November 20, 2009
Google Chrome OS
Computerworld (brief article on good and bad features)
Andrew Dorchak at 03:36 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) | categories: New Tools and Databases
November 19, 2009
International Law in Crisis: A Qualitative Empirical Contribution to the Compliance Debate
Professor Michael Scharf has recently posted “International Law in Crisis: A Qualitative Empirical Contribution to the Compliance Debate” on the Social Science Research Network http://ssrn.com/abstract=1499401. Professor Scharf’s paper is based on meetings and exchanges with ten former State Department Legal Advisers about the role of international law’s impact on the formation of foreign policy.
Lisa Peters at 03:09 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) | categories: Empirical Legal Scholarship
Cornell's Regulation Room research site
The Legal Information Institute and Cornell e-Rulemaking Initiative have launched the beta of Regulation Room, to provide:
...an online environment for people to learn about, discuss, and react to selected rules (regulations) proposed by federal agencies.
Carl Plumb-Larrick at 02:19 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0) | categories: legal publishing and information
November 18, 2009
Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act
Download file Senate health care bill (11/18/09, 2074 pages)
White House on health care
CNN news story
Andrew Dorchak at 08:58 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) | categories: legal news
Medical Mart
Plain Dealer article (11/18/09)
Plain Dealer article (11/17/08)
Roldo Bartimole's blog entries (Nov., 2009)
Crain's Cleveland Business article (11/17/09)
Cleveland Magazine blog entry (11/18/09)
MedCity News article ('strong interest' in Cleveland medical mart from 20 companies)
MedCity News article: New York medical mart (11 tenants; four years away)
Tradeshow Week (6/1/09): Nashville dreams of a medical mart
Medical Mart FAQs (2007)
Merchandise Mart Properties, Inc. (overview)
Andrew Dorchak at 04:03 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) | categories: News , legal news
Even more on Google Scholar and cases...
A lot of virtual ink has been spilled this week about Google's inclusion of judicial decisions in Google Scholar. Here are some highlights of the discussion:
Carl Plumb-Larrick at 03:42 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) | categories: FreeSearch , legal publishing and information
November 17, 2009
New Westlaw OnePass Security Requirements--All Users Must Switch by January 31, 2010
New Westlaw OnePass Security Requirements
—All Users Must Switch by January 31, 2010
__________________________________________________________
Westlaw is in the process of switching user accounts to a more robust password standard they are calling OnePass. We have been informed of several problems our users have had in changing their accounts over to the new standard, and the law librarians are actively working with West on solutions for the problems we know about. There was no announcement, prior to last week, that West would make this change.
Details and Instructions after the jump....
Judith Kaul at 05:13 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) | categories: Service Alerts
More sources on Google Scholar case law...
Update Weds. - Monica Bay at American Lawyer Media's Common Scold quotes Rick Klau with more detail about Google's sourcing, and has statements from Lexis Nexis and Thomson Reuters.
By way of updates to my own initial take on Google Scholar's inclusion of cases, here are other early sources about the product launch:
The Official Google Blog now has an announcement and description of the service.
Duke Law Library's The Goodson Blogson has a nice write-up, includes important notes about Google Scholar's links to materials available only through library-based subscriptions, and also points out the limitations of this model of searching when compared to the nuance possible (but not always achieved) with Lexis' or Westlaw's boolean Terms & Connectors searching. (They also link the Duke Law Library's useful research guide to Legal Research on the Web.)
The Supreme Court of Texas Blog has a nice illustrated walk-through.
The University of Nebraska's Richard Leiter has a self-described 'mini-review' on his The Life of Books.
Laura Bergus at Social Media Law Student provides a (social-media savvy) 1L's perspective on Google Scholar's case law searching. While her critique of Westlaw/Lexis usability is informative and illustrative, I hope she and her readers do understand the limitations of the Google/ranking approach to the high-recall-required search often required in thorough legal research.
Greg Lambert uses the Google Scholar launch as a springboard for discussing the broader potential for new competition in the legal research marketplace.
