...an online environment for people to learn about, discuss, and react to selected rules (regulations) proposed by federal agencies.

White House on health care

CNN news story

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)

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....

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+)

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.

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

Other interested Cleveland residents may consider becoming patrons of the Cleveland Public Library.

Andy Dorchak

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.

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

Committee on Rules

Cheryl Cheatham

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.]

Andrew Plumb-Larrick