Bloomberg Law

I’m sure you know the extensive financial services on the web from Bloomberg.  But do you know about Bloomberg Law, which is positioning itself to be a direct competitor to Westlaw and Lexis?  Bloomberg Law (BL) integrates comprehensive legal content, company and market information, and proprietary news all in one place.  One of the features that many of us are finding especially useful is access to PACER, with full text dockets from the federal courts, as well as a courier service for a fee for documents not accessible in PACER.  BL also has a legal citator system, BCite, which is invaluable for comprehensive research.  Cornell law students have BL passwords, and you can, too. 

 

 

Our BL rep, Pamela Haahr, will be here this Thursday morning, December 15, and is setting appointments to meet with faculty who want to get started with Bloomberg Law.  Contact her directly at oribe@bloomberg.net to make an appointment and request a BL password.  Even if you are satisfied with Westlaw or Lexis for your own research, Bloomberg Law is worth experiencing in the world of legal information.

Pat Court

Associate Law Librarian

 

 

New Law Books at Cornell, Nov 16-30

The New Books List for November 16-30 is now available on the Law Library web site.  Click here to view the entire list.  It includes all new books at the Law Library as well as law-related books all across campus.  Here are a few titles of interest:

Courtwatchers : eyewitness accounts in Supreme Court history / Clare Cushman. -- Lanham, Md. : Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, c2011.

KF8742 .C875x 2011 -- Law Library

Sink or swim: the first decade -- John Marshall takes charge: establishing power -- Justice by Shay, stagecoach, steamboat, train: riding circuit -- Wives, children . . . husbands: supporting roles -- Yes, Mr. president: appointment and confirmation -- Learning the ropes: a rookie arrives -- Inside the courtroom: views of the bench -- Silver tongues and quill pens: oral argument -- Nine justices, one bench: building consensus -- (Not so) good behavior: discord and feuds -- A peek inside chambers: clerk stories -- "Welcome to the chain gang": managing the workload -- Timing it right: stepping down.

 

Making of international criminal justice: a view from the bench: selected speeches / Theodor Meron. -- Oxford ; New York : Oxford University Press, c2011.

KZ7235 .M47 2011 -- Law Library

Humanitarian law and human rights law : evolving bodies of law -- The rise of international criminal tribunals -- International crimes and jurisprudence of international courts -- Responsibility and the role of the judge

 

Compliance and compromise : the jurisprudence of gender pay equity / by Cher Weixia Chen. -- Leiden ; Boston : Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 2011.

K1772 .C48x 2011 -- Law Library

Gender pay equity and the international instruments -- Legislative compliance -- the process of "internalization" -- Judicial compliance -- the process of "interpretation" -- The process of "interaction”

 

You can click on the underlined title to go to the online catalog entry for that book.  And then click on “Long View” near the top of that screen for more information, usually chapter titles and authors, and subject headings.

 

If you would like to have any of these or other books checked out to you, please contact me or your librarian liaison.

 

Pat Court

Associate Law Librarian

pat.court@cornell.edu  

 

 

Faculty/Pet Matching Contest -- We have a Winner!

Many thanks to all of the faculty members who participated in the Faculty/Pet Matching Contest!  The Law Library received a total of thirteen pet photos from eleven faculty members.  The pictures were featured in a Reading Room display case, and clues were posted to Facebook and Twitter throughout the month of November. 

 

Of the many entries, only three students matched every pet correctly, and from this pool, the winning name was drawn.  Please congratulate Chris Engler, 2L, when you see him around and about, who won an Amazon gift card.

 

Amy Emerson

Head of Access Services & Foreign & Int'l Law Specialist

aae25@cornell.edu

New Law Books at Cornell, Nov 1-15

The New Books List for November 1-15 is now available on the Law Library web site.  Click here to view the entire list.  It includes all new books at the Law Library as well as law-related books all across campus.  Here are a few titles of interest:

 

The challenge of originalism : theories of constitutional interpretation / edited by Grant Huscroft, Bradley W. Miller. -- Cambridge ; New York : Cambridge University Press, 2011.

