The Goodson Blogson

Get the drop on your holiday shopping this year with the Goodson Blogson's 2017 roundup of legal-themed gifts for the lawyers and law students in your life. (Be on the lookout for other lawyer gift recommendations from attorney Reid Trautz's Reid My Blog , whose annual gift guide has been providing great suggestions for more than a decade.) Many legal thinkers on your holiday list would appreciate a gift subscription to The Green Bag: An Entertaining Journal of Law . This quarterly periodical is well-known for its tongue-in-cheek humor, and for its popular U.S. Supreme Court Justice bobbleheads . The limited-edition bobbleheads are hot commodities at PILF Auctions and an online secondary market – but lucky random subscribers might receive a redemption certificate along with an issue. The "Extravagant" subscription option (only $20/year more than the Basic subscription) promises four other (non-bobblehead) "surprises" per year (see past examples ). Both B...

In 1953, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson famously said of his place of work: "We are not final because we are infallible, but we are infallible only because we are final." Brown v. Allen , 344 U.S. 443 (1953) (Jackson, J., concurring). This week, ProPublica released the results of a study which examined Supreme Court opinions for factual errors . While the sampling of eighty-four cases from 2011-2015 is too small to draw sweeping statistical conclusions, the researchers did uncover factual errors, both large and small, in seven of the twenty-four sampled SCOTUS cases which contained "legislative facts." (The report also highlights five earlier opinions containing additional factual mistakes.) ProPublica notes that the sources of the mistakes varied: some apparently originated with a justice's extrajudicial research, while other errors had been repeated from faulty filings and amicus briefs. The impact of the errors also varied – some were minor er...

The Goodson Law Library research guide to North Carolina Practice was updated recently. One of the most important changes? This year's move of the Clarence W. Walker North Carolina Alcove itself – from its former home on Level 2 to its current place on Level 3! (Materials from the former Federal Alcove are located nearby on Level 3, in the William F. Stevens Federal Area .) The North Carolina Alcove, which contains important primary and secondary state law materials, moved to the main floor of the library in order to provide alcove users with convenient access to state materials, as well as to assistance from the library service desk. What else is new in the N.C. Practice research guide ? Here are a few highlights: Updated editions of print treatises like Arrest, Search and Investigation in North Carolina , the North Carolina Personal Injury Liens Manual , and North Carolina Manual of Complaints . Pattern Jury Instructions for North Carolina civil, criminal and motor vehic...