The Goodson Blogson

Traveling over the winter break? Let the Goodson Law Library staff help you find a book to keep you busy during airport layovers, train trips, or just a relaxing night at home. Below are several recommendations or suggestions from staff members about books we've enjoyed or are looking forward to reading soon – more staff picks will be on display in December at the library's service desk. Magic Kingdom for Sale—Sold! by Terry Brooks (1986). Request from TRLN! "One of the first exposures I had to lawyers that I remember. There aren't many books that make the leap from lawyer to magical fantasy, but despite the odd scenario, the book still fits an unusual niche for me. For anyone who wondered what it takes for a lawyer to be a king..." –Michael McArthur, Assistant Director, Access and Collection Services Same Bed Different Dreams: A Novel , by Ed Park (2023). Request a print copy! "An epic and off-kilter alternative history of Korea, Same Bed Different Dre...

Where did the semester go? While the fall semester may have disappeared quickly, there’s still plenty of time to prepare for a successful exam season. First, fill in those outline gaps with study aids , available in print and online via the Law Library. The West Academic Study Aids Library includes Acing, Concepts and Insights, Hornbooks, Nutshells, Black Letter Outlines, Legalines, and Sum and Substance audio. The Aspen Learning Library includes Examples & Explanations, Glannon Guides, and Emanuel Law Outlines. Elgar Advanced Introductions to Law provides accessible yet comprehensive overviews of more than two dozen legal topics, particularly strong in comparative and international areas of law. All three study aid databases can be accessed quickly from the Law Library’s Legal Databases & Links page. First-semester students might also want to take a look at general exam preparation guides , like those listed on the library orientation guide to Law School Success . Titles...

The Goodson Blogson has been in the holiday gift guide game since 2009 , but we are hardly the first. Last year, we featured excerpts from the Duke Law student newspaper Devil's Advocate containing humorous legal gift suggestions from the 1960s. This year, we stumbled across a legal gift guide with wider reach in the library stacks. Nearly 50 years ago, Juris Doctor , a lifestyle magazine for lawyers published in the 1970s, featured an irreverent last-minute holiday gift guide in its December 1975 issue. Credited to freelance journalist Regina Nadelson (who, best we can tell, went on to greater fame as mystery novelist and nonfiction author Reggie Nadelson ), "Gifts No One Else Will Think Of" featured a grab bag of shopping suggestions, from the thoughtful (vintage bottles of wine, fancy chocolates, autographs of favorite historical figures), to the practical (a "booklite" for reading in bed, a white-noise machine, fine linens), to the aspirational (trips aro...

As most of the United States prepares to set its clocks an hour earlier overnight on Saturday, it’s time again for frequently asked questions like "Is it better to wake up in the dark, or to go home in the dark?" and "Why are we doing this, again?" Daylight Saving Time ends at 2 a.m. Sunday, November 3, as outlined in 15 U.S.C. § 260a . DST will resume with a "spring forward" on the second Sunday of March. In 2020, the Congressional Research Service issued a helpful report on Daylight Saving Time . The CRS report details the history of DST in the U.S. and congressional action related to it. DST was first adopted in the United States during World War I, with the Standard Time Act of 1918 (also called the Calder Act). This act created standardized time zones for the United States and set a DST, which was already in place in parts of Europe to help conserve fuel during the war. (Temporary year-round DST, also known as "War Time," reappeared in t...

On Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court will open its annual October Term, with its first oral argument scheduled for 10 am. The "First Monday in October" has marked the start of the Supreme Court’s year since 1916. The first case of the new Term, Williams v. Washington , concerns state court claims under section 1983; a live-stream of oral argument audio will be provided on the Court’s website. To learn more about individual cases on the Court's docket this year, SCOTUSblog offers quick access to case information and filings on its October Term 2024 page , organized by argument date. Oyez provides a similar overview of OT2024 cases, and will link to oral argument audio and opinions when they become available for each case. The ABA also publishes a regular Preview of United States Supreme Court Cases ( available in HeinOnline ; Duke NetID required) that provides an overview as well as legal analysis of each featured case. ( Williams is featured in the latest Preview issue...

Over the weekend, Hurricane Helene devastated more than 600 miles of the southeastern United States, from the Gulf Coast of Florida through Tennessee ( NYTimes: Mapping the Destruction ). Western North Carolina was hit especially hard with flooding, landslides, and collapsing highways and bridges, leaving the mountain region inaccessible and impassable from all directions. DriveNC.gov maintains a map of current road closures, warning that "All roads in Western North Carolina should be considered closed and non-emergency travel is prohibited." Widespread power outages and shortages of food and water have followed in the wake of the storm. While aid has begun to reach the region, recovery and repairs will be a slow and difficult process, and the full impact of the destruction is not yet known. The Asheville Citizen-Times and The Assembly NC have temporarily suspended their paywalls for hurricane-related coverage. If you are able to help, agencies are seeking monetary contr...