K3165 .C428x 2011 – Law Library

 

Imagining legality : where law meets popular culture / edited by Austin Sarat. -- Tuscaloosa : University of Alabama Press, 2011.

PN1995.9.J8 I53x 2011 –  Law Library

 

The body of John Merryman : Abraham Lincoln and the suspension of habeas corpus / Brian McGinty. -- Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press, 2011.

KF223.M48 M38x 2011 – Law Library

 

Animal laws of India / Maneka Gandhi, Ozair Husain, Raj Panjwani. -- New Delhi, India : Universal Law Publishing Co.Pvt. Ltd., 2011.

KNS1533 .A28 2011 – Law Library

 

You can click on the underlined title to go to the online catalog entry for that book.  And then click on “Long View” near the top of that screen for more information, usually chapter titles and authors, and subject headings.

 

If you would like to have any of these or other books checked out to you, please contact me or your librarian liaison.

 

Pat Court

Associate Law Librarian

pat.court@cornell.edu  

 

 

Faculty Scholarship Exhibit Case

The display case located outside classrooms 276 and 277 is now a permanent exhibit space showcasing recent faculty scholarship.  Please stop by to view materials written by your colleagues, including books, book chapters, and articles.  Please note that items will be temporarily rotated out of the case when they are requested by library patrons for circulation purposes.  

 

When viewing the materials, please also consider whether you’ve sent PDF copies of all of your articles to your library liaison for inclusion in the library’s online repository at http://scholarship.law.cornell.edu/.

 

Amy Emerson

Head of Access Services & Foreign & Int'l Law Specialist

aae25@cornell.edu

 

 

New Law Books at Cornell, October 16-31

The New Books List for October 16-31 is now available on the Law Library web site.  Click here to view the entire list.  It includes all new books at the Law Library as well as law-related books all across campus.  Here are a couple titles of interest:

 

Rethinking law as process : creativity, novelty, change / James MacLean. -- Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon ; New York : Routledge, c2012

K213 .M33x 2012 -- Law Library (Myron Taylor Hall)

                Locating the problem in law : the conjoined twins case, Re A -- Justifying legal decisions in hard cases : different approaches -- Alfred North Whitehead’s philosophy of organism -- Lessons from organisation theory -- Towards a process reconstrual of ’the middle’ -- Two ways of thinking : two types of knowledge -- Michael Polanyi’s ’tacit knowledge’ -- Legal institutional knowledge -- The judge as institutional actor and decision-maker -- Legal contexts as practices -- Chaos and complexity -- Closing the gap : narrative and the law -- Law’s institutional becoming : creativity, novelty, change -- Law as process : legal decision-making as an actual occasion in concrescence.

 

First thing we do, let's deregulate all the lawyers / Clifford Winston, Robert W. Crandall, Vikram Maheshri. -- Washington, D.C. : Brookings Institution Press, c2011.

KF306 .W48x 2011 -- Law Library (Myron Taylor Hall)

The market for lawyers -- Evidence of earnings premiums in the legal profession -- Sources of lawyers’ earnings premiums -- Welfare costs -- The case for deregulating entry into the legal profession -- Toward policy reform.

 

If you would like to have either of these or any other books on the list checked out to you, please contact me or your librarian liaison.

Pat

 

Pat Court

Associate Law Librarian

 

 

InfoBrief: GPO Access now Archive Only

To Cornell Law Faculty:

 

GPO Access is dead!  Long live FDsys!

 

Tomorrow, the U.S. Government Printing Office (GPO) draws one step closer to shutting down GPO Access, the free public access web site of full-text, official Federal information and finding aids.  Once the Friday editions of daily updated content (e.g., Federal Register, Congressional Record) have been uploaded, GPO will cease updating GPO Access in terms of both database content and HTML pages.  Friday, November 4, will mark the start of the archive only phase of GPO Access and new content will only be loaded to FDsys. During this phase, GPO Access will remain publicly accessible as a reference archive.

