The Goodson Blogson

LexisNexis Academic , the campus-wide version of the Law School ' s LexisNexis online legal research system, will unveil its new interface on Monday, December 23. Details about the changes, including screenshots and an instructional video detailing the upcoming new look, can be found on the LexisNexis wiki . The biggest change will be the introduction of a single search box , which replaces the six separate "Easy Search" options on the current interface. The new search box combines legal, news, and business searching, with an Advanced Options tab to help filter out unwanted content. (An " Easy Search " box to retrieve court opinions by citation or party name will still be available on the home page, for quick law-related lookups.) The new link to Search by Content Type will replace the current left-hand menu which links to custom search pages for "US Legal" and "International Legal". The new interface also provides a quick link to sear...

Hey, law students! Do you have seminar papers from past semesters gathering dust on your desk? Consider polishing them up for submission to a student writing competition ! Each year, organizations offer countless opportunities for student writers to submit papers on a variety of topics, for the chance to win prize money, scholarships, and even publication. For example, the Legal History and Rare Books Section of the American Association of Law Libraries (AALL), in cooperation with Cengage Learning, has just announced the Sixth Annual Morris L. Cohen Student Essay Competition . The competition is named in honor of Morris L. Cohen, late Professor Emeritus of Law at Yale Law School. Professor Cohen was a leading scholar in the fields of legal research, rare books, and historical bibliography. Essays for the competition may be on any topic related to legal history, rare law books, or legal archives . The competition is open to students currently enrolled in accredited graduate programs...

Recently, the entire back file of Duke Law Magazine was scanned into PDF format and added to the Law School website. Readers may now browse or search issues and articles back to the first volume of the magazine in 1982. Previously, issues from 1982 to 2001 were available only in print in the Goodson Law Library's Archives collection on level 1. The online collection from the Law School's Office of Communications provides wider access to the fascinating tidbits of Duke Law School history within. Some highlights from the magazine include Fall 1997's A Celebration of Women: 70 Years at Duke Law School or the Winter 1993 Alumnus Profile of Dr. Floyd M. Riddick , shortly before the library's Rare Books and Special Collections Room was renamed in honor of Dr. Riddick and his wife Marguerite. There are also numerous profiles of (and articles by) current and former Duke Law School faculty. (At Goodson Blogson HQ, we're partial to Senior Associate Dean for Information ...

[Guest blogger Marguerite Most , Reference Librarian and Senior Lecturing Fellow, highlights some of the items which can be found in the library’s most recent display of special collections.] On November 20th, 1945, the Nuremberg Trials opened in the Palace of Justice in Nuremberg, Germany. The trials were restricted to the "punishment of the major war criminals of the European Axis countries." In June, prior to the opening of the Trials, delegates of the major wartime powers met in London to discuss what to do with Nazi leaders. The American delegate and chief United States prosecutor at the trials, Associate Justice Robert Jackson, told negotiators from the other nations, "What we propose is to punish acts which have been regarded as criminal since the time of Cain and have been so written in every civilized code." The Goodson Law Library's J. Marshall Doswell, Jr. Nuremberg Trials Collection is a collection of books and memorabilia relating to the Tria...

On Friday, law blogger Reid Trautz unveiled his ninth annual Holiday Gift Guide for Lawyers . Trautz does not limit his gift ideas to a strict legal theme, but casts a wide net for goodies that the lawyers in your life might enjoy, such as artisan gin , high-end headphones , and flash drive cufflinks . The Goodson Blogson, too, is no stranger to holiday gift recommendations, having published gift guides of our own in 2009 , 2010 , and 2011 . We're not sure how we could have forgotten to compile a roundup in 2012 (perhaps an excess of eggnog?), but we'll make up for it with a 2013 list worthy of sending straight to Santa. The Supreme Court Historical Society Gift Shop continues to be the top source of law-themed gifts for all ages and interests. Cookbook Chef Supreme was compiled by the spouses of the Supreme Court justices in memory of Martin Ginsburg, the late husband of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. In addition to being a noted tax attorney and professor, "Marty"...