September 17 is Constitution Day , commemorating the 1787 signing of the United States Constitution in Philadelphia. The National Archives and Records Administration, which houses the original document, maintains a page for America's Founding Documents: The Constitution of the United States with a transcription and historical background about the document and its signing. (Constitution Day shares the September 17 holiday with Citizenship Day , an occasion often marked by naturalization ceremonies across the country. The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service offers a sample citizenship test on its website: can you achieve a passing score?) As always, you can pick up a pocket copy of the U.S. Constitution at the library service desk, while supplies last. You might also want to take a look at the thousands of resources in the Duke Libraries Catalog on constitutional law and interpretation. Some recent highlights from the print and electronic collections: Elie Mystal, Allow Me...

The Goodson Law Library, in partnership with the Duke University Libraries, now offers campus-wide access to The Assembly , an award-winning news source focused on North Carolina politics, government, and other issues affecting the state. Full-text access is currently automatic from the Duke University IP range or through the “Library Resources” group of the Duke VPN . A link with access instructions is available at the Legal Databases & Links page. The Assembly launched in 2021 and maintains bureaus in the Triangle, Fayetteville, Wilmington, and Greensboro. In the local area, a partnership with Indyweek brings selected stories to the biweekly free paper. The site offers newsletters for statewide and regional coverage as well as The Docket , a weekly email on state court activity. For help with accessing The Assembly , or for questions about the other news resources you can access at Duke University and Duke Law , be sure to Ask a Librarian .

Tired of newspaper website paywalls? At Duke, you have access to more popular news sources than you may think! The Goodson Law Library offers current members of the Law School community access to group subscriptions for several outlets, including The New York Times , Financial Times , and the Washington Post ; additional titles are available through your NetID or other credentials, such as the Law School Lexis login. Details for major titles are available at the Legal Databases & Links page and highlights are below. The Law community can set up an individual account with The New York Times by visiting https://nytimesineducation.com/access-nyt/ while connected to the VPN (be sure to choose "Library Resources" option rather than the "Default" when logging in). Once connected, type "Duke" under "Find School" and select "Duke University School of Law." Student accounts last until December of the graduation year; faculty and staff a...

The Goodson Law Library research guide to Court Records & Briefs has recently been updated. In addition to corrected web links and updated guidance to free and premium resources like PACER and Bloomberg Law dockets searching, the guide includes a number of new records and briefs compilations that were added since the last update. Some highlights include: The Making of Modern Law: Landmark Records and Briefs of the U.S. Courts of Appeals, 1891-1980 features selected records and briefs from the U.S. Courts of Appeals dating from the 1890s to 1980. Drawn from a number of source libraries (including the National Archives, the New York City Bar Library, and the University of Iowa), featured cases cover a wide range of subject matter. The database is searchable by case name, citation, and keyword, and a "Topic Finder" feature is also available. LLMC Digital has expanded its records and briefs offerings since the last guide update. Its Records and Briefs search tab (avai...

It's been three years since the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously held in National Collegiate Athletic Association v. Alston that the NCAA's rules on player compensation violated federal antitrust law. Since then, Name, Image, and Likeness (NIL) deals have proliferated for college athletes, and universities and fans alike are grappling with the changes and their impact on the recruitment and retention of top prospects. You can read more about the history and future of these developments in College Sports Law in a Nutshell , a newly published title now available in the West Academic Study Aids Library . Attorney Dan Lust and Ole Miss sports law professor William W. Berry III cover such topics as NIL, the transfer portal, and the impact of conference realignment. West Academic Study Aids Library also includes Walter T. Champion, Jr.'s Sports Law in a Nutshell , 5th ed. 2017, which includes some content about collegiate athletics. Other general sports law treatises can be fo...

A new 12th edition of Black's Law Dictionary was published in June. Once the library's hard copies arrive and are processed, you will find a print copy at the Reserve Desk and on the dictionary stand in the library Reading Room. Online, the Black's Law Dictionary database on Westlaw has already incorporated the 12th edition changes. (To access it on Westlaw Precision, type BLACKS into the main search bar and select the source from the drop-down suggestions, or retrieve it from the Secondary Sources content menu.) What's new in the 2024 edition? As with the 2019 update, the publisher promises a revision to every single page . More than 2,500 new terms (such as ghost gun and shadow docket ) have been added, bringing the total number of definitions higher than 70,000. Last month, longtime editor Bryan A. Garner joined David Lat's Original Jurisdiction podcast to discuss the new edition and his editorial process for revising the much-cited source. Of course, w...

A common question at the Law Library reference desk involves how to find contact information for various people: potential academic collaborators, government employees like court clerks or agency officials, or attorneys who participated in a particular case. A basic web search on your favorite search engine may reveal contact information for academics and other public figures. (Go beyond the usual suspects with PC Mag’s " Best Alternative Search Engines .") If contact information is omitted or behind a login wall, though, some additional free options are available: SSRN contains author contact information, although researchers are restricted to accessing the email addresses of 3 contacts per day (click the author's name to access their profile, then the down arrow next to "Contact," then the link to "Email"). This can be a good method to locate contact information for academic authors whose emails are not provided on their institutional website. S...

