Information About Presidential Signing Statements

The American Constitution Society for Law and Policy offers in PDF format a comprehensive index of presidential signing statements issued between 2001 and 2007. According to the Society's Web site, "the index, compiled by Neil Kinkopf, associate professor of law at Georgia State University College of Law and former special assistant in the Office of Legal Counsel at the Department of Justice, provides a comprehensive list of every provision of a law objected to by the White House in a signing statement, the reason for the objection, and a link to the relevant signing statement".

In addition, the index assigns each objection to one or more categories, from a base set of twenty-three. These categories include constitutional, doctrinal, structural, and other justifications for objection.

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Law Library of Congress Website

The Law Library of Congress, "the world's largest collection of law books and legal resources," has just announced its newly redesigned website at http://www.loc.gov/law. The site provides links to the Library's research guides and databases, such as Guide to the Law Online and the Global Legal Information Network (GLIN), an international legal database with official full texts of published documents from countries around the world. Two new resources are especially useful for law students. Take a look at the Congressional Hearings project, which provides full-text, PDF access to selected historical Congressional committee hearings on three topics: immigration; freedom of information/privacy; and the U.S. Census. These hearings are just samples of a much larger group from the Library's collection that will be digitized and made available. Also new and helpful are the Foreign and International Law Guides, designed as a starting point for research in this area, with individual guides for a selection of countries.



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21st Century Library workshops

What are the 21^st Century Library workshops? The librarians have put together a number of 50 minute workshops that identify and demonstrate online resources other than Lexis or Westlaw. The workshops are topical or focus on a specific resource providing descriptions of the resources and why they should be used. Research strategies and tips are a bonus.

Effective and efficient legal research means knowing there are a number of resources available and understanding the purpose of each and when to use them. A common critique we hear from law firm librarians is that students are too quick to use Lexis or Westlaw when another tool is more appropriate for their research task.

21^st Century Library workshops goal is to expose our students to additional online tools.

All workshops are held in the lower level computer lab. Registration for a workshop is not required. Look for announcements closer to the dates of the workshops.

Tentative schedule for workshops during the Fall 2007 semester.

Week of 10/1 – Paper Writing resources

Week of 10/15 – Health Law research

Week of 10/29 - U.S. Government Information

Week of 11/5 – LexisNexis Congressional Universe

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Constitution Day

Celebrate Constitution Day by visiting the Constitution page at the National Archives Experience.
The web site offers high resolution images of the Constitution, information about the Constitutional Convention and dozens of interesting facts.


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LawGuru

If you're finding the interface of a government-provided legal information site hard to use, or if you would like an alternative to Cornell's Legal Information Institute, LawGuru's Legal Research Tool tries to offer one-stop shopping for searching free online legal information. LawGuru also provides a good set of links on its Internet Law Library. These sites are by no means comprehensive--one should not necessarily assume that they search or link to all of the legal information that is available on the internet, or the best or most recent, but they are helpful. LawGuru's compilation of Weird Laws also has some entertaining entries.



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Intelways--A Different Search Engine Concept

Although it is not a meta-search engine, Intelways is nevertheless an innovative one-stop search tool. Through its comprehensive set of search channels organized into different categories, Intelways offers a quick and convenient way to search for almost anything on the Web.

By using Intelways, you can easily find information and Web content in different formats, and on different topics and media types, by retrieving results from multiple search engines and online providers. To use Intelways, you need only type your search terms into the input box, and then click any search service from the buttons set provided for a given category.

One virtue of Intelways is that it demonstrates very simply and effectively how search results may differ among different search engines.



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New York's Legislative Website

Law students and practicing lawyers often need quick and reliable information about what's going on in the current session of the New York legislature. What bills have been introduced on a particular topic and what is their status? What is the text of a recently passed law? It's all there--and more--on the user friendly, official New York State Legislature public legislative information website. You can search by bill, chapter number, and other document number, or search all bills by keyword. You can also browse the current year's "chapter list" of all bills that passed into law, and link to each bill to see a summary and the text of the bill, how individual legislators voted, sponsors' memoranda, and the text of the resulting law as signed by the governor--all brought together in one convenient document.



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Rosh Hashana

Deane Law Library will be open regular hours this week: Wednesday and Thursday, 8 am to 12 midnight; Friday, 8 am to 9 pm. Weekend hours are: Saturday, 10 am to 8 pm and Sunday, 10 am to 12 midnight.

Law School classes will not be held after 4 pm on Wednesday, September 12th. Law School classes resume on Monday, September 15th.




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Today in Legal History

Looking for a daily dose of legal history?

National Public Radio’s Justice Talking Program and Findlaw have joined forces to create Today in Legal History.

Each day, this online feature highlights an historical event related to law or government. It also provides links to related resources. Enjoy!

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New York Cases Online

The New York State Law Reporting Bureau and West make all decisions published in the New York Official Reports from 1997 to the present accessible at no cost here. As the site explains, "Opinions can be searched by word, official citation, official slip opinion number, docket number, case name, judge name, counsel name, opinion type (i.e., majority, concurring, dissenting) and decision date."



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