The legal education community seems downright obsessed with rankings at times. Even slight movements in the annual U.S. News and World Report graduate school rankings can have large ripple effects at law schools. University of Chicago Law professor and prominent legal blogger Brian Leiter even has a dedicated "Law School Rankings" blog , measuring law school faculty scholarly impact and productivity, law student admissions by LSAT scores and GPA, and employment placement figures. So it's no surprise that the rankings bug has infected the legal profession, as well as academia. Here at Goodson Blogson HQ, we surrender. Our recently-updated research guide to Directories of Lawyers now includes the inevitable: a section of attorney rating and recommendation sites, such as Avvo and Super Lawyers . The inclusion arrives just in time for a brand-new Super Lawyers edition dedicated to business lawyers, released earlier this week . The Directories of Lawyers guide also...

[The following guest post was written by Goodson Law Library Reference Intern Kate Dickson , a student at UNC-Chapel Hill's School of Information & Library Science.] In honor of Halloween, the books currently on display in the Goodson Law Library's Riddick Rare Book & Special Collections Room all focus, in one way or another, on the topic of witch trials . The first word that normally comes to mind at the mention of witch trials is "Salem," and the library has a number of interesting sources related to this topic. For example, the 1641 Massachusetts Body of Liberties , which is on display in facsimile, listed twelve crimes carrying the death penalty. The second of these—which was listed even before premeditated murder--provided: If any man or woeman be a witch, (that is hath or consulteth with a familiar spirit,) They shall be put to death. The provision remained in subsequent versions of the Body of Liberties , but was later disallowed by the crown...

As print subscriptions to newspapers have declined, and even major papers are resorting to newsroom layoffs, it has become increasingly common for newspaper websites to use a paywall model of access for online content. Usually under these models, a selected number of articles are available free online per month, and after that, visitors discover that the next article they wish to read is locked, and requires a paid subscription to access. Fortunately, the Duke University Libraries have access to thousands of major and local newspapers online. To locate databases which provide access via your NetID and password, visit our link to Online Full-Text Journals and type in the title of the newspaper you wish to access. Law students, faculty and staff have additional access to many newspapers and news wire services through Westlaw , Lexis , and Bloomberg Law . But these third-party subscription databases sometimes do not include a newspaper's "web-only" or "online-excl...

Are you a regular user of The Bluebook: A Uniform System of Citation ? If so, the editors of this long-running legal citation manual and style guide want to hear from you. From now through Friday, November 8, a survey on LegalBluebook.com is gathering opinions about the clarity and usability of the current Bluebook , to help inform potential changes to the next edition. The detailed survey includes questions about each rule and table of the Bluebook , with plenty of room for additional comments. Share your thoughts on your favorite – or least favorite – rules; compare the print edition to its electronic counterparts ( on the web and in mobile form ); and contribute ideas to improve the next edition. Responses will be reviewed by the team of top law review editors who publish the Bluebook (a joint effort from Columbia, Harvard, Penn, and Yale). The Bluebook improvement survey also includes an optional prize drawing for respondents who choose to leave their contact information. ...

Many state bar associations provide their members with free access to a low-cost legal research system , such as Fastcase , Casemaker , or LoisLaw . These systems generally allow users to search or browse primary sources of law from the federal system and the various states. While the premium legal research services Westlaw , Lexis and Bloomberg may offer more bells and whistles (in the form of robust collections of secondary sources; case headnotes and other research aids; and superior citator tools for updating and validating legal materials), their fewer-frills cousins offer an unbeatable price point for searching the full text of case law and statutes. Some of the low-cost research services even offer unique content which is unavailable in their higher-priced counterparts. (For example, in North Carolina, the state's Pattern Jury Instructions are available exclusively on the research system available through the state bar, and cannot be found electronically in the premium leg...

Today, President Obama nominated Federal Reserve vice chair Janet Yellen to succeed Ben Bernanke as the head of the United States' most powerful authority in monetary policy. (Bernanke will complete an eight-year term as Fed chair in January 2014.) If Yellen's nomination is confirmed by the U.S. Senate, her appointment will mark the first time that a woman has helmed a central bank in the United States – or any other country in the world. So what's all the fuss about "The Fed"? A quick review of the 2012 U.S. Government Manual should clear up any confusion. The entry for the Federal Reserve System describes the weighty mission of the organization thusly: "FRS contributes to the strength and vitality of the U.S. economy. By influencing the lending and investing activities of depository institutions and the cost and availability of money and credit, the FRS promotes the full use of human and capital resources, the growth of productivity, relatively stabl...