 

In order to make the switchover from GPO Access to FDsys as seamless as possible for users, GPO is in the process of creating one-to-one redirects from GPO Access content to the FDsys equivalent. This will ensure that bookmarks, Web links, URLs in print publications, and other GPO Access references point to valid Web resources. Once this has been completed, GPO Access will be taken offline. A date has not yet been established for the final shutdown of GPO Access; however, it is slated for fiscal year 2012.

 

If you would like assistance accessing federal documents through FDsys,please contact me or your librarian liaison. Information above supplied by GPO.

 

Pat

 

Pat Court

Associate Law Librarian

pat.court@cornell.edu   

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New Law Books at Cornell

The New Books List for October 1-15 is now available on the Law Library web site.  Click here to view the entire list.  It includes all new books at the Law Library as well as law-related books all across campus.  Here are a couple titles of interest:

 

From crisis to crisis : the global financial system and regulatory failure / Ross P. Buckley, Douglas W. Arner. -- Alphen aan den Rijn : Kluwer Law International ; Frederick,  c2011.

K1066 .B83 2011 -- Law Library (Myron Taylor Hall)

 

Regulating the international movement of women : from protection to control / edited by Sharron A. FitzGerald. -- Oxon ; New York : Routledge, 2011.

K3275 .R438x 2011 -- Law Library (Myron Taylor Hall)

 

If you would like to have either of these or any other books on the list checked out to you, please contact me or your librarian liaison.

 

Pat Court

Associate Law Librarian

 

 

Federal Court Opinions in FDsys

Access to federal court opinions, free on the web from the federal government, is on its way.  Through FDsys, the Federal Digital System, the U.S. Government Printing Office (GPO) and the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts (AOUSC) have put up the first opinions as a test.  Initial testing is with three courts:

 

United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit;

United States District Court District of Rhode Island; and

United States Bankruptcy Court Southern District of Florida.

 

The secure transfer of files to GPO from the AOUSC’s Case Management/Electronic Case Filing system (CM/ECF, which feeds PACER) maintains the chain of custody,  This allows GPO to authenticate the files with digital signatures. 

Read more about it at http://www.fdlp.gov/component/content/article/341-featuredarticles/1078-oyez-oyez-federal-court-opinions-in-fdsys

 

Pat Court

Associate Law Librarian

 

New Books, September 16-30

The New Books List for September 16-30 is now available on the Law Library web site.  Click here to view the entire list.  It includes all new books at the Law Library as well as law-related books all across campus.

 

Here are a couple of titles of interest:

 

1.       Why the law is so perverse / Leo Katz. -- Chicago ; London : University of Chicago Press, c2011. -- xi, 239 p. ; 24 cm.

K290 .K38x 2011 -- Law Library (Myron Taylor Hall)

Why does the law spurn win-win transactions? -- Things we can’t consent to, though no one knows why -- A parable -- Lessons -- The social choice connection -- Why is the law so full of loopholes? -- The irresistible wrong answer -- What is wrong with the irresistible answer? -- The voting analogy -- Turning the analogy into an identity -- Intentional fouls -- Why is the law so either/or? -- The proverbial rigidity of the law -- Line drawing as a matter of life and death -- Why don’t we punish all we condemn? -- The undercriminalization problem -- Multicriterial ranking and the undercriminalization problem.

 

2.       Property and the law in energy and natural resources / edited by Aileen McHarg ... [et al.]. -- Oxford ; New York, N.Y. : Oxford University Press, 2010. -- xviii, 478 p. ; 24 cm.

K3478 .P76x 2010 -- Law Library (Myron Taylor Hall)

Contents include:  Property and the law in energy and natural resources / Aileen McHarg ... [et al.] -- Different views of the cathedral : the literature on property law theory / Jonnette Watson Hamilton and Nigel Bankes -- Public and private rights to natural resources and differences in their protection / Anita Rønne -- Restrictions on foreign investment in the energy sector for national security reasons : the case of Japan / Kazuhiro Nakatani -- The significance of property rights in biotic sequestration of carbon / Al Lucas -- Community based property rights regimes and resource conservation in India’s forests / Lavanya Rajamani.

