Legal Writing and Research Commons^™

Searching Govinfo.Gov/, Bert Chapman

Libraries Faculty and Staff Presentations

This U.S. Government Publishing Office (GPO) database provides access to information legal, legislative, and regulatory information produced on multiple subjects by the U.S. Government. Content includes congressional bills, congressional committee hearings and prints (studies), reports on legislation, the text of laws, regulations, and executive orders and multiple U.S. Government information resources covering subjects from accounting to zoology.

The Role Of U.S. Government Regulatioms, Bert Chapman

Libraries Faculty and Staff Presentations

Provides detailed coverage of information resources on U.S. Government information resources for federal regulations. Features historical background on these regulations, details on the Federal Register and Code of Federal Regulations, includes information on individuals can participate in the federal regulatory process by commenting on proposed agency regulations via https://regulations.gov/, describes the role of presidential executive orders, refers to recent and upcoming U.S. Supreme Court cases involving federal regulations, and describes current congressional legislation seeking to give Congress greater involvement in the federal regulatory process.

A Theory Of Federalization Doctrine, Gerald S. Dickinson

Articles

The doctrine of federalization—the practice of the U.S. Supreme Court consulting state laws or adopting state court doctrines to guide and inform federal constitutional law—is an underappreciated field of study within American constitutional law. Compared to the vast collection of scholarly literature and judicial rulings addressing the outsized influence Supreme Court doctrine and federal constitutional law exert over state court doctrines and state legislative enactments, the opposite phenomenon of the states shaping Supreme Court doctrine and federal constitutional law has been under-addressed. This lack of attention to such a singular feature of American federalism is striking and has resulted in …

Self-Determination In American Discourse: The Supreme Court’S Historical Indoctrination Of Free Speech And Expression, Jarred Williams

Honors Theses

Within the American criminal legal system, it is a well-established practice to presume the innocence of those charged with criminal offenses unless proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. Such a judicial framework-like approach, called a legal maxim, is utilized in order to ensure that the law is applied and interpreted in ways that legislative bodies originally intended.

The central aim of this piece in relation to the First Amendment of the United States Constitution is to investigate whether the Supreme Court of the United States has utilized a specific legal maxim within cases that dispute government speech or expression regulation. …

Portrait Of A Transplant Artist, Kim Brooks

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

This article explores the process of norm migration through the study of one tax expert, Victor Thuronyi. It situates the literature on the role of experts in tax norm migration and identifies core themes and gaps in the tax transplant literature; explores five themes, connected to the literature on the role of tax experts and tax transplants, that arise from a study of Victor Thuronyi’s contributions to tax transplantation; and concludes with some reflections on the benefits and challenges of having highly specialized, non-insider tax experts engaged in the exercise of drafting tax laws.

A Reconsideration Of Copyright's Term, Kristelia A. García, Justin Mccrary

Publications

For well over a century, legislators, courts, lawyers, and scholars have spent significant time and energy debating the optimal duration of copyright protection. While there is general consensus that copyright’s term is of legal and economic significance, arguments both for and against a lengthy term are often impressionistic. Utilizing music industry sales data not previously available for academic analysis, this Article fills an important evidentiary gap in the literature. Using recorded music as a case study, we determine that most copyrighted music earns the majority of its lifetime revenue in the first five to ten years following its initial release …

Feminist Statutory Interpretation, Kim Brooks

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

Leading Canadian scholar Ruth Sullivan describes the act of statutory interpretation as a mix of art and archeology. The collection, Feminist Judgments: Rewritten Tax Opinions, affirms her assessment. If the act of statutory interpretation requires us to deploy our interdisciplinary talents, at least somewhat unmoored from the constraints of formal expressions of legal doctrine, why haven’t feminists been more inclined to write about statutory interpretation? Put another way, some scholars acknowledge that judges “are subtly influenced by preconceptions, endemic privilegings and power hierarchies, and prevailing social norms and ‘conventional’ wisdom.” Those influences become the background for how judges read legislation. …

Law Library Blog (November 2018): Legal Beagle's Blog Archive, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Law Library Newsletters/Blog

No abstract provided.