Four days into a federal government shutdown, with no apparent end in sight, citizens are taking stock of the many services and resources which have been affected by the funding lapse. The news media has focused on the most highly-visible impact: thousands of federal workers furloughed or working without pay, hundreds of national parks and memorials shuttered from tourism, and the fate of the animals – and beloved webcams – at our National Zoo. But the less-obvious impact of the prolonged shutdown is becoming more apparent, as researchers attempt to access the many free federal online resources which have gone dark due to lack of staff and funding. Researchers have long been able to rely on the U.S. Government Printing Office and federal agencies for free copies of federal publications, but access during the shutdown has been unpredictable. Many websites went offline on October 1, displaying only a notice about the lack of funding. Even websites which have remained online (albeit w...

For nearly two decades, THOMAS has provided free public access to information about Congress: bill text, legislative history materials, member biographies, and committee activities. But in November, the Library of Congress's newer Congress.gov interface is taking over as the default public website for congressional research, after a two-year beta test. (For fans of the older site, the THOMAS interface will continue to be available via a link on Congress.gov until late 2014, although links to THOMAS.gov and THOMAS.loc.gov will redirect to the Congress.gov homepage.) Congress.gov offers improved search capability over THOMAS's more basic interface. Users can also link directly to search results or individual documents, and subscribe to search alerts via RSS (both features which were impossible with THOMAS's unstable URLs). Congress.gov will soon complete its migration of all historical content from THOMAS (currently, the full text of legislation from 1990-1992 is stil...

Earlier this week, Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper released a number of newly-declassified documents related to the operations of the National Security Agency . The NSA has occupied the headlines all summer, since former contract employee Edward Snowden released materials to the media which exposed details of large-scale government surveillance programs. But this week's releases were actually prompted by a ruling in a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed several years earlier by the watchdog Electronic Frontier Foundation (see news release & searchable collection of documents ). The documents include a number of redacted opinions and orders from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) . The operations of this mysterious federal court, which was established in 1978 by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), have long been a source of interest for scholars and privacy advocates. Federal law provides that "The Foreign Intelligen...

In the new issue of ABA Journal , legal writing expert (and Black's Law Dictionary editor) Bryan A. Garner poses a legal vocabulary challenge . Inspired by a 1948 textbook, Garner's multiple-choice quiz offers twenty words which are not commonly found in everyday conversation, but do appear with some frequency in American court opinions (ranging from dozens of cases, to more than a thousand). So far, only four test-takers have managed a perfect score, according to Garner's Twitter feed . How did your vocabulary skills stack up? If your quiz score was disappointing, don't despair – Garner offers his favorite vocabulary-building tip in the article. He recommends jotting down unfamiliar words as you encounter them, and then consulting a dictionary once you have amassed a good-sized list. (He suggests avoiding the temptation to perform an immediate look-up on a mobile device, as his method improves long-term retention of the definitions.) Fortunately, you have a numbe...

This week, the Goodson Law Library added the new looseleaf Social Media and the Law (2013) to its collection. This Practising Law Institute treatise, edited by information technology lawyer Kathryn L. Ossian, can also be accessed electronically with current Duke University NetID via PLI Discover Plus (campus-wide trial until February 2014) and to current Law School students, faculty and staff on Bloomberg Law . The Ossian treatise is part of a developing literature outlining how these emerging technologies have affected the legal system. Information from social networks like Facebook and Twitter has created new opportunities (and challenges) for electronic discovery , as well as new ethical headaches for attorneys and judges. Jury instructions have been redrafted to specifically prohibit jurors from discussing pending cases on social networks on Twitter. Attorneys have faced discipline for deceptively "friending" potential witnesses on Facebook. Some recent criminal tri...

