The Goodson Blogson

With the Goodson Law Library preparing for upcoming Christmas and New Year holiday closures (see Hours & Directions for info), it’s a good time to reflect on holidays around the world. As globalization has made transnational business the new normal, lawyers must be aware of cultural differences which can impact scheduling and travel plans; these details aren’t always readily apparent from travel guidebooks or simple web searching. Most international travelers are already familiar with the Background Notes and travel information provided by the U.S. State Department, including security threats and travel warnings. But a lesser-known series from the federal government can also be invaluable to travelers and those who do business on a global scale. The Commerce Department’s U.S. Commercial Service publishes and updates Country Commercial Guides , which are intended for use by U.S. companies doing business in a particular country. Chapter 8, “Business Travel,” always contains a sect...

December can be full of unexpected surprises – a holiday card from a long-lost friend, a sudden snow day from work or school, or a fabulous gift from your wish list . But for a quick moment of pure unmitigated cheer, a seasonal favorite has to be pulling out your heavy coat in anticipation of another dreary winter, and finding some long-forgotten cash in the pocket. But wouldn’t it be even better if that crumpled-up $20 bill was a check for $1,500? The Internal Revenue Service recently announced that more than $150 million in federal tax refunds have gone undelivered this year , usually due to outdated mailing addresses. If you’re one of the 99,123 taxpayers who is still waiting for a refund check, visit the IRS status lookup page Where’s My Refund? You’ll need to provide your Social Security Number, filing status and the exact amount of the refund. With the average unclaimed refund totaling $1,547, the site is certainly worth a visit. The IRS isn’t the only place which may be holdin...

Last week, German newspapers reported that Pope Benedict XVI had been sued by an anonymous citizen for “repeatedly violat[ing] German seatbelt laws during a visit to Freiburg in September.” Allegedly armed with YouTube videos of the Catholic leader recklessly standing “for more than an hour” in his famous Popemobile, the suit requests the maximum fine of 2,500 euros for repeated violations of the misdemeanor. Lowering The Bar investigated further and discovered that even if the Pope did neglect to buckle up in the bulletproof Plexiglas cabin of his armored Mercedes-Benz, diplomatic immunity provides yet another layer of papal protection from an overzealous Verkehrspolizist . (Though he should be more careful in the future - the 5-ton Popemobile can accelerate from 0 to 60 mph in a respectable six seconds, and can achieve a top speed of 160 mph .) With the German attorney outright admitting that the suit was really intended to raise public awareness of the country’s seatbelt laws, th...

This weekend marks the sesquicentennial of the U.S. State Department publication Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS) . The “thorough, accurate, and reliable documentary record of major United States foreign policy decisions and significant United States diplomatic activity” ( 22 U.S.C. 4351 ) has undergone many changes since its debut on December 3, 1861, when it mostly reprinted correspondence between State Department officials on then-current matters of foreign policy. Beginning in 1925, FRUS took on more of a historical perspective, covering events which occurred decades prior, and scholarly analysis began to appear alongside the correspondence. The publication of FRUS is now mandated by the United States Code , although the State Department has a little trouble meeting the 1991 requirement that a FRUS volume should appear “not more than 30 years after the events recorded” (the latest volume, published in 2011, concerns 1973’s Arab-Israeli conflict). FRUS is available in...

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 informati...

Yesterday afternoon, the Government Printing Office and the National Archives and Records Administration announced the public release of President Richard Nixon's Watergate grand jury testimony . Federal grand jury proceedings typically remain secret, but last September historian Stanley Kutler petitioned the U.S. District Court in D.C. for the Nixon transcripts’ release, citing their substantial research value. On July 29, Chief Judge Royce Lamberth granted the petition, agreeing with Kutler in his 15-page order that “[t]here is no question that the requested records are of great historical importance…[disclosure] would likely enhance the existing historical record, foster further scholarly discussion, and improve the public’s understanding of a significant historical event.” The grand jury records have been reviewed and some information has been redacted from the public release in order to protect the privacy of certain named individuals. Still, even a redacted release is u...