Jim Calloway notes the inclusion of Hein Online material in results.
Internet for Lawyers' cites Tim Stanley's and Carl Malamud's Twitter comments for likely database scope:
While there is no documentation on the Scholar site yet regarding coverage of the database, a number of other tweets form reliable sources (including Tim Stanley and Carl Malamud) indicate that it includes:* 1 US 1 (pre 1776)
* 1 F 2d 1 (1924 +)
* F Supp Cases
* US State Cases (1950+)
Carl Plumb-Larrick at 01:56 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0) | categories: FreeSearch , legal publishing and information
Case Law in Google Scholar
Google Scholar has a new radio-button selection on its front page to search for "Legal opinions and journals." This development is at least a useful new free way to quickly obtain the (cut-and-past-able, html) text of known opinions with cited opinions conveniently hyperlinked -- it remains to be seen what, if any, deeper research value the tool will have.
Based on a few minutes of tinkering, the legal opinions that turn up in searches are full-text, hosted by Google, while journal article results tend to be hosted by third parties and/or have only a "citation" result turning up from the Google Scholar search. The 'Advanced Scholar Search' interface also allows the user to limit the search to opinions only from either federal courts or from individual states. The Google-hosted Scholar results do not seem to show up in regular web-search Google results.
Carl Plumb-Larrick at 10:05 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) | categories: FreeSearch , legal publishing and information
November 16, 2009
Revised Google Books Settlement filed
A revised version was filed late Friday night of the proposed settlement of the Author's Guild and Association of American Publishers class-action copyright lawsuit against Google for its Book Search product -- and in particular for the book contents scanned by Google from the collections of major participating research libraries into the "Google Library Project." It is unclear whether the revisions to the settlement, originally proposed in October 2008, will satisfy the Department of Justice's anti-trust concerns or the concerns of the other objectors.
Library representatives have, of course, been among those most involved in monitoring the lawsuit, and the consequences to the electronic book marketplace likely to result from its settlement.
The official settlement administration website includes the text of the agreement and the forms for rights-holders to claim works covered by the settlement agreement.
The Public Index (thepublicindex.org)is a project of James Grimmelmann, of the NYU Law School's Institute for Information Law and Policy, that gathers a 'reading room' of lawsuit documents. The site also has a useful redline mark-up of the amended settlement that allows monitoring of the changes since the initial settlement proposed last year, and a 'news timeline' linking selected news stories about the Google project, the lawsuit, and the settlement - from December 2003 to the present. The site also has a collaboratively annotated version of the settlement document, although it has seen a rather low level of participation.
Law Librarian Blog links additional resources.
Library Journal has a write-up post-revision and notes that the DOJ concerns about Google's treatment of orphan works may be unresolved by the amendments.
Andrew Plumb-Larrick
Carl Plumb-Larrick at 10:06 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) | categories: legal news , legal publishing and information
November 13, 2009
Serial Set
The Law Library has acquired the digital U.S. Serial Set. The Serial Set indexes U.S. government documents from 1789-1968. Many of the documents are available in full-text. Access is restricted to currently-affiliated CWRU Law patrons.
Other interested Cleveland residents may consider becoming patrons of the Cleveland Public Library.
Andy Dorchak
Andrew Dorchak at 04:31 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) | categories: New Tools and Databases
News: White House Counsel Gregory Craig Resigns
Breaking news from the New York Times:
Jeff Zeleny,President’s Top Lawyer Is Leaving White House,Nov. 13, 2009 "a departure that was timed to coordinate with a Justice Department announcement that five terrorism suspects held in Guantánamo Bay would face trial in New York." Craig's resignation letter does not mention Guantánamo Bay.
Law.com also has an article on the shake up: Jenna Greene and Mike Scarcella,Gregory Craig Resigns as White House Counsel, Nov. 13, 2009.
Craig's resignation becomes effective January 3, 2010. Robert Bauer, current general counsel to Obama for America as well as general counsel to the Democratic National Committee, will take Craig's place.
