Library Blog
03/15/2008
Scrutiny for a Bush Judicial Nominee
Gustavus A. Puryear IV, a top lawyer for America's biggest private prison company, Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) recently confronted tough questions about his conduct, experience and potential conflicts of interest from the Senate Judiciary Committee during a hearing to discuss nomination to become a federal district judge for the Middle District of Tennessee.
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03/13/2008
House to Close Its Doors for Spying Bill
House Democratic leaders agreed Thursday to a rare closed-door session the first in 25 years to debate surveillance legislation.
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03/13/2008
GAO Report Finds EPA Library Closures Flawed
The report says that the decision to close libraries was not justified and strongly suggests that the entire process EPA has followed in closing the libraries is flawed and could deprive the public, EPA staff, state and local agencies, and academics with valuable environmental data.
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03/13/2008
Census Atlas of the United States
The U.S. Census Bureau has published its first comprehensive atlas of population and housing since 1920.
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03/11/2008
Library of Congress Research Reports on Inherent Executive Power
The Law Library of Congress has posted several
recent articles by Louis Fisher about inherent executuve power in foreign relations and national security contexts.
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03/11/2008
Now this looks very useful: history meets technology, again!
It has always seemed that history is the area of research best suited for the heavy use of technology. A new wiki on English medieval legal documents confirms this again!
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03/11/2008
Law Firms posting documents / forms
A new web site,
JD Supra, offers documents created by some law firms for reference and form. Interesting . . . Firms involved include the EFF, Morrison & Foerster, Mintz Levin, etc..
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03/11/2008
So, which State Supreme Court is the most convincing?
A recent study of citations to state supreme court opinions reveals that the California Supreme Court is most often followed by sister state supreme court. The New York Times
article describing the study includes the following:
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03/11/2008
A $100 Million Donation to the N.Y. Public Library
The library’s venerable lion-guarded building is to be renamed for the financier Stephen A. Schwarzman.
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03/10/2008
Mexico's Senate Approves Judicial Reform
Mexican senators on Thursday overwhelmingly approved a sweeping judicial reform that would introduce public, oral trials and guarantee the presumption of innocence.
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03/07/2008
Lawyer and Client Sanctioned $29K for Conduct During a Deposition
U.S. District Judge Eduardo Robreno of Philadelphia has tallied the number of times Aaron Wider, the CEO of HTFC, dropped the F-word or a variant of it in a deposition — it was 73 times — and calculated the more than $29,000 sanction he and his lawyer Joseph R. Ziccardi should pay.
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03/02/2008
Library of Congress RSS Feeds
The Library of Congress has a number of RSS feeds. Many are primarily of interest to those headed to DC, but there are also some excellent copyright feeds, law feeds, and other interesting feeds. A list of the feeds with descriptions is available here:
http://www.loc.gov/rss/.
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02/28/2008
Jailhouse Lawyer Under Investigation
The prison law clerk who convinced the U.S. Supreme Court to hear a fellow inmate's drug possession case is being investigated by South Carolina's Attorney General Henry McMaster for practicing law without a license.
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02/27/2008
EU Action Against Microsoft
A
€ 899 penalty was imposred on Microsoft by the European Commission for failure to comply with the Commission's 2004 decision. This is the first time that the EU has fined an organization for failure to comply with one of its decisions.
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02/26/2008
Guatemala 'to open war archives'
Military archives spanning nearly four decades of civil war in Guatemala will be opened to the public, the country's President Alvaro Colom has announced.
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02/25/2008
Yale Law students help a community facing a wave of foreclosures
New Haven Mayor John DeStefano has assembled a task force is using Yale law students to gather more details about the scope of the mortgage crisis, and to look for potential targets of litigation.
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02/25/2008
GPO And Depository Libraries Partner To Offer Online Reference Assistance
The U.S. Government Printing Office (GPO) is joining the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) and Federal Depository Libraries around the country to provide an online reference service to the American public.
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02/23/2008
S.M.U. Makes It Official: Bush Library Is Coming
A center devoted to the life, works, papers and policies of President Bush will be built at Southern Methodist University, despite lingering concerns and opposition from some Methodists.
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02/22/2008
Open Access to Research
It is an exciting time for researchers who are rich with intellectual curiosity, but short on cash. Read More...
02/14/2008
The English Bill of Rights - a bill of responsibilities!
This is really interesting. The proposed new British of Rights looks increasingly like a bill of responsibilities. Responsibilities that are enforceable in court!
More from the Guardian:
Straw plans duties of behaviour in bill of rights
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02/14/2008
The Guardian gets into the constitutional conversation
The constitutional conversation is getting interesting. Here the Guardian git in its two cents (is that pence?):
Constitution
Magna Carta, the sequel
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02/14/2008
Fall-Out from Straw's constitutional comments
That didn't take long. Responses to Straw's comments are coming fast and furious. This will be interesting to watch. Here is an article in The Times:
Missing link in plans for a new constitution is impact on voters
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02/13/2008
Jack Straw discusses a written constitution for Britain
Gordon Brown raised the issue upon assuming the Prime Ministership and Jack Straw provides some detail.
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02/13/2008
A Supreme Court for the UK nears
As a Supreme Court for the UK approaches, appellate judging is in the news. From The Times:
How many law lords does it take to decide a case?
Normally five, recently nine and could be either seven or nine when the Supreme Court opens in 2009
How many law lords does it take to decide a case? Normally, the answer is five. But last week and this, nine members of the Appellate Committee of the House of Lords are hearing two important cases. When the new Supreme Court opens its doors in October 2009, seven or nine justices should hear every case.
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02/13/2008
General Report on the European Union's Activities in 2007
An excellent review of the EU's year is now available in the offical report from the Commission to the Parliament. The press release with a link to the document follows:
Publication of the General Report on the European Union's Activities in 2007
The Commission has presented the General Report on the activities of the European Union in 2007 to the European Parliament. Highlights of the past year were the signing of the Treaty of Lisbon, the enlargement of the Union to 27 members, the adoption of common objectives to tackle climate change and the response to the challenges of globalisation.
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02/13/2008
European Commission presents policy priorities for 2009
So, what does the EU plan for 2009? The Commission released it's priorities, following is the press release with a link to the document
Commission presents policy priorities for 2009
The Commission has today presented its Annual Policy Strategy setting out its political priorities for 2009. It outlines the Commission's policy objectives in five priority areas: growth and jobs, climate change and sustainable Europe, making a reality of the common immigration policy, putting the citizen first, and Europe as a world partner. The Commission will seek to gain approval for its legislative initiatives and also look forward by stimulating debate on the internal market, social agenda and budget reviews.
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02/07/2008
Bush budget requests going electronic
This year, when President George W. Bush submits his budget requests to Congress, the White House only plans to post it on the Internet. Therefore, lawmakers will need to dig into their own pockets if they want an official print copy.
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01/29/2008
2008 State of the Union
The official White House website has plenty of information about last night's State of the Union address by Pres. Bush. This includes a complete transcript as well as a video webcast of the entire speech. For all of this, visit the White House's
State of the Union page.
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01/29/2008
Wall Street Journal continues charging for website
Despite early promising comments from new owner Rupert Murdoch, the Wall Street Journal
announced last week that it will continue to charge users to access the majority of information contained on the newspaper's website.
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12/14/2007
Free case law database announced
Public.Resource.org and
FastCase recently
announced plans to create a free database of federal caselaw accessible to anyone via the internet. The database will include all U.S. Supreme Court cases since 1754 and all U.S. Court of Appeals cases since 1950, and new cases will be added as they are published.
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