Around this time of year, the Goodson Blogson features links to unique sources of holiday gifts for lawyers and law students (see 2009 and 2010 ). Though many of these sites have appeared in our past roundups, their selections of merchandise often change from year to year, and are worth a second (or third) look this holiday season. Many D.C.-area government attractions maintain online gift shops with a wide range of law- and government-themed gifts, which can be perfect presents or stocking-stuffers to the lawyers and law students in your life: The Supreme Court Historical Society Gift Shop includes its latest entry in their annual holiday ornament series , Court-themed greeting cards , and a variety of office doodads like bookends, scale of justice clocks, and decorative statues. The U.S. Capitol Historical Society Gift Shop also offers holiday ornaments , in addition to stationery, framed posters and artwork, and (for some reason) decorative baseballs . (Note to our students: b...

The Goodson Law Library now provides campus-wide electronic access to the complete set of the Recueil des Cours (Collected Courses of the Hague Academy) through HeinOnline . Previously, Duke users needed to consult the print set in the library’s Periodicals collection and had electronic access to only a small subset of the publication (1923-1937) through the Gallica Periodicals database . The Hague Academy is a major research center for the study and teaching of international law, and its “Collected Courses” ( Recueil des Cours ) are drawn from its famous summer class series. Top international law scholars visit the academy to deliver lectures on public and private international law topics, which are then published in a volume of the Recueil des Cours . Each volume contains the courses for that year, in the language in which they were delivered (generally, either French or English). To locate Collected Courses on a particular topic, the individual courses are indexed in the Index t...

In the spirit of Open Access Week , (see more about Open Access at Duke ), Reference Librarian Kelly Leong highlights the collaborative efforts of the U.S. Government Printing Office and Administrative Office of the United States Courts in piloting a program to offer free electronic access to federal court opinions. FDsys , the GPO’s collection of electronic materials, currently offers a plethora of free authenticated content, including the U.S. Code , Federal Register , and numerous congressional documents. As announced earlier this month , FDsys now also offers the United States Courts Opinions – Beta collection , providing free electronic access to federal court opinions. The current Beta version offers the authenticated opinions from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, the U.S. District Court of Rhode Island, U.S. Bankruptcy Court - Southern District of New York and U.S. Bankruptcy Court - Southern District of Florida. The collection is set to expand to twelve courts...

This month’s issue of the New York State Bar Association Journal features a fun cover story on “the law of Halloween.” Buffalo attorney Daniel B. Moar unearths a collection of devilishly funny Halloween-themed court opinions from across the United States, which run the gamut from personal injuries sustained by flammable costumes, to emotional distress claims arising from haunted-house attractions, to “the constitutional right to insult your neighbors with tombstone displays.” The article is provided as a free sample online to non-subscribers at the Journal website . If you’re pressed for time but are curious about this blog entry’s title, it is a quote from one of the featured cases: Stambovsky v Ackley , 169 A.D.2d 254 ( full text via Google Scholar ). North Carolina isn’t featured in Moar’s round-up, but this month has already seen some Halloween decorations cause a bit of emotional distress across the state. In early October, a Salisbury farmer who decorated his lawn with a mangl...

In April 2011, the Goodson Law Library received a generous donation from John Simpson of Charlotte, North Carolina: a collection of books and memorabilia related to the Nuremberg Nazi war crime trials, named in honor of his uncle, Marshall Doswell. The J. Marshall Doswell, Jr. Nuremberg Trials Collection was unveiled on July 29 at a gathering in the library’s Riddick Rare Book & Special Collections Room , which featured remarks from Mr. Simpson and Mr. Doswell (pictured at right), as well as Duke Law Professors Paul Carrington and Madeline Morris. For the next few weeks, you can view a selection of The J. Marshall Doswell, Jr. Nuremberg Trials Collection in the window of the Riddick Room . The display includes books and media about the Nuremberg trials, photographs of the July 29 event, and memorabilia such as a commemorative medal and a shoulder patch worn by U.S. forces who served at Nuremberg during the trials. The Doswell Collection items are being added to the Duke Libraries...

It’s probably happened to you: maybe you’re searching the libraries’ online catalog . Maybe you’re browsing one of our excellent research guides . Maybe you’re skimming our list of Legal Databases & Links . Wherever you may be looking, once in a while you’ll see an ominous-looking note like “Password is required; see reference desk for assistance.” It’s hardly the end of the world to have to stop and ask for the password (we’re actually very friendly), but these little hurdles can be especially problematic for late-night and weekend researchers. While the library tries to provide easy NetID-based login to its electronic resources, not every database allows us that option, and some have restrictions (such as a limit on access to only current Law School students, faculty and staff) which require a little oversight by staff. One frequent password request at the Goodson Law Library reference desk has always been The Leadership Library , which is featured in our guides to Directories of...