 

If you would like to have either of these or any other books on the list checked out to you, please contact me or your librarian liaison.  And if you have suggestions for new books, do let us know!

 

Pat Court

Associate Law Librarian

pat.court@cornell.edu   

 

 

Electronic Casebooks

Electronic textbooks have not completely taken over yet in legal education, but more casebooks and textbooks for law courses are now available as e-books.  West, Lexis, Aspen, and other publishers are offering digital casebooks to you and your students.  Click here to view the entire infographic, represented below, with sections on It’s Already Happening; The iPad of Today: Hinting at the Textbook of Tomorrow; and What Will the Textbook of the Future Look Like?

 

 

Pat Court

Associate Law Librarian

New Books List, September 1-15

 

InfoBrief is a current awareness service for the Cornell Law School faculty from the Law Library, sent to you weekly or as news may warrant.  This is the first message of the academic year, letting you know that the New Books List for September 1-15 is now available on the library’s web page.  Click here to view the entire list.  The list is posted twice a month and includes all the new books at the Law Library, as well as the law-related books added at the other libraries on campus.  We will send you a quick InfoBrief message as soon as each list is posted.

 

A couple titles of interest:

 

The political uncommons : the cross-cultural logic of the global commons / Kathryn Milun. -- Farnham, Surrey, England ; Burlington, VT : Ashgate, c2011. -- 231 p. : ill., maps ; 24 cm.

K3585 .M55x 2011 -- Law Library (Myron Taylor Hall).  View selected chapters.                     

 

The European Court of Human Rights between law and politics / edited by Jonas Christoffersen and Mikael Rask Madsen. -- Oxford ; New York : Oxford University Press, 2011. -- xiv, 236 p. : ill. ; 25 cm.

KJC5138 .E918x 2011 -- Law Library (Myron Taylor Hall).  View selected chapters.

 

For details about using the New Books List, see InfoBrief of August 28, 2010.  Please contact your liaison librarian to request any of the new books be sent to you.  We love getting books into your hands!

 

 

Pat Court

Associate Law Librarian

pat.court@cornell.edu

 

Government Documents Online

To Cornell Law Faculty:

Cornell Law Library is an official depository for federal government documents, many of which are produced electronically these days. From the recent list of new documents, here are a few that may be of interest:

 

Can we sue our way to prosperity?: litigation’s effect on America’s global competitiveness : hearing before the Subcommittee on the Constitution of the Committee on the Judiciary, House of Representatives, May 24, 2011

http://purl.fdlp.gov/GPO/gpo9538   

 

National strategy for counterterrorism, Executive Office of the President, June 2011

http://purl.fdlp.gov/GPO/gpo9627  

 

Failed state 2030: Nigeria : a case study, February 2011

http://purl.fdlp.gov/GPO/gpo9564     

 

Nigeria’s pernicious drivers of ethno-religious conflict, by Chris Kwaja.  Africa Center for Strategic Studies, 2011

http://purl.fdlp.gov/GPO/gpo9658

 

USA PATRIOT Act: dispelling the myths: hearing before the Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security of the Committee on the Judiciary, House of Representatives, May 11, 2011

http://purl.fdlp.gov/GPO/gpo9632

 

To find more federal government documents, search the Catalog of U.S. Government Publications or the Cornell Library Catalog. Please contact me or your librarian liaison with any questions.

Pat Court

pat.court@cornell.edu  

Prize Winners for Exemplary Student Research

The 2011 Winners of the new Cornell Law Library Prize for Exemplary Student Research are:

• First Place: Improving Drinking Water Provision under Increasing Global and Regional Economic Integration, by William Garthwaite, awarded $500
• Second Place: Law on the Books vs. Law in Action: Under-Enforcement of Morocco's Reformed 2004 Family Law, the Moudawana, by Annie Eisenberg, awarded $250

 

The Law Library inaugurated this research prize to recognize excellence in research by our law students.  A review panel comprised of Research Attorneys Jean Callihan, Pat Court, Amy Emerson, Iantha Haight and Matthew Morrison selected the winners from among 18 well-crafted applications, each of which demonstrated exceptional research and original thought.  Their final decision was based upon the following criteria:

• Sophistication, originality, or unusual depth or breadth in the use of research materials, including, but not limited to, print resources, electronic search engines and databases, primary and secondary legal resources, interdisciplinary resources, and empirical resources
• Exceptional innovation in research strategy, including the ability to locate, select, and evaluate research materials with discretion
• Skillful synthesis of research results into a comprehensive scholarly analysis

 

Criteria for acceptable papers include, but are not limited to, papers written for a class or a journal note, but not work product from employment. In addition to receiving a monetary award, the winners are also invited to publish their papers in Scholarship@Cornell Law, the Law Library’s digital repository, and to feature their papers in Reading Room displays during the next academic year. 

 

Funding for the Cornell Law Library Prize for Exemplary Student Research is provided by an endowment given to the Law Library by Barbara Cantwell in honor of her late husband, Robert Cantwell, a 1956 graduate of Cornell Law School. I know you join us in congratulating these rising 3Ls who are our inaugural prize winners!

 

Pat Court

Interim Law Library Director

 

Shutdown of the Federal Government - Causes, Processes, & Effects

The Congressional Research Service recently published a 10-page CRS Report for Congress on Shutdown of the Federal Government: Causes, Processes, and Effects.  If Congress does not pass a budget today, the information in that report will be particularly important. 

 

Clinton T. Brass, Analyst in Government Organization and Management, author of the report, explains that “OMB documents and guidance from previous funding gaps and shutdowns may provide insights into current and future practices. OPM has recommended on a website that agencies use OMB guidelines to determine ‘excepted’ positions (i.e., those not subject to furlough) and provided retyped copies of previous OMB bulletins and memoranda for reference.”  Those guidelines are all cited in footnote 19 of the report.  Please contact me or your librarian liaison if you’d like to see the text of any of those OMB memoranda or bulletins.

 

Pat Court

Associate Law Librarian

pat.court@cornell.edu  

 

CHECKPOINT for Tax Research

Yes, it’s almost Tax Day.  It happens to be Monday, April 18, this year because Emancipation Day is Saturday, April 16, and therefore celebrated in Washington, D.C. with a day off on Friday, April 15.  If this three-day reprieve is not enough, you can check out the IRS's website on how to get an extension for filing your taxes.

And to help you with your taxes or other research around federal tax, I just wanted to let you know that the Law Library makes available CHECKPOINT, a comprehensive tax research database that you may find to be an easy spot to find various laws, regulations, IRS publications, court decisions, journal articles, financial calculators, and much more.  It is also available to law students if you want to assign a look at tax information or have a tax angle in your scholarship assigned to a research assistant.  To access Checkpoint, start from our list of Online Legal Resources, click on Tax in the left column, then click on RIA Checkpoint.  Take a look at our quick guide to get started using Checkpoint.

 

As always, you are encouraged to contact me or your librarian liaison with any questions about tax research or using Checkpoint.

 

Pat Court

Associate Law Librarian

pat.court@cornell.edu  

 

Google Books Settlement Rejected

Last Tuesday Judge Denny Chin refused to grant the plaintiffs' motion for final approval of the Google Books Amended Settlement Agreement ("ASA"), finding that the ASA is not fair, adequate, or reasonable.  The opinion is available here, and worth the quick read.  Judge Chin, in analyzing whether the agreement met the requirements of Federal Rules of Civil Procedure 23(e), applied the factors articulated in City of Detroit v. Grinnell Corp., 495 F.2d 448 (2d Cir. 1974).  He found that most of the Grinnell factors favored approval, i.e.:

• litigation has been complex, expensive, and lengthy
• the case has been pending since 2005
• the outcome of the case, were it to go to trial, is in substantial doubt
• maintaining the class throughout the litigation is risky

One factor however, weighed substantially against approving the settlement: the many negative reactions of class members, which Judge Chin summarized as follows:

1. Adequacy of class notice. Judge Chin rejected this objection.
2. Adequacy of class representation.  Judge Chin found there to be an issue regarding the existence of competing interests between class members.
3. Scope of relief under Rule 23.  The judge found that the scope of the settlement goes beyond permissible bounds in several respects.  First, the settlement reshapes copyright law related to orphan works and affects international copyright law, which are matters more properly determined by Congress.  Second, the settlement goes far beyond the boundaries of the complaint, which was limited to the scanning and display of "snippets" by giving Google the ability to digitize and sell copies of millions of books, including books still protected by copyright.  Third, the interests of some class members have not been adequately represented, such as academic authors who may prefer free access to their copyrighted books and the copyright holders to orphan works, who have a conflict of interest with Google.  Fourth, the agreement violates copyright law by requiring copyright holders to take affirmative action to prevent the scanning of their books.  Fifth, the settlement grants Google a monopoly over orphan books and increased Google's position in the search market.  Sixth, some objectors have concerns that consumers will lose privacy in their reading habits to Google, but Judge Chin rejected this concern due to Google's safeguards.  Seventh and lastly, despite the removal of certain foreign works from the ASA, foreign copyright holders continue to object that the settlement will affect their works and violate the international copyright law.

So what's next?  In closing, Judge Chin informed the parties that he may approve the settlement if it were changed to an "opt-in" agreement from an "opt-out" agreement.  This option is extremely unattractive to Google because it significantly decreases Google's ability to exploit the books it has digitized so far.

So what is next?  A status conference is scheduled for April 25.  Google has not yet publicly responded to the court's decision.  Settlement does not seem very likely.  An "opt-in" settlement agreement accomplishes very little for Google because Google can, and already has, continue to make private agreements with publishers and authors.  Many of us hope that Google will approach Congress to pass copyright reform, such as this legislation that stalled out in Congress in 2008.

While Congress is the appropriate forum for addressing the issue--and not a far-reaching agreement between corporations and private parties--Congress is notorious for leaving the crafting of copyright legislation to large, wealthy, corporate copyright holders.  The voices of libraries, the public, and people who make use of public domain materials are typically ignored.  So although I have been hoping for the settlement to be rejected so that Congress can tackle the problem, there are some serious barriers to the creation of legislation that does not favor corporate interests.  Google will propose legislation very similar to the ASA, except the Registry will be government run and the ability to exploit orphan works will be opened up to other entities.  Companies like Amazon and Microsoft will not like this because Google has a head start on commercializing orphan works.  Congress will ignore provisions meant to assist libraries in digitizing their collections or helping patrons gain access to orphan and out-of-print works. 

Is there any way to make arguments in support of a robust public domain palatable to Congress?

Iantha Haight

Research Attorney and Lecturer in Law

imh24@cornell.edu

 

China Legal Knowledge Database

If you are interested in law from China, you are encouraged to try out China Legal Knowledge Database.   This is the only content officially sanctioned by the People’s Republic of China, and the most extensively used by Chinese attorneys.   CLKD features more than two million records from secondary resources back to 1994—law reviews, journal and newspaper articles, dissertations/theses, and conference proceedings—plus statutes from as early as 1949, and cases from 1979. In addition, laws at both the national and local level are added within days of enactment.

Use it on the web at:

an English interface: http://clkd.cnki.net/

a traditional Chinese interface:  http://law1.cnki.net 

simplified Chinese interface: http://chinalaw.cnki.net

Any of those interfaces lets you easily change over to another.

 

They planned to give us IP-authenticated access, but I find you need to sign in with:

Username:  cornelllaw

Password:    cornellclkd

 

Although the journal articles themselves are in Chinese, it has English keywords, abstracts, article titles, journal titles, and authors, which are all searchable and viewable.  The trial runs through April 8, 2011.  Please let me know if you try it out and what you think, to help the library makes its decision to subscribe or not.

 

Xie xie,

 

Pat Court

Associate Law Librarian

 

 

 

HeinOnline Webinars Rescheduled

The webinars on HeinOnline Searching have been rescheduled for this week on Thursday, March 3, at 10am & 2pm. 

