The Goodson Blogson

Data analytics are a rapidly-growing feature in legal research services. From the intellectual property predictive analysis in Lex Machina (now owned by LexisNexis) to the recently-unveiled Bloomberg Law Litigation Analytics , many legal research services are offering their users charts, tables, and other information about the connections between court opinions and orders, lawyers, judges, and companies. Judges are a particularly interesting use case. Most research services provide a basic biographical profile of current judges, along with links to their full-text opinions and orders. However, some research services provide a bit more analysis and examination of individual judges. The Judge Analytics module of  Ravel Law , featured in Forbes earlier this year, is one example of the possibilities. Duke Law students, faculty, and staff may request an Educational Account. Judge Analytics' coverage includes current and historical federal judges, as well as current state appell...

This weekend's episode of Saturday Night Live sounded a little different to viewers in the Raleigh-Durham market served by NBC affiliate WRAL-TV . Host Dave Chappelle's monologue featured several ten-second audio drops, omitting entire sentences and joke punchlines. The periodic audio interruptions continued into several SNL sketches. (Twitter user Nathania Johnson compared her local DVR recording to video clips from the national broadcast on Hulu . The WRAL interruptions are described in detail at her Medium post, 10 times NBC affiliate WRAL censored Dave Chappelle-hosted SNL last night .) Raleigh's News & Observer confirmed that the local network affiliate had elected to provide additional local censorship of language, even though several pre-taped sketches already featured bleeping from the national broadcast feed. In an official statement released on Sunday, WRAL said, "WRAL-TV has a station obscenity, decency and profanity policy that outlines 10 specif...

It's that time of year again! Since 2009, the Goodson Blogson has compiled holiday gift ideas for the law students or lawyers in your life. We are proud to stand alongside long-time lawyer gift guide authors like Reid Trautz of Reid My Blog (which, sadly, seems to have ceased updating after its 2015 gift guide) and the ABA Journal . This year, we are getting a head start on our holiday shopping plans, with our earliest gift guide ever. The gift shops of federal museums and other D.C.-area tourist attractions remain a great place to locate unique law-themed items. If you can't make it to the new National Museum of African American History and Culture (where advanced tickets quickly sold out until 2017), you can browse some of its souvenirs available in the Smithsonian Store , including books on African-American and civil rights history, t-shirts, and jewelry. The Supreme Court Historical Society Gift Shop and White House Gift Shop are also perennial favorites for legal a...

The Goodson Law Library's HeinOnline subscription now includes the new library Slavery in America and the World: History, Culture & Law . Edited by Paul Finkelman of Albany Law School, Duke's Fall 2012 John Hope Franklin Visiting Professor of American Legal History, the collection compiles slavery-related treatises, law review articles, case law, and statutes into a single place, which is described as "all known legal materials on slavery in the United States and the English-speaking world." The collection includes such seminal historical works as Catterall's Judicial Cases Concerning American Slavery and the Negro , a five-volume digest of early American case law concerning slaves. More modern works on slavery can also be found in the "Articles" tab as well as the "UNC Press" tab, featuring more recent e-books from the University of North Carolina Press. The collection may be browsed or searched. For example, researchers who wish to ...