During the ongoing "occupation" of Wall Street by protestors, police have unearthed—and enforced—an obscure state law which prohibits loitering in a public place while wearing a mask or disguise . Yesterday's Wall Street Journal reported that, since the start of the protest on September 17, at least five of the demonstrators who have been arrested were issued a summons for violating the strange old statute, which has been on the books since 1845. The protest has roots with the online collective Anonymous, whose members often don Britain's iconic Guy Fawkes mask (as seen in the 2006 film adaptation of the graphic novel V for Vendetta ) during public demonstrations. (Notable past targets of the group include the Church of Scientology in 2008, and more recently the San Francisco BART system, in response to transit officials' jamming of subway cell phone service to prevent a growing demonstration in the city .) But it wasn't only the Guy Fawkes impersonators who...

LexisNexis and Westlaw have long battled for the hearts (and dollars) of legal researchers. The two premium legal information systems are so ubiquitous in law practice that many refer to the pair of market competitors with the single, Brangelina-esque nickname " Wexis ." But beginning in 2004, the financial juggernaut Bloomberg began an expansion into the legal research market, albeit one limited to use on Bloomberg Professional's proprietary computer workstations (four of which are still available in Duke's Ford Library at the Fuqua School of Business and three more at the Perkins Library's Data/GIS Computer Cluster ). In 2009, Bloomberg launched an alternative web-based legal research interface, Bloomberg Law , and has provided pilot access to selected law schools, including Duke. An ABA Journal cover story in February 2010 detailed the development of this version of Bloomberg Law, and the difficulties of breaking into a market so dominated by longtime com...

The Goodson Blogson is a few years behind on its leisure reading, but just finished Erik Larson's Thunderstruck (2006) , a fascinating nonfiction work which interweaves the notorious 1910 North London Cellar Murder case with Guglielmo Marconi's struggle to perfect his wireless telegraph (the technology which eventually led Scotland Yard investigators to ambush their suspects aboard a transatlantic steamer ship). American doctor Hawley Harvey Crippen and his wife Cora, an aspiring singer, moved to England in 1900. A decade later, Cora disappeared from the quarreling couple's North London home; the doctor informed concerned friends that she had returned to America and later died of an illness. Unconvinced by Crippen's story (particularly since his young secretary, Ethel Le Neve, moved into the home almost immediately, and was frequently spotted around town wearing Cora's furs and jewelry), Cora's friends alerted the police, who eventually discovered human remain...

School is back in session, and the student journal editors are busily preparing new issues of their law reviews and journals. With literally thousands of law review articles being published every year, keeping up with the latest scholarship in a particular area can be a challenge. Sadly, one of our favorite law-focused current awareness services closed up shop this summer: Washington & Lee’s Current Law Journal Content service stopped updating its database in May 2011. The site lives on as a searchable archive of more than 1,400 law journals' tables of contents from approximately 2000- April 2011, and remains linked on our Legal Databases and Links page as a helpful tool for finding articles. But those who used its handy tools for saving searches as email alerts and RSS feeds will need to look elsewhere from now on. That leaves another long-time TOC service, the University of Washington's Current Index to Legal Periodicals (CILP) as an obvious choice. CILP indexes the la...

It’s been a wild week for weather around Duke Law. On Tuesday afternoon, the Southeast was rocked by a rare 5.8-magnitude earthquake , which rattled our library windows and library users alike, but caused no lasting problems in this area (although our nation’s capital, closer to the quake’s epicenter in Virginia, sustained some damage to national monuments ). Now, North Carolina’s coast is bracing for a direct hit from Hurricane Irene , which is expected to make landfall on the Outer Banks today before heading toward New York City. Currently, the effects of Irene here in the Research Triangle are expected to be comparatively minimal, although meteorologists predict a soaking rain on Saturday along with some high winds, which could cause flash flooding and power outages in the Durham area. Duke University is monitoring the situation carefully, and the Goodson Law Library will announce any emergency closures this weekend on our website. You can also sign up for Duke Alert emails and ...