It’s not too late; you can still register for one of these sessions, below. 

Upcoming Webinar: HeinOnline Searching 101 The Basic Fundamentals     This webinar has been rescheduled for this week: Thursday, March 3, 2011 10:00am to 10:45am EST 2:00pm to 2:45pm EST This webinar will focus on basic search techniques and searching options in HeinOnline. Below is a short snapshot of what we will cover during the session:   • Title Lookup Search  • Understanding the electronic table of contents and how it can help you formulate a search  • Reviewing Field & Advanced Search Forms  • How to use facets to narrow search results  • Review of basic Boolean operators (AND, OR)  • Review of proximity and wildcard searching    Sign up for 10am at https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/122053890  Sign up for 2pm at https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/619093115

Original InfoBrief announcement on February 15, 2011

Pat Court

Associate Law Librarian

Submitting Articles to Law Reviews

Handy in one location is “Information for Submitting Articles to Law Reviews & Journals,” fully updated in February 2011 by Nancy Levit and Allen Rostron, law professors at UMKC.  This SSRN document contains information about submitting articles to 202 law reviews and journals, including the methods for submitting an article, any special formatting requirements, how to contact them to request an expedited review, and how to contact them to withdraw an article from consideration.  Also included is a chart of US News ratings of the law schools and William and Lee law review rankings.

Pat Court

Associate Law Librarian

 

Center for Research Libraries

We can make available to you some esoteric legal research materials through Cornell’s membership in the Center for Research Libraries (CRL), an international consortium of university, college, and independent research libraries.  CRL, headquartered in Chicago, acquires and preserves newspapers, journals, documents, archives, and other traditional and digital resources from a global network of sources.  Most of the materials acquired are from outside the United States, and many are from the emerging regions of the world: Africa, the Middle East, Southeast Asia, South Asia, and Latin America.  Cornell faculty, students, and other researchers have liberal access to these rich source materials through interlibrary loan and electronic delivery.

To identify materials that may be of interest to you:

·         Search the CRL online catalog

·         Browse the CRL digital collections (including Chinese Pamphlets and African newspapers)

·         Use a CRL topic guide (including Law, Human Rights, Labor, France, US History)

·         Consult with Member Liaison and Outreach Services Director for research assistance

 

The extensive collection has these monographs, and many more:

Violence against women in North East India: an enquiry

Human rights in Egypt

Empirical studies in corporate finance, taxation and investment

Pleasurable pastimes: seven essays, including judgement awarding capital punishment

               

Learn more about CRL and their incomparable collections from your liaison or at the CRL web site.

 

Pat Court

Associate Law Librarian

 

HeinOnline Webinar

HeinOnline has earned its place as a comprehensive legal research tool.  You probably use it for finding pdfs of journal articles when you have the citation.  Over the last few years, it has developed its searching capabilities to be a first choice for searching journal articles.  Hein is offering a webinar on Thursday, February 24, at 10:00 am and at 2:00 pm on search techniques for HeinOnline.  Sign up at the links below, and you can learn – right at your desk top -- more strategies for improving your searches.

Upcoming Webinar: HeinOnline Searching 101 The Basic Fundamentals     This webinar will be held: Thursday, February 24, 2011 10:00am to 10:45am EST 2:00pm to 2:45pm EST This webinar will focus on basic search techniques and searching options in HeinOnline. Below is a snapshot of what we will cover during the session:   • Title Lookup Search  • Understanding the electronic table of contents and how it can help you formulate a search  • Reviewing Field & Advanced Search Forms  • How to use facets to narrow search results  • Review of basic Boolean operators (AND, OR)  • Review of proximity and wildcard searching    Sign up for 10am at https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/871521891 Sign up for 2pm at https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/732671170

Pat Court

Associate Law Librarian

Title 51 of the U.S. Code

Some things we just KNOW – the sky is blue, ALL of the Supreme Court decisions are officially published in U.S. Reports, and that the U.S. Code has 50 titles.  But no longer.  While we were busy winding down the semester and grading exams and papers, Congress added Title 51 to the U.S. Code.  Title 51 is National and Commercial Space Programs, the compilation of general laws regarding space programs, which rearranges sections from titles 15, 42, and 49. It was signed by President Barack Obama on December 18, 2010, creating Public Law 111-314, 124 Stat. 3443 (H.R. 3237).  You can access Title 51 on Lexis but not yet on Westlaw.