The United States Supreme Court has designated two opinion release days this week: Thursday and Friday. With more than two dozen still-pending decisions from October Term 2023 to release before the traditional end of the term (including five from the November and December oral arguments), the next few weeks promise to be busy at One First Street! You can keep up with the activities of the Court at its website, including new opinions as they are released. Seasoned Court-watchers gather at the SCOTUSblog homepage on opinion days at 10:00 am Eastern for expert commentary and live updates on opinion releases. The blog's Cases section includes helpful overviews of the issues under review, with links to relevant case documents. The Statistics section also includes handy information about decided and pending decisions. The Newsfeed provides daily updates on pending petitions, opinion analysis, and other Court activities (such as the justices’ financial disclosures , released earli...

Whether you're hunting for an audiobook for long commutes or seeking out a perfect beach vacation read, it can be daunting to pick the right title. After all, no one wants to be stuck on a long plane ride with a book that turns out to be a dud! To help you find something good to read this summer, the Goodson Law Library staff are once again sharing their recent recommendations. You can see some of these titles in person at the service desk display this month, along with special summer reading bookmarks. Magic for Beginners: Stories , by Kelly Link (2005). ( Request a print copy or read the e-book !). "Based on the recommendation from a friend and fellow librarian, I began reading this book as an escape from the everyday, and it has not disappointed. Kelly Link's short stories paint of world of magic that lurks behind the mask of the ordinary." –Julie Wooldridge, Research Services Librarian and Senior Lecturing Fellow   The Firm , by John Grisham (1991). ( Borrow...

Hard to believe that summer is almost here! Whether you are graduating from Duke Law this month or continuing your legal studies next year, your access to legal research services and other campus databases may change this summer. Below is a summary of policies for the major legal research databases that you might wish to access in the next few months. Continuing Students Westlaw allows continuing students to use Thomson Reuters products, including Westlaw Precision and Practical Law, over the summer for non-commercial research ( i.e ., "to gain understanding and build confidence in your research skills, but you cannot use them in situations where you are billing a client"). Examples of permissible uses for your academic Westlaw password include the following: Summer coursework Research assistant assignments Law review or journal research Moot Court research Non-profit work Clinical work Externship sponsored by the school Your Westlaw summe...

Curious about how casebooks and study aids have treated a particular court opinion or doctrine over time? The Goodson Law Library now has access to a brand-new collection in HeinOnline: the West Academic Casebooks Archive , available to the Duke University community with NetID and password. This collection contains nearly 4,000 historical West casebooks and study aids, including the American and University Casebook series, Hornbooks, and Nutshells. Contents of this collection date from the 1830s to 2018. Hundreds of additional titles will be added in the near future. However, don't go looking for the latest editions of casebooks and study aids here: The two most recent editions of any series are held back from the collection until a newer one arrives to push the third-oldest title into the archive. (Recent West Academic study aids series can be found in the separate database of West Academic Study Aids , while recent West casebooks assigned in Duke Law courses can be found in the ...

Last month marked a milestone for the Caselaw Access Project (CAP) , an ambitious project from the Harvard Law Library Innovation Lab to digitize centuries of U.S. federal and state case law for free public access. Launched in 2016 with the financial backing of online legal research company Ravel Law (now owned by LexisNexis ), the Caselaw Access Project involved the digitization of more than 36 million pages of printed case reporters. The original agreement contained a commercial use restriction for eight years, which has now expired. The Innovation Lab commemorated the occasion with a conference on March 8 , highlighting the history of the project and use cases for the future. For more information on the history of the project, see Adam Ziegler's guest post at Bob Ambrogi's Law Sites . The Search feature on the legacy version of the CAP website links to CourtListener's Advanced Case Law Search , which has incorporated the CAP content. The beta version of the  CAP websit...

The Goodson Law Library has just subscribed to MuniPro MuniCode Library , a database with nearly 4,000 municipal codes. While many municipal and local ordinances are freely readable and searchable online (such as Durham, NC ), MuniPro allows researchers to search across multiple codes and jurisdictions, as well as create saved searches and alerts for topics of interest. For more details, visit the vendor help page .    Municode is available to current members of the Duke University community and is linked from the Legal Databases & Links and campus libraries Databases A-Z list . If using off-campus, connect via the Library Resources Only group of the Duke VPN . At the Municode home page, select "Sign in" in the header area and then click "Log in with site-wide subscription." Additional resources for researching municipal codes include: Fastcase (University) includes city codes for Durham, Raleigh, Greensboro, and Winston-Salem in its North Carolina Statut...

Last week, the talk of the Internet was an essay called "The Day I Put $50,000 in a Shoe Box and Handed It to a Stranger." The Cut's financial-advice columnist Charlotte Cowles details the elaborate telephone scam that led her to withdraw five figures of savings and surrender the cash to someone she believed to be an undercover CIA agent. Social media chatter debated whether Cowles's predicament was the relatable reaction of a frazzled mom who had been targeted by experienced con artists, or the public admission of a surprising lapse in common sense. However one may feel about Cowles's particular experience, one thing is certain: she is hardly alone in falling for a scam. Earlier this month, the Federal Trade Commission estimated that American consumers lost more than $10 billion to fraud in 2023 . While almost half of these losses came from investment fraud, imposter scams (like the one Cowles faced) represented nearly $3 billion of this figure. The FTC news r...