Welcome to our new students, and welcome back to our returning students! The Fall 2011 semester is about to begin, and the Goodson Law Library is ready for the typical questions we hear around this time of year: Are you ever open later than 5:00 p.m.? Yes! While the library is always "open" to Duke Law students (who enjoy 24-hour access with their DukeCards), the library service desk will resume evening and weekend hours on Sunday, August 21 . See the Hours & Directions page for information. Staffing hours vary a bit across the three service points (Circulation/Reserve, Reference, and Computing Help), but generally the desk will be staffed until 9 p.m. on weeknights, 5:00 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays, and 6:00 or 9:00 p.m. on Sundays (depending on the service point). Does the library have copies of my textbooks on Reserve? Maybe! Historically, the library's textbook collection has been the "luck of the draw;" we always buy extra copies of casebooks...

With the explosive growth of reality TV over the last decade, it’s increasingly likely that you already know someone who has participated in one of the many competitions or candid programming out there (in fact, a Duke Law 2L and Simpsons superfan put in a winning appearance on a 2009 Food Network Challenge ). But for the rest of us, we can only speculate about life behind the scenes...that is, until Monday night. That’s when the Village Voice Runnin' Scared blog published a copy of MTV's standard participant contract for its long-running Real World series , and highlighted the blogger's favorite clauses in the 30-page document. Among the explicitly-assumed risks: you might die, and it's not the producers' responsibility. Your new roommates could assault you (sorry, engage in "non-consensual physical contact"), and you have only yourself to blame. And if the show completely misrepresents your life story, unjustly casting you as its major antagonist? Tota...

July was a rough month for Netflix , all things considered. First the film-subscription service announced a radical change to its pricing structure , which by September could hike some subscribers’ monthly payments by nearly 60 percent. The company’s July 12 blog post sparked enough bourgeois Internet outrage that FunnyOrDie.com created a parody “Relief Fund” with celebrity spokesman Jason Alexander . Then came the corporation’s July 25 quarterly letter to its shareholders ( PDF ), which described plans for a “Facebook integration” tool which will soon launch in Canada and Latin America. But what’s the holdup in Netflix’s home country? The shareholder report explains: At this point, we plan to launch this initiative only in Canada and Latin America, as the VPPA (Video Privacy Protection Act) discourages us from launching our Facebook integration domestically . Under the VPPA, it is ambiguous when and how a user can give permission for his or her video viewing data to be shared. A bipar...

With July bar exams right around the corner, a weekend of panic is perfectly normal. We hope you’ve kept up with your study program, and consulted our additional tips for bar exam success from earlier this month. But if you just can’t shake that sense of dread, here are some fun (or maybe not-so-fun) facts about bar exams in other jurisdictions to help put things into perspective. The ABA’s Comprehensive Guide to Bar Admission Requirements (Reference KF302 .Z9 C65 2011) is chock-full of statistics about the bar exams in other states and U.S. territories, and it just might reassure you that the grass is greener than you think. Take, for example, the length of exams , which is compared in Chart 6 on page 23. California has long been famous for its grueling 3-day bar exam, but did you know that Mississippi and Palau also triple the fun? Nine other states also use a two-and-a-half day format, which might as well be three for those souls who must hole up in a hotel. Suddenly that 2-day f...

“Try before you buy” isn’t just good advice for car shopping – the Duke University Libraries share that motto when purchasing shiny new research toys, too. The Duke community has always been able to test-drive Trial Databases at http://library.duke.edu/apps/dbtrials/ , but this summer offers two trials which are particularly interesting to the Duke Law community, since both can help a great deal with federal legislative research. First, there’s the U.S. Congressional Serial Set, 1981-1994 . The Serial Set is an essential resource for legislative history research, as it reprints House and Senate committee reports and other congressional documents. The Duke University Libraries already subscribe to the online serial set from 1817-1980, and the additional years featured in this trial could help fill gaps in our online access through other sources to congressional reports and documents (outlined in our Federal Legislative History research guide). This trial of 1981-1994 runs through Augu...

With the bar exam now less than three weeks away, the Goodson Law Library staff have noticed an increase in questions about additional study resources. In our online catalog, try a subject keyword search for “ Bar examinations—United States—Study guides ”. This will retrieve some helpful resources for any state’s bar exam, including a 2010 edition of Strategies & Tactics for the MBE (Reserves KF303 .W345 2010) and other titles like The Essential Rules for Bar Exam Success (KF303 .F75 2008). If you have a hole in your bar exam study outlines from a particularly confusing area of law, check out Part III of our Law School Success guide for an overview of popular law school study aids. Many of these series, like Examples & Explanations and the West Hornbooks, can be found on Reserve. ( Tip: Although Reserve Collection items are loaned in 4-hour blocks, arrive at the Circulation/Reserve desk less than 4 hours before our 5:00 p.m. summer closing time to borrow a Reserve Collecti...

