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

E-Repository

It was just one year ago that the law librarians met with you over a faculty luncheon to discuss Scholarship@Cornell Law, the e-repository that contains articles written by our law faculty, students, and visitors.  In the past year, there have been 84,560 full text downloads from the repository, a number that may surprise you.  The number that surprises and delights me is this one: 

 

243,910 full text downloads since the repository started in 2003!

 

These downloads often are by researchers who do not rely on SSRN for articles.  Our repository is discoverable by search engines like Google and Bing, so lawyers, scholars, students, and others around the world looking for legal information will find your articles in this repository. 

 

If you ever find that we lack one of your recent articles in the repository, please let me know so we can be sure to add it.  You and I both will enjoy seeing those numbers rise and having Cornell Law School’s scholarship spread broadly.

 

Pat Court

Associate Law Librarian

pat.court@cornell.edu  

 

Lexis for Microsoft Office

Lexis® for Microsoft® Office is now available, enabling you to research and write at the same time within your Microsoft® Word document with just one click.  Some of the key features of Lexis® for Microsoft® Office for Faculty include:

 

Enhanced Grading Experience:

Lexis for Microsoft Office helps you validate the citations in your students’ documents without ever leaving them by adding Shepard’s Signal™ indicators and links for each cite. With just one click, Lexis for Microsoft Office adds Shepard’s Signal indicators and direct links to the citations in the document. You can also create a list of all the citations in the document for even quicker review.

 

Streamline Your Scholarly Writing:

Lexis for Microsoft Office allows you to quickly find more cases, briefs, motions, and pleadings while you are performing scholarly research or reviewing documents. With one click, you can perform a search of Lexis materials (cases, statutes & analytical material) in addition to searching the open web (Google, Bing and Lexis Web) without having to leave the document.

 

To download Lexis® for Microsoft® Office you can follow this link. If you have questions about using Lexis® for Microsoft® Office or the download process, please contact your Library Liaison.

 

Pat Court

Associate Law Librarian

pat.court@cornell.edu  

 

Law Library Prize for Exemplary Student Research

To recognize excellence in research by our law students, the Law Library is inaugurating the Cornell Law Library Prize for Exemplary Student Research.  Librarian judges will be looking for sophistication, originality, or unusual depth or breadth in the use of research materials; exceptional innovation in research strategy; and skillful synthesis of research results.  Papers must be at least 10 pages, written June 2010-May 2011, by current 2L, 3L, or LL.M. students.  Acceptable papers may include, but are not limited to, papers written for a class or a journal note, but not work product from employment.  First prize is $500; second prize is $250, awarded  May 13, 2011, and will have the opportunity to be published in Scholarship@Cornell Law, our digital repository of law faculty and student publications.

 

You are encouraged to invite your students to submit their papers to this research competition.  If you find a well-researched paper as you are grading this semester, please let the students know about this new prize and encourage them to apply.  Applications are to include a one page abstract (500 words or less) summarizing the research process involved, the lessons learned from that research process, the original purpose for which the paper was written, and the professor for whom the paper was written, if applicable.

 

Let me know if you have questions about this new Prize for Exemplary Student Research.  We look forward to having many papers from which to choose!              

                                                        

Pat Court

Associate Law Librarian

pat.court@cornell.edu