The Goodson Law Library now has campus-wide access to Trade Law Guide , a source for legal materials from the World Trade Organization. The database contains WTO agreements and instruments, negotiating history, precursor agreements, all related WTO and pre-WTO case law, dispute documents and other related content. The database is accessible from the Legal Databases & Links page under Foreign & International Resources. An encyclopedic Subject Navigator organizes topics alphabetically, allowing quick access to specific agreements. Trade Law Guide also features a citator service for both articles and case law, linking users to a list of documents which have each cited back to a particular article or case. Several key agreements are also available in annotated format, linking to citing articles and cases. Trade Law Guide will soon be added to the library’s research guide for GATT/WTO resources, alongside the competing service WorldTradeLaw.net . For help finding other in...

[In this guest post, Reference Librarian and Senior Lecturing Fellow Marguerite Most explores the history of the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, just as a new collection of previously-unreleased opinions has been published.] "Criminal Liability for Newspaper Publication of Naval Secrets"…"Use of Marshals, Troops, and Other Federal Personnel for Law Enforcement in Mississippi"…"The President and the War Power: South Vietnam and the Cambodian Sanctuaries". The Table of Contents reads like above-the-fold headlines in our nation's most respected newspapers. These are actually titles in the new series of supplemental opinions from the U.S. Department of Justice's Office of Legal Counsel , most of which address the legality of executive orders. These are opinions which "with the passage of time have become publishable." Last week, the Office of Legal Counsel released volume one of its new series: Supplemental Opinions of t...

The database LLMC Digital contains a treasure trove of digitized primary and secondary legal sources, drawn from the collection of the Law Library Microform Consortium. Of particular interest to users of the Goodson Law Library are LLMC's collections of official state court case reporters , since the library's print copies are in off-site storage. LLMC also includes session laws; historical legal treatises; agency opinions and reports; court records and briefs from New York and California; and a growing collection of foreign and international legal materials, which is particularly strong for Canada and the United Kingdom. However, LLMC Digital was sometimes overlooked by researchers due to its previously difficult-to-navigate web interface and limited search functions. Today, though, LLMC Digital unveiled a brand-new design which simplifies searching, browsing and accessing its rich collection. The new site provides a streamlined catalog search, the familiar jurisdictional ...

It may not be obvious from their name, but non-profit (often interchangeably called tax-exempt ) organizations may actually deal with vast sums of money. In exchange for special tax treatment, exempt organizations in the United States are required to file special reports with the Internal Revenue Service. These annual Form 990s provide detailed descriptions of the organization's operations, including governance structure and compensation of employees. Form 990 can be a useful tool for evaluating how donations to a charitable organization will likely end up being distributed. The subscription service GuideStar (available to the Duke University community with a current NetID and password) and free websites like Charity Navigator (selected features available without free registration) use this data to assess the financial health of a nonprofit organization, and sometimes even provide a rating system for consumers. (For example, Duke University receives 3 stars out of a possible...

In his upcoming book Reflections on Judging (due out this fall), U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Richard Posner urges his peers on the bench to embrace extracurricular web-surfing in order to better understand the cases before them. According to the Wall Street Journal 's Law Blog (subscription required), which obtained a review copy of the work, Posner complains that judges' technophobia creates a vicious cycle of under-informed case records: "Judicial timidity about conducting Internet research has a negative feedback. Appellate lawyers naturally focus their briefs and oral arguments on what the judges have the easiest access to. […]The Web is an incredible compendium of data and a potentially invaluable resource for lawyers and judges that is underutilized by them." For his part, Posner has used web searching to find common definitions of the word "harboring" (as many rising 2Ls will remember from this spring's LARW appellate brief), and also...

The Goodson Law Library is pleased to announce campus-wide access to the database ProQuest Legislative Insight , a collection of nearly 20,000 compiled legislative histories for federal laws. Coverage is strongest from 1929-present, but the database also includes selected compilations dating back to 1897. Like its sister database ProQuest Congressional , Legislative Insight provides a handy list of congressional documents (bills, reports, debates, and hearings) which are associated with a particular law. However, Legislative Insight provides the full text of all associated documents in the compiled legislative history – even those document types which are not available in the Congressional interface (such as reports and debates, which Duke researchers previously had to access through other resources). To view the difference in action, compare search results in each database for Public Law 78-110 . On this day in 1943, Congress established the Women's Army Corps, which forma...

