Just the Facts

With just over a week to go in what can safely be described as a contentious election, this is a good time to think about facts. Exactly how accurate are the claims of politicians and political advertising?

There are a number of good web sites to help answer this question. PolitiFact.com , sponsored by the St. Petersburg Times, provides a "Truth-o-meter" judging the degree to which a claim or ad is accurate. For another site, try FactCheck.org, a project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center .

Ernster, the Virtual Library Cat

ABA May Support Greater Law School Transparency

ABA President Steve Zack recently told a gathering of law school deans and professors that the organization is considering a proposal that would require accredited law schools to disclose cost and employment statistics to all accepted law school applicants. Read more here.

Ernster, the Virtual Library Cat

Regulating the Legal Industry - International Perspectives

Think that the large number of U.S. law school graduates are making the job market too tough for young attorneys? Apparently other countries have problems with regulating the legal profession that make similar issues in the U.S. seem paltry. In India, there are over 1,000 law schools. And, in Japan, only 25% of people who sit for the bar exam pass (a huge increase from the previous number: 3%!). (from the National Law Journal)


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Law Library of Congress: Congressional Hearings

The Law Library of Congress contains approximately 75,000 volumes of printed Congressional Hearings.

"As part of the Law Library’s transition to the digital future, a collaborative pilot project was undertaken with Google, Inc., to digitize the entire collection and make it freely available to Congress and the world. Three collections have been selectively compiled to provide users with a test experience:"

• Census: U.S.
• Freedom of Information/Privacy
• Immigration

For each Hearing, all of the text is in searchable PDF format.
Ernster, the Virtual Library Cat

MetaLib

MetaLib is a federated search engine that searches multiple U.S. Federal government databases, retrieving reports, articles, and citations while providing direct links to selected resources available online. You can search in a variety of information resources, such as catalogs, reference databases, digital repositories, or subject-based Web gateways. These information resources can be local or remote. A search may be basic, advanced or expert.
Ernster, the Virtual Library Cat