Noscitur a Sociis: Law Library Current Awareness

New US IP Law Database

2009-02-24T14:36:00.005-05:00

The Law, Science & Technology Program at Stanford Law School launched the Stanford Intellectual Property Litigation Clearinghouse (IPLC), an online database that offers comprehensive information about intellectual property disputes within the United States (in real-time data)

I have used Stanford's other clearinghouse: Securities Class Action Clearinghouse - which is also a great source for research and information (settlements, decsions, news, charts, graphs, etc.).

Another great addition to the world of free legal research.

Comparison of Legislative Resources

2009-02-24T14:21:00.003-05:00

GPO Access is putting themselves (and other federal information sources) to the test with their new "Comparison of Legislative Resources on GPO Access and Selected Government
and Non-Government Web Sites" avaiable at:
http://fedbbs.access.gpo.gov/library/compare/compr5.pdf

Included is THOMAS, the House of Representatives web site, the Senate web site,
THOMAS, HeinOnline, Lexis-Nexis Congressional, and Westlaw.

Direct access to charts containing the results for the non-government sites can be found at
http://fedbbs.access.gpo.gov/library/compare/compr5b.pdf

For the government site chart see: http://fedbbs.access.gpo.gov/library/compare/compr5a.pdf

More Federal Resources

2009-01-26T09:43:00.003-05:00

Library of Congress Handles

The LOC created "Legislative Handles," a new persistent URL service which allows users to link to legislative documents from the THOMAS web site. These links, or "handles," do not change over time. It was created to aid in potential future database and search engine changes, but also aids in creating predictable links. For example, if you want to search bills from 110th Congress you can link directly to http://thomas.loc.gov/home/c110query.html and it will remain that way no matter what Congress is currently in session.

2008-09 U.S. Government Manual

The latest version of this title is now available on GPO Access. Previous editions dating
back to 1995 can also be found here.

News From Around the World

2009-01-22T09:12:00.003-05:00

Seeing the Newseum on the Inauguration Parade route reminded me of theirs (and others) spectacular foreign news service.

The Newseum Front Pages (provided by the Newseum - an actual museum of news located in Washington, D.C.) offers over 600 front pages from 62 countries. A quick glance at the front page of the local newspaper can really aid jurisdictional specific research.

The page Press Display offers a number of services, free and fee. One of the freebies is the opportunity to view front pages of newspapers from around the world. They also offer a premium service at approx. $30 per month for unlimited access to their newspapers, a 14-day archive, and the ability to set up monitoring alerts.

Looking for Circuit Splits?

2008-10-28T12:57:00.003-04:00

Found an excellent blog that has answered a few of my "Where is there a circuit split?" questions. Circuit splits are often utilized for law review articles, moot court competitions, and legal writing courses.

Split Circuits is a blog run by Prof. A. Benjamin Spencer at Washington & Lee University School of Law, Virginia, and includes citations and some analysis.

Federal Materials

2008-10-07T08:43:00.001-04:00

Active Legislation
http://www.senate.gov/reference/active_bill_type/110.shtml
A simple page that lists currently active legislation for the 110th Congress. Access is by category, popular titles, and subjects. Simple and effective.

GovernmentDocs.org
http://governmentdocs.org/
This site gives the public an unprecedented level of access to government documents by allowing users to browse, search, and review hundreds of thousands of pages acquired through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and other public disclosure, or “sunshine,” laws. Of note recently, the Jack Abramoff emails.

Guided Tour of PACER
http://www.virtualchase.com/video/pacer/pacer.html
Genie Tyburski's online guided tour of the using the name/party index lookup on PACER.

Rutgers School of Law – Congressional Documents Online
http://lawlibrary.rutgers.edu/gdoc/search.shtml
This is a full text archive of selected documents of the United States Congress from the collection of the Rutgers-Camden School of Law. Hearings included in this online collection date from the 1970's to 1998. The project is ongoing and that there are currently 7064 documents available, totaling: 1732460 pages, as of Sept. 3, 2008.