The Goodson Blogson strongly approves of any technology which allows our readers to see new postings, so the announcement of Google Reader's July 1 demise hit us especially hard. With only a few days left to export your existing RSS subscriptions to a replacement service, advice is flying from all directions of the blogosphere. But which option should you choose? The service which has benefited the most from Google ' s decision to retire Reader is certainly Feedly , which has ballooned in size since Google's March announcement. Feedly allows quick import of existing Google Reader subscriptions and also exports any categorized blogs or starred items (features not available in many competitors). It's been recommended by respected law bloggers Bob Ambrogi and Jeffrey Taylor of The Droid Lawyer , as well as a popular unofficial Google tips & tricks blog . But for a fuller range of options, check out Lifehacker's extensive guide to Google Reader alternatives ,...

This morning, the U.S. Supreme Court announced its opinion in six cases, including the highly-anticipated affirmative action ruling in Fisher v. University of Texas ( opinion PDF ). Seasoned Court-watchers expect at least two more days of announcements, with several high-profile cases left still pending. Yesterday's New York Times outlined the issues in Fisher as well as the topics of other key remaining cases, including same-sex marriage (considered in two separate legal challenges: one to the federal Defense of Marriage Act and one to a California state law) and section 5 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Another remaining case is not getting as much national attention, but its subject matter is likely quite familiar to many LARW alumni at Duke: whether the Indian Child Welfare Act can be used to revoke the adoption of a Cherokee child to non-native parents by the child's estranged biological father ( prior N.Y. Times coverage of the case ). How can a researcher keep u...

After some time running parallel login systems for its original and next-generation interfaces, Lexis Advance will become the default way to access LexisNexis research tools beginning on or around June 22nd. At that time, Lexis.com usernames and passwords will be deactivated, and the single Lexis Advance ID will be used to access both research systems. The Lexis.com research interface will still be accessible from within Lexis Advance. However, alerts which were set up in Lexis.com will need to be migrated over to Lexis Advance in order to continue operating. To create new versions of your existing Lexis.com alerts in Lexis Advance, run a search for the same content in Advance and select the gold bell icon to create a new search alert. To review or edit your Advance alerts, select My Workspace > Alerts at the top of any screen. If you do not have a Lexis Advance ID or need assistance setting up your Alerts on Lexis Advance, please contact Duke Law Lexis representative Marv...

Over the weekend, singer Ciara accepted an unusual gift from a front-row concert attendee – legal papers. Hollywood gossip site TMZ shared a video of the Grammy nominee's performance at a Los Angeles Pride week event, during which she reaches to greet an audience member who hands her several pages of paper. Ciara scans the material briefly before tossing it back to the crowd, never interrupting her performance. The apparent process server picks up the discarded papers and places them back on the stage, reassuring the camera operator, "She got served," with a wide smile. The lawsuit stems from a dispute over an appearance at an earlier Los Angeles Pride event , at West Hollywood bar called The Factory. Club owners maintain that the singer backed out of an agreement to visit the club on the day before her concert performance, but Ciara's management denies that she was ever officially scheduled to appear at the earlier event. The full complaint is available to Duke ...

Among the many reasons why legal research can be frustrating, especially for non-lawyers, is the relative inaccessibility of research materials. Secondary sources , such as scholarly treatises, are often invaluable tools to help researchers untangle the complex interrelationships of legislation, regulations and case law. But usually these expensive and highly specialized sources can be found only on the shelves of law libraries, or locked behind subscription-only databases like Bloomberg Law, LexisNexis and Westlaw. In addition, resources which are written primarily for an audience of practicing attorneys can be difficult to understand without a legal background. The new Copyright Codex: A Free Treatise for Lawyers and Artists attempts to remedy both of these problems, at least for the topic of copyright law. Maintained by Eric Adler, a partner in the New York office of intellectual property firm Adler Vermillion & Skocilich, this free online treatise presents copyright law in p...