Law Commons^™

Understanding The "Other" International Agreements, Ryan Harrington

AALL/LexisNexis Call for Papers

The President routinely enters into international agreements with foreign states that circumvent the requirements in the Treaty Clause, leaving many researchers with a cloudy

understanding of the international agreement-making process in the United States. In many instances, Congress has preauthorized the President to negotiate and conclude an international commitment. In others, the majority of both houses of Congress, rather than two-thirds of the Senate, approve of an international agreement. Even more troublingly, in the last half century, the United States has come to rely on yet another form of international agreements, called “political commitments,” that create nonlegally binding expectations and …

Flying The Flag, Aaron S. Kirschenfeld

AALL/LexisNexis Call for Papers

This paper analyzes the accuracy with which descriptions of subsequent negative treatment are applied by an online citator system that employs a hierarchical controlled vocabulary -- Shepard's Citations -- as opposed to one that does not -- KeyCite. After a contextual review of the citator's history, a framework for assessment is proposed and employed to test the hypothesis that a citator employing a hierarchical controlled vocabulary would produce more accurate descriptions. The study's results suggest that a system making use of a hierarchical controlled vocabulary does apply descriptions of subsequent negative treatment in a marginally more accurate way. A discussion …

On Writing With Adverbs, James M. Donovan

AALL/LexisNexis Call for Papers

The standard rules for good writing dictate that adverbs should be avoided. They undermine the effectiveness of the text, and detract from the author’s point. Students and teachers of legal writing have incorporated this general rule, leading them not only to avoid adverbs in their own writings, but also to overlook them in the writings of others, including statutes and cases. However, as Michael Oakeshott has argued, law happens not in the rules but in the adverbs. To become desensitized to the power of adverbs, or to presume that they are weak and unnecessary, leads the reader not only to …

What About The Majority? Considering The Legal Research Practices Of Solo And Small Firm Attorneys, Joseph D. Lawson

AALL/LexisNexis Call for Papers

Solo and small firm practitioners account for the majority of attorneys practicing in the United States. However, they are regularly underrepresented in studies of attorneys’ research practices, which tend to focus on attorneys in larger practice settings. This article reports the results of a local survey in which more than 80 percent of respondents fell into this forgotten demographic. Comparison of the local study with a recent national survey demonstrates that greater consideration of smaller firms could lead to a different understanding of fee-based online resource usage among the demographic, which may have widespread implications for public and academic law …

The Unc Law Library's Redaction Of Its Digitized Collection Of North Carolina Supreme Court Briefs: A Case Study, Nicole Downing

AALL/LexisNexis Call for Papers

This study evaluates the digital redaction process as undertaken by the University of North Carolina Kathrine R. Everett Law Library as part of digitizing their collection of North Carolina Supreme Court briefs. New privacy concerns are raised by digitizing court documents and making them available online. Libraries have an interest in digitizing their print collections of court documents for public access on the Internet, but have received no clear guidance on how to proceed in the face of legal concerns. The purpose of this research is to inform libraries of the legal, ethical, and practical situation surrounding redaction of digitized …

How May We Help? Perspectives On Law Librarian Support Of Students In Law School Clinics, Virginia Neisler

AALL/LexisNexis Call for Papers

In the face of economic pressures and educational policy challenges, law schools nationwide have begun to shift away from doctrinal teaching toward practice-oriented instruction. Legal research instruction is also in flux, with research instructors and law librarians attempting to prepare students for real-world research. Law school clinics offer unique opportunities for law librarians to support students as they engage in real-world legal research. To explore the legal research skills required by clinical work as well as the research support and instruction students currently receive, interviews were conducted with 14 clinicians. The goal of this study is twofold. First, to identify …

The Invention Of Legal Research, Joseph L. Gerken

AALL/LexisNexis Call for Papers

No abstract provided.

Does Form Follow Function?: Academic Law Libraries' Ogranizational Structures For Collection Development, Connie Lenz, Helen Wohl

AALL/LexisNexis Call for Papers

While academic law libraries devote a large portion of their budgets to creating and maintaining their collections, little has been written about the organizational structures for the full range of collection development functions in these libraries. To explore this issue, the ALL-SIS Collection Development Committee surveyed nineteen academic law libraries, asking detailed questions about the libraries’ collection development practices and organizational structures, with the aim of defining what organizational forms best support collection development functions. This article begins by defining collection development functions, and reviewing law library literature examining organizational structures for collection development. The article then presents the findings …