Need to know some details about a state or federal judge? The Goodson Law Library just added another place to look, with a new subscription to the online version of The American Bench . While the library has always kept the latest copy of this directory in the Reference Collection (and will continue to do so), the online version allows searches by judge name or by court/jurisdiction. Although the Goodson Law Library has a number of other judicial directories available in print and online formats, The American Bench is unique for its inclusion of more extensive biographies of state court judges . (The website also reproduces the print version’s helpful maps of state and federal judicial districts, which are posted in PDF.) Available information varies by judge, but generally entries provide basic biography (such as education and date of appointment) as well as contact information for the judge’s chambers. Occasionally, the entries also include professional affiliations and activities,...

From time to time, we all feel ripped off. Whether it’s a sleazy car salesman selling you a lemon, or furniture on Craigslist which turns out to be scratched and reeking of smoke, or the online date who hasn’t updated his profile picture since 1999, everyone can relate to being so angered by a raw deal that you just want to forcibly remove the scammer’s facial hair and make him eat it. Wait...maybe we can’t all relate to that last part. But that’s exactly what happened last November to Harvey Westmoreland, a Kentucky man who just wanted to sell his lawnmower to neighbors Troy Holt and James Hill. But when their negotiations broke down, an intoxicated Holt and Hill held Westmoreland and his brother at knifepoint, then cut off Westmoreland’s beard and force-fed it to him . The unusual story made headlines around the country, and before he “knowed” it [sic], Westmoreland’s grammatically-challenged video interview with a local news station became a top hit on YouTube (as did the dance remi...

Over the weekend, the John Hughes class-cutting classic Ferris Bueller’s Day Off turned 25. An intern at the blog Jezebel marked the anniversary of the film’s release like a typical first-year law student whose thought process has been overtaken by legalese: by compiling a video identifying the various laws broken by Ferris throughout the course of the film . The compilation was partly inspired by a running list from 2009 at the Metafilter discussion board , which came complete with citations to the Illinois Compiled Statutes . But to play the advanced version of this home game, you’d need to determine what the laws in question actually said back in 1986 . In particular, relevant statutes about computer tampering (shown in the video as Ferris revises his school attendance record before the principal’s incredulous eyes) likely changed a great deal between the film’s release and today. How could you accomplish this impossible-sounding task, for this or any other research which require...

From political love children to movie star arrests, who doesn’t love a bit of trashy celebrity gossip? As it turns out, many British celebrities, who can spend upwards of £20,000-50,000 to squash would-be scandals with a super-injunction , an exceptionally strict UK gag order which keeps the requestor completely anonymous and prevents the British media from publishing details about either the salacious story... or the existence of the gag order itself. Earlier last month, an anonymous Twitter user attracted more than 100,000 followers by leaking information about alleged scandals which had been smothered by a super-injunction. Following coverage on celeb-watch blogs like Gawker , that Twitter handle fizzled out almost as quickly as it appeared. But by the end of May, a new username seemed to take its place, and then quieted just as quickly as its list of gossip-hungry followers grew. The popularity of these two accounts illustrated the challenges of maintaining an anonymous legal r...

Though some spent last week preparing for their last days on Earth, one California woman was more preoccupied with the moon. This weekend brought news of a NASA sting operation after the unidentified woman offered a “moon rock” for sale on eBay . Undercover NASA agents met the would-be seller in an area Denny’s and offered to buy the lunar treasure for $1.7 million , then detained her for questioning and seized the rock. So is it a question of fraud? Could be, if the rock turns out to be phony. But the woman could also face legal trouble even if the rock is authentic. As it turns out, astronauts who visited the moon during various NASA missions in the 1960s and 1970s did collect a number of rock samples, some of which were given in commemorative plaques as “goodwill” gifts to 135 foreign governments and the 50 U.S. states by Presidents Nixon and Ford. As the London Times explained in 2004 , those samples are legally considered the cultural property of the recipient government, and ot...