Two Pedagogies In Search Of Synergy, Lisa Schultz, Susan Nevelow Mart

Publications

Anyone who has taught a first-year legal research course understands the dilemma: How do we weave research skills into the writing program without sacrificing the quality or quantity of either discipline? In fact, it is difficult and time consuming to interweave any serious legal research instruction into a first-year writing course. What the students need to know is not just how to do a little case law research or how to find a statute: they need to also know how to formulate a research plan, how to evaluate a database, what kind of search works in different information environments, and …

Tracking Colorado Legislation, Robert Linz

Publications

No abstract provided.

Memorandum, Masterpiece Cakeshop, Ltd. V. Colo. Civil Rights Comm., __ U.S. __ (2017): Legislative History Of Sb08-200, Matt Simonsen

Research Data

This legal Memorandum on the legislative history of a 2008 amendment to the Colorado Anti-Discrimination Act (CADA) was researched and written by Matt Simonsen, J.D. Candidate 2019, University of Colorado Law School, and submitted to law professors Craig Konnoth and Melissa Hart. The Memorandum is cited in Brief of Amici Curiae Colorado Organizations and Individuals in Support of Respondents, Masterpiece Cakeshop, Ltd. v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, __U.S.__ (2018) (No. 16-111).

4 p.

"The legislative history primarily identifies two issues that SB08-200 was designed to resolve: (1) the need for dignity and access to justice for LGBT people and …

Master File, Masterpiece Cakeshop, Ltd. V. Colo. Civil Rights Comm., __ U.S. __ (2017): Legislative History Of Sb08-200, Matt Simonsen

Research Data

This Master File of the legislative history of a 2008 amendment to the Colorado Anti-Discrimination Act (CADA) was researched and compiled by Matt Simonsen, J.D. Candidate 2019, University of Colorado Law School, and submitted to law professors Craig Konnoth and Melissa Hart. The SB08-200 Master File is cited in Brief of Amici Curiae Colorado Organizations and Individuals in Support of Respondents, Masterpiece Cakeshop, Ltd. v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, __U.S.__ (2018) (No. 16-111).

449 p.

Introducing Govinfo: A New Source For Federal Government Documents Online, Erik Beck

Publications

No abstract provided.

Protecting The Watchdog: Using The Freedom Of Information Act To Preference The Press, Erin C. Carroll

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The fourth estate is undergoing dramatic changes. Many newspaper reporters, already surrounded by a growing number of empty desks, are shifting their focus away from costly investigative reporting and towards amassing Twitter followers and writing the perfect “share line.” Newspapers’ budgets can no longer robustly support accountability journalism and pitching fights against the government. And so, while this busier and noisier media environment may have a desirable democratizing effect—more of us are able to participate in analyzing, debating, and perhaps even making the news—it has not succeeded in filling a role that print journalists have traditionally played well—keeping watch on …

Legislation And Regulation In The Core Curriculum: A Virtue Or A Necessity?, James J. Brudney

Faculty Scholarship

The first-year curriculum at American law schools has been remarkably stable for more than 100 years. Many would say ossified. At Harvard, the First-Year Course of Instruction in 1879-80 consisted of Real Property, Contracts, Torts, Criminal Law and Criminal Procedure, and Civil Procedure. These five courses-focused heavily on judge-made common law-dominated Harvard's IL curriculum from the law school's founding into the 21st century. The same five subjects have long commanded the primary attention of first-year students at Fordham, founded in 1905, and at virtually every other U.S. law school throughout the 20th century. Starting in the 1990s, however, a growing …

Cu Law Library Launches New Resource For Historical Colorado Statutory Research, Robert M. Linz

Publications

No abstract provided.

Introduction To The Micro-­‐‑Symposium On Scalia & Garner's “Reading Law”:The Textualist Technician, Karen Petroski

All Faculty Scholarship

Recently, the Green Bag issued a call for short (1,000 words) essays on Reading Law: The Interpretation of Legal Texts, by Antonin Scalia and Bryan Garner. We sought “[a]ny theoretical, empirical, or practical commentary that will help readers better understand the book.” The result is this micro-symposium. Our call drew dozens of micro-essays, some thought-provoking, some chuckle-prompting, and some both. Blessed with an abundance of good work but cursed by a shortage of space, we were compelled to select a small set – representative and excellent – of those essays to publish in the Green Bag and its sibling publication, …

Guest Blog On Skills: Professor Jan Levine's Legislative Drafting Course At Duquesne, Jan M. Levine

Law Faculty Publications

For more than two decades, at three law schools, I have been teaching an advanced legal writing course that builds upon the foundation created in the first-year writing courses and introduces students to new drafting skills, focusing on statutes and statutory drafting. The final project in the course requires students to solve a personally-identified legal or quasi-legal problem by drafting a report and a statute, ordinance, regulation, procedural rule, or a similar solution.

