The Goodson Blogson

Over the holiday weekend, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump spent 12 minutes of an hour-long speech in San Diego criticizing a sitting federal judge. Gonzalo Curiel ( biography ) of the Southern District of California is presiding over a fraud lawsuit against the candidate's now-defunct Trump University, filed in 2010 and scheduled for trial in late November. The Wall Street Journal published excerpts of Trump's speech , which is also available at C-SPAN in video and full transcript : "I have a judge who is a hater of Donald Trump, a hater. He's a hater. His name is Gonzalo Curiel […] He is not doing the right thing. [...] The judge was appointed by Barack Obama, federal judge. Frankly, he should recuse himself because he's given us ruling after ruling after ruling, negative, negative, negative. […] I'm telling you, this court system, judges in this court system, federal court, they ought to look into Judge Curiel. Because what Judge Curiel is...

Earlier this spring, it seemed like last call for Oyez ( pronounced oh-yay ), the repository of U.S. Supreme Court oral argument transcripts and audio recordings, currently hosted by the Chicago-Kent School of Law. As creator Jerry Goldman neared retirement after a long career as a law professor, he announced that the site would be shuttered at the end of this month unless a buyer was willing to commit to both the six-figure annual operating costs and a buyout for Goldman's two decades of helming the site. Fortunately for Supreme Court researchers, Oyez has just announced its new home, at Cornell Law School's Legal Information Institute . As reported late yesterday in the National Law Journal and on Bob Ambrogi's Law Sites , the shift to Oyez's new host is expected to be in place by the beginning of the Court's next October term. Free Law partner website Justia will provide additional support. Since its debut in 1996, Oyez has grown to a massive archive of...

Statutes and regulations and case law, oh my! There are so many places to find federal legal sources that it can feel overwhelming at the start of a research project. If you've been relying on Law School-only tools like Westlaw, Lexis, and Bloomberg Law, you might not know where to begin when you no longer have access to your favorite research service. Fortunately, the Goodson Law Library can help with our Federal Law Links list, which provides alternative (and often free) web access to the current and historical U.S. Code , federal legislative history documents, federal court opinions, and agency/executive resources. For items published after the mid-1990s, the U.S. Government Publishing Office's govinfo , currently in beta, is a great place to start. This site will eventually replace FDsys as the federal government’s official online repository; note that both sites currently offer the same content, but govinfo does not yet include browsing capability for certain collecti...

The Goodson Law Library has added a few new legislative history search options to its collection of electronic resources. ProQuest Congressional now contains the library of Digital U.S. Bills and Resolutions, 1789-2013 . This module includes the full text of all federal bills and resolutions since the 1st Congress, including PDF images of handwritten early bills (see example below). An Act Making an Alteration in the Flag of the United States (1789). Senate bill from 1st Congress; accessed in ProQuest Congressional. Use the "Bills & Laws" search option, or choose "Legislative & Executive Publications > Search by number" to retrieve known citations. Results include a "Bill profile" which compiles information about the bill's progress within Congress and subsequent or variant versions. This resource will be particularly valuable for researchers working with bills related to unenacted laws, since many full-text legislative history re...