Stolen Art File , launched in late November as part of the Bureau’s website redesign. The database includes information on stolen artwork and cultural property which is valued at more than $2,000. Also worth a look is the FBI’s general Art Theft page, which includes resources to report thefts, advice for protecting against losses, and the Bureau’s fascinating list of “Top Ten Art Crimes.” The FBI is not the only organization which is concerned with stolen art. INTERPOL also maintains a resource page about art theft , although their database requires approved registration in order to perform advanced searches (acces...

It's been hard to ignore the last few weeks of debate about the massive tax legislation working its way through Congress. A controversial “compromise” plan, engineered in part by the White House, passed the U.S. House of Representatives close to midnight on Thursday, December 16 . Just a few hours later, the major tax research databases were announcing the publication of updated commentary and analysis of the Tax Relief, Unemployment Insurance Reauthorization, and Job Creation Act (H.R. 4853 – THOMAS bill summary and text ). Researchers at Duke Law have access to three premium tax resources: BNA’s Tax and Accounting Center, CCH IntelliConnect, and RIA Checkpoint. Since research in these services can be overwhelming to novice users, here are detailed roadmaps to their expert commentaries on the new tax law. BNA Tax and Accounting Center : Follow the path Federal Tax > Tax Legislation > BNA Analysis of the Tax Relief, Unemployment Insurance Reauthorization, and Job Creation Ac...

Earlier this year, we rounded up some Duke databases which can help identify Congressional staff members , and asked the question: “Do any free Internet sources stack up to CQ and the Yellow Book ?” Last week, a new online resource entered the fray when the Sunlight Foundation, a government transparency organization, released a beta directory of all employees from the U.S. House of Representatives. Sunlight's House Staff Directory contains data from the third quarter of 2009 to present. The data can be searched by staff title, political party, quarter and/or state, and results can be downloaded to a spreadsheet. The Sunlight Foundation explains the development of the directory in its blog post . The staff information is drawn from the House Clerk’s office and the Statement of Disbursements (a quarterly breakdown of House expenditures). The makers caution that some data may be up to six months out of date, due to the distribution schedules of their source material. The new direct...

On this day in 1948, the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights . The anniversary of this influential document has been observed around the world in subsequent years as Human Rights Day , including since 1949 in the United States by presidential proclamation . The UN’s Human Rights Day 2010 page profiles “human rights defenders” who are working to end discrimination from Mongolia, to Lesotho, to Chile. There is also a short quiz to test your historical human rights acumen. More than 60 years after the declaration’s adoption, human rights violations remain a major international concern. Non-governmental organizations like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch publish reports on a variety of topical issues, and also provide access to news and commentary for particular countries and/or regions. Additional human rights NGOs around the world can be located through resources listed in the Perkins Library’s NGO research guide , including A...

Some numbers just seem destined to remain constant: 24 hours in a day; 212 degrees to boil water; and a 3.5 median in Law School seminar classes. For a long time, it seemed like the 50 titles to the U.S. Code was one of those dependable numbers too. The U.S.C. has had 50 titles since its first edition in 1926 (although their corresponding subjects have changed over time, and Title 34, Navy, has sat empty since its 1956 repeal). But over the weekend, the Senate unanimously passed H.R. 3237, The Charles 'Pete' Conrad Astronomy Awards Act , which would create Title 51 of the U.S. Code, as a single place for laws on the subject of ‘National and Commercial Space Programs.’ The newly-enacted title would transfer existing code sections related to space from Title 15 (Commerce and Trade), Title 42 (Public Health and Welfare), and Title 49 (Transportation). The bill had passed the U.S. House of Representatives in January 2010, but languished without action in the Senate for months. H....

Parliamentary procedure tends not to be a very hot topic of discussion-- unless your organization follows Robert's Rules of Order , or there’s yet another fistfight on a legislative chamber floor. But without even a single punch thrown, the finer points of parliamentary procedure are currently making headlines in the U.S. Last week, the Senate passed the FDA Food Safety Modernization Act , hailed as a landmark achievement by a lame-duck Congress. The bill would provide greater authority to the Food & Drug Administration to recall contaminated food, in addition to requiring more frequent inspections of production sources. Unfortunately for the bill’s sponsors, and much to the amusement of Jon Stewart at the tail end of this Daily Show clip , the bill hit a constitutional snag almost immediately after its passage. As Roll Call reported , any revenue-raising legislative provision is required to originate in the U.S. House of Representatives, not the Senate. (To avoid the issu...

It's reading & examination period at the Law School, and that means our students are busily preparing outlines and reviewing class notes. As stress levels rise and preparation time grows short, the Goodson Blogson wants to review some of the most common questions at the service desk lately. Library Access As previously reported (both here and in certain other legal blogs of note), exam time brings a temporary change to the library’s access policy, most notably in the evening hours. From now until the end of exams (Saturday, December 18), access to the Goodson Law Library for study purposes will be limited to current Duke Law students, faculty and staff. Card-swipe access to the library entrance will be required after 5:00 p.m. on weekdays and all day on weekends. Members of the Duke University community who require access to the library for research purposes should contact the library service desk for assistance. Additional study space is available to all throughout the bui...