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Our research guide to Court Records and Briefs has just been updated with some new resources. What's changed over the last year? Increased access to oral argument recordings : Effective April 2017, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit joined the majority of federal appellate courts in providing audio recordings of oral arguments on its website. As Law360 noted in December , this change leaves the 10th Circuit as the lone holdout of federal appellate courts which do not provide some free access to audio. In addition, the research guide now includes a link to the Free Law Project's Court Listener Oral Argument Audio , which allows users to search more than 20,000 federal and state oral argument recordings by case name, keyword, docket number, and/or judge. A new source for U.S. Supreme Court records and briefs : A link to the ProQuest Supreme Court Insight database was added to the section on compiled U.S. Supreme Court records and briefs. Although the database is...

On June 29, 1972, the U.S. Supreme Court issued its opinion in Furman v. Georgia , which held that imposing death sentences on three inmates would constitute cruel and unusual punishment. Expressing concerns about "arbitrary and discriminatory" imposition of capital punishment, the Court's per curiam opinion effectively suspended death sentences in the U.S. (Just four years later, the Court would reinstate the death penalty with its 7-2 opinion in Gregg v. Georgia , which reviewed amended Georgia statutes concerning capital punishment.) As discussed in both Supreme Court opinions, and in countless articles and books, capital punishment in America has a long and controversial history. While the Eighth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution prohibited "cruel and unusual punishment," the death penalty was common in every state, and the federal Crimes Act of 1790 (1 Stat. 112, c. 9) included death as the punishment for treason against the United States, willful murd...

From continuing discussions of Brexit, to the Paris Agreement withdrawal announcement, to concerns over the legality of U.S. airstrikes in Syria, international law is a frequent topic in the news lately. If you'd like to learn more about international law, the Goodson Law Library's recently-updated International Law research guide recommends some good starting places. Just need to brush up on the basics? Try the Study Aids section for some titles like Understanding International Law and International Law: A Very Short Introduction . Want an explanation of core concepts? Check out the Treatises section for some seminal works from notable scholars. Need guidance in researching a specific international law topic? Try the Research Guides section, or explore the print and online series of Research Handbooks in International Law . The Goodson Law Library collection contains thousands of titles on international law topics; additional titles are available across campus, or e...

Today, LexisNexis announced that it has acquired Ravel Law ( press release ). Developed by a team of Stanford Law graduates in 2012, Ravel quickly became known for its visual presentation of case law search results ( ABA Journal 2014 cover story ), and later for its ambitious partnership with Harvard Law Library to digitize historical case reporters and make them freely available to researchers. (Lexis, Ravel, and Harvard each confirmed in separate statements that the acquisition will not change the Caselaw Access Project 's mission to provide open access to historical case law materials.) Ravel also became known for its data analytics products, including Judge Analytics and Court Analytics, both featured in the Goodson Law Library research guide Directories of Courts & Judges . (A new product, Firm Analytics , was also recently announced, but is not yet available for subscriber trial access.) Ravel will continue to operate under its current web interface until the end ...