Uelma - Another First For Colorado, Susan Nevelow Mart

Publications

No abstract provided.

Congratulations To The 2014 Recipients Of The Oakley Advocacy And Pagi Awards!, Susan Nevelow Mart

Publications

No abstract provided.

Other Uses Of Legislative History, Mary Whisner

Librarians' Articles

Although we usually think of using legislative history to determine legislative intent when interpreting statutes, Ms. Whisner shows that legislative documents can be useful for other, less controversial purposes as well.

Why I Do Law Reform, Lawrence W. Waggoner

Articles

In this Article, Professor Waggoner, newly retired, provides a retrospective on his career in law reform. He was inspired to write the Article by a number of articles by law professors explaining why they write. He contrasts law-reform work with law-review writing, pointing out that the work product of a law-reform reporter is directed to duly constituted law-making authorities. He notes that before getting into the law-reform business, he had authored or co-authored law review articles that advocated reform, but he also notes that those articles did not move the law a whit. The articles did, however, lead to his …

Legislative Intent And Legislative History In Michigan, Kincaid C. Brown

Law Librarian Scholarship

Determining legislative intent is one of the key roles that the judicial system plays in Michigan, and legislative history can be a useful tool for evaluating the intent of the legislature when enacting a law. However, legislative history resources can be difficult to gather and some resources may not be persuasive in Michigan courts. This article provides a brief description of the Michigan legislative process, the court’s view of using legislative history to determine legislative intent, and a list of Michigan legislative history resources.

Legal Interpretation: The Window Of The Text As Transparent, Opaque, Or Translucent, George H. Taylor

Articles

It is a common metaphor that the text is a window onto the world that it depicts. In legal interpretation, the metaphor has been developed in two ways – the legal text as transparent or opaque – and the Article proposes a third – the legal text as translucent. The claim that the legal text is transparent has been associated with more liberal methodological approaches. According to this view (often articulated by critics), the legal text does not markedly delimit meaning. Delimitation comes from the interpreters. By contrast, stress on the opacity of the legal text comes from those who …

Writer's Block: Why Punctuation Matters, Part Two, David Spratt

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

No abstract provided.

Misplaced Modifiers - Say What, David Spratt

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

No abstract provided.

Writer's Block - Resolve To Become A Better Writer, David Spratt

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

No abstract provided.

Guiding Patrons To Online Health Information: Can Librarians Be Found Liable?, Elaine Gibson

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

The amount of health information available on the Internet is growing rapidly and information intermediaries are increasingly being asked to help information seekers find and make sense of this information. This activity is for the most part benign from a legal perspective. However, there is a small possibility that, should the intermediary steer an information seeker to information that proves harmful to the seeker, the intermediary may be found liable for injuries incurred. In this paper, we examine the theoretical underpinnings of the relevant laws, clarify the risks, and recommend ways to minimize risk.

Rethinking Crime Legislation: History And Harshness, Victoria Nourse

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

There is a truth about the criminal law that scholars evade as much as they criticize: the criminal law is produced by legislators (rather than the experts). The author states she does not know of any way to make law in a democracy other than through the voters' representatives. And, yet, it is the standard pose of the criminal law scholar to denigrate legislatures and politicians as vindictive, hysterical, or stupid. All of these things may be true but name-calling is a poor substitute for analysis. As in constitutional law, so too in criminal law, it is time to put …

Phoebe's Lament (Symposium: Empirical Research In Commercial Transactions), James J. White

Articles

Assume a bright hypothetical social scientist - call her Phoebe - who is completely ignorant of legal research as it is practiced in today's law schools. Phoebe might speculate about legal research as follows. First, she would note that the law schools are joined with and are the exclusive source of the practitioners of a profession. Second, she would note that commercial and legal actors rub up against and are influenced by the law in countless ways every day. Third, she might remark that this interaction occurs practically on the doorsteps of our law schools. Unlike anthropologists, who may have …