Noscitur a Sociis: Volume 1, No. 2 (August 2008)

2008-08-28T08:51:00.001-04:00

Volume 1, No. 2 (March 2008)

Federal Materials

Hazardous Materials Safety Administration Online Library
http://hazmat.dot.gov/enforce/forms/ohmforms.htm
Office of Hazardous Materials Safety is the Federal safety authority for ensuring the safe transport of hazardous materials by air, rail, highway, and water. With Boston’s new BioLab and the LNG Tanker controversies, this has become a more active site. The Library has files that are the most frequently requested by shippers, carriers, Federal and State agencies, as well as members of the general public.

Keeping Government Secrets: A Pocket Guide for Judges on the State-SecretsPrivilege, the Classified Information Procedures Act, and Court Security Officers http://www.fjc.gov/public/pdf.nsf/lookup/secrets1.pdf/$file/secrets1.pdf
This guide produced by the Federal Judicial Center was designed to familiarize federal judges with statutes and procedures established to help public courts protect government secrets when courts are called upon to do so. The guide provides information about the Classified Information Procedures Act (CIPA), information security officers, and secure storage facilities.

Cases Against Doctors
http://www.deadiversion.usdoj.gov/crim_admin_actions/
The Office of Diversion Control of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) offers a listing of DEA investigations of physicians that resulted in an arrest, as well as a listing of administrative actions. The listings appear in alphabetical order. Browsing only; you cannot search them. With the criminal cases, information provided includes the name of the physician, his/her city and state, date of the arrest, date of the prosecution, judicial status, description of the conviction, and more. Hope my doctor isn’t there!

State Materials

State of the States 2008
http://archive.stateline.org/flash-data/StateOfTheStates2008.pdf
Trusted Stateline.org offers a 76-page report that covers major state topics such as politics, health care, gambling, stem cell research, infrastructure, education, and immigration.

New York Codes, Rules and Regulations (NYCRR)
http://www.dos.state.ny.us/info/nycrr.htm
With help from Westlaw (ahem….Alfreda!), the New York Secretary of State makes available an unofficial compilation of all New York State codes, rules and regulations. Currently, you cannot browse the collection. "This initial release of the online NYCRR does not yet include a table of contents. To find desired text, visitors [click the link for NYCRR, and then] simply enter a search term or NYCRR citation. A table of contents will be available in the near future."

Topical

Refugee Caselaw Database
http://www.refugeecaselaw.org/guidedsearch.asp
Easy Guided Search interface and a solid collection of refugee cases, this collection features cases from the highest national courts of Australia, Canada, Germany, New Zealand, Switzerland, the UK, and the US. Also, since 2004, the collection has been expanded to include decisions from other asylum countries, as well as the most important decisions of lower courts and tribunals in the core collection states.

Lemon Justice
http://www.lemonjustice.com/lemonmeter.html
This page allows you, by answering a few questions about the type of car you own and your current residence, to determine if your car is covered under a particular state’s lemon laws.

NAFTA Decisions
http://www.worldlii.org/int/cases/NAFTA/
While all these Presidential Candidates are talking about who voted for NAFTA or not, WorldLII has created a database contains decisions arising from the treaty. Updated frequently by record culled from the NAFTA Secretariat website.

Egyptian Civil Code Translated
http://www.tashreaat.com/view_studies2.asp?std_id=82
In one of those rare moments of serendipity, I found a website put out by LADIS (Legislation and Development Information Systems) an IT company based in Egypt specializing in business and information systems for government and public sector bodies.

Human Rights Index for the Arab Countries
http://www.arabhumanrights.org/en/
The Human Rights Index for the Arab Countries is a project of the UN Development Programme on Governance in the Arab Region. The website is a repository of UN human rights documents enhanced with responses, including ratifications and reservations, of the Arab countries. Twenty-two countries are included, from Algeria to Yemen. Charts are provided for each convention that list status, signature date, ratification, and date in force by country.

FUN

ManyBooks
http://manybooks.net
This great site offers free books for your PDA, iPod, or eBook reader. You may also download the PDFs to your computer and read them that way. The site offers over 18,000 e-books in many, many categories. Obviously, you are not going to find a lot of legal texts, but I did find some good Dr. Who books!

Welcome!

2008-08-28T08:42:00.000-04:00

These are some interesting sources on the Internet I have culled from diverse sources such as the Internet Law Researcher, Internet Guide for the Legal Researcher, INT-LAW, Law-Lib, and other research resources! These are selected by me for their usefulness to law librarians - but I also include other sources that are related to technological fun!

Please feel free to send me any suggestions for additional resources.