 

In fact, plans are underway for the next new titles:

Title 52:  Voting and Elections

Title 53:  Small Business

Title 54:  National Park System

Title 55:  Environment

 

And they are working on reorganization of Title 35, Patents, Trademarks and other Intellectual Property and Title 41, Public Contracts.

 

Just wanted to make sure that if you discuss the U.S. Code in your classes or writings, that you are aware of the new Title 51!

 

Plus ça change…

 

Pat Court

Associate Law Librarian

 

Survey on our Federal Depository

Cornell Law Library is a Federal Depository Library, officially designated to have U.S. federal documents and information for you, the university, and the community.  Primarily, we receive the law-related materials, such as U.S. Reports, the official U.S. Code, the Code of Federal Regulations, Congressional documents, the federal budget, and much more.  We are obligated to organize and help you use the materials, in print and on the web, which come to us at no charge.

The Federal Depository Library Program (FDLP) is conducting a web survey this month to learn what you think of the value of the program.  The survey is at http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/HSLCRRB and is available until February 28, 2011.  At the conclusion of the survey, we will receive a report with aggregated responses and comments from our Law Library users, which will be used to help us determine the value of the FDLP here and to facilitate the development of outcomes-based performance measures.

If we are doing our jobs well, the federal documents are a seamless part of the Cornell Law Library collection and services.  Our aim is to integrate the federal documents with all the other materials in the library.  I encourage you to complete the web survey and let us know how we are doing!

Pat Court

Associate Law Librarian

pat.court@cornell.edu

 

Borrow Direct

One of the fastest ways that you can borrow a library book that is not in the Cornell University Library collection is to use Borrow Direct.  Even faster than traditional Interlibrary Loan, you can send your request for a loan directly to one of the participating libraries, and within four days you should have the book in hand!

The original participants are Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Princeton, and Penn.  And now, we have gained access to 25 million more volumes as Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have joined Borrow Direct.  This will increase the number of volumes available from more than 45 million to almost 70 million.  This is a popular service among Cornell researchers, who made more than 21,000 requests to Borrow Direct in 2010. 

When you search for a book in the Cornell Library Catalog, you will see the suggestion to try Borrow Direct when the book is checked out to someone else, or if it is on Reference and not available to be checked out, or is not owned by Cornell.  Just click on Borrow Direct from that screen, and follow the directions from there.  

Here’s the fine print:  Materials are available within four working days of the request and can be borrowed for six weeks, with the option for another six-week renewal. The borrowed items are subject to recall by the owning libraries and are subject to the same overdue fines as Cornell-owned books.

Try it out and see how fast and easy Borrow Direct can be!  Feel free to contact me or your librarian liaison with any questions.

Pat Court

Associate Law Library

pat.court@cornell.edu

 

Financial Crisis Inquiry Report

Now Available:  The Financial Crisis Inquiry Report, published by the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, investigating  the causes of the financial and economic crisis of 2007-2010.

On May 20, 2009, President Obama signed into law an Act that established the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission to "examine the causes, domestic and global, of the current financial and economic crisis in the United States." During the course of its investigation, the ten person bipartisan committee reviewed millions of pages of documents, interviewed more than 700 witnesses, and held 19 days of public hearings in New York, Washington, D.C., and communities across the country that were hit hard by the crisis.

The final report presents the Commission's findings and conclusions and also contains 126 pages of dissenting views. The Commission terminates sixty days following the release of its final report.

Cornell Law Library will have a print copy soon of the 662 page report. Right now, you can read it on the web at http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/GPO-FCIC/pdf/GPO-FCIC.pdf.  Let me know if you’d like to see the print version when it arrives.

 

Pat Court
Associate Law Librarian
pat.court@cornell.edu