Judith Kaul at 03:43 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) | categories: News
The Affordable Health Care for America Act, H.R. 3962
For those following the health reform debate, here are links to the Affordable Health Care for America Act, H.R. 3962, passed November 7, 2009. Links to selected hearings and documents are included.
Committee on Energy and Commerce publications
Committee on Energy and Commerce: House Makes History on Health Reform
Committee on Education & Labor
Committee on Ways and Means
Cheryl Cheatham
Andrew Dorchak at 01:41 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) | categories: legal news
November 12, 2009
Interested in empirical legal research?
A good place to start is reading The University of Chicago Law Review’s “Exchange: Empirical Research and the Goals of Legal Scholarship,” volume 69 (1) (2002).
The exchange begins with the Epstein & King article, “The Rules of Inference”(page 1).
It is followed by three critiques, Cross, Heise, & Sisk’s “Above the Rules: A Response to Epstein and King” (page 135), Goldsmith & Vermeule’s “Empirical Methodology and Legal Scholarship” (page 153), and Revesz’s “A Defense of Empirical Legal Scholarship” (page 169).
Epstein & King get the final word with “A Reply” (page 191).
[Note: access to articles limited to Case faculty, students, and staff. If you are wireless or off campus use VPN.]
Lisa Peters at 05:02 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) | categories: Data and Empirical Tools
November 11, 2009
Westlaw Password Changes
Westlaw is in the process of switching user accounts to a more robust password standard they are calling OnePass. We have received several reports of problems in getting accounts changed over to the new standard, and the law librarians are actively working with West on solutions for the problems we know about. Judy Kaul will post more details here as we have them. In the meantime, please let your librarians know if you have had trouble creating or using a OnePass username.
Andrew Plumb-Larrick
Carl Plumb-Larrick at 02:32 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) | categories: Service Alerts
Bilski Oral Arguments
The U.S. Supreme Court yesterday heard oral arguments in the patent case Bilski v. Kappos, on appeal from the 2008 decision of the Federal Circuit. The Federal Circuit opinion had affirmed the Board of Patent Appeals in denying Bilski's attempt to obtain a process patent on a method of hedging financial risk. The case has been closely watched within the information and technology fields for its impact on the status of so-called 'business method' patents (including, famously, several related to e-commerce).
For news and background:
Orin Kerr at Volokh Cosnpiracy (and linking an article available through SSRN).
Jill Browning at PatentlyO.
Ashby Jones at the Wall Street Journal's Law Blog.
And I was hoping for one of Dahlia Lithwick's entertaining Supreme Court Dispatches from Slate, but it appears she wrote about the Graham v. Florida and Sullivan v. Florida arguments instead (cases regarding the constitutionality of life sentences without parole for juvenile offenders).
Andrew Plumb-Larrick
Carl Plumb-Larrick at 01:45 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) | categories: legal news
November 10, 2009
More about West and legal information competition...
This isn't the forum for yet more extended discussion on this issue, but Tom Bruce has another valuable post on the Berring-video kerfuffle. (Teasingly addressing only one of three points that "need serious attention from the library profession," with the other two left unspecified.) In the post, Prof. Bruce describes West as operating in a very distorted market. I think the most critical observation in this regard may be that the combination of bulk availability of 'raw materials' and the baseline service levels of free tools like LII's may ultimately create a much more fertile environment for smaller, entrepreneurial, commercial services than has previously existed -- and that this may play a role in the sensitivity Bruce sees West displaying in regards to free/bulk legal information. It is certainly true that West (to a greater degree than large commercial competitors Lexis and Bloomberg) has occupied a privileged position in terms of official legal publication, citation systems, and the certification of authenticity.
Andrew Plumb-Larrick
Carl Plumb-Larrick at 10:00 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0) | categories: FreeSearch , legal publishing and information
November 09, 2009
Richard Sonnenfeldt, chief interpreter at Nuremberg
Richard Sonnenfeldt, chief interpreter at Nuremberg, died October 9th, aged 86 (The Economist, Oct. 31st, 2009, at 100).
Deborah Dennison at 10:21 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) | categories: News