Legal Writing and Research Commons^™

The Prospects For Change: The Question Of Justice In A Law & Society Framework, Michael W. Raphael

Graduate Student Publications and Research

What is the law and society framework and where has it gotten us? A student in a classroom might raise their hand and offer "understanding legal pluralism" as a possible answer. However, the conceptual problem with legal pluralism is the coexistence of potentially conflicting bases of justification. Given this, desiring to understand how the law shapes the structural underpinnings of whichever "legal" phenomena and its "ongoing transformation", is nevertheless an immense achievement that stops short of its underlying goal – the achievement of human dignity through human rights. For example, to talk about 'multi-stakeholder consultations' and other pithy phrases that …

Sources Of Information On The Trans-Pacific Partnership, Barbara H. Garavaglia

Articles

The Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP) is a free trade agreement between 12 countries in the Asia Pacific region: Australia, Brunei Darussalam, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, the United States, and Vietnam. The agreement, signed by the U.S. and other participating countries in Auckland, New Zealand on February 4, 2016, “promotes economic integration to liberalise trade and investment” and “bring economic growth” to the region and participating countries. One reason for the sense of uncertainty, unease, and concern surrounding free trade agreements in general and the TPP in particular is that the negotiations are not public and …

A Golden Opportunity: Legal Research Simulation Courses, Leslie A. Street, Shawn G. Nevers

Library Staff Publications

No abstract provided.

Crossing Borders: Adventures In International Legal Research, Anne Burnett

Presentations

An overview of the resources and processes for researching international law topics in classroom H.

Real Resources For Researching Ip Law, Anne Burnett

Presentations

A presentation on strategies for researching intellectual property law in classroom I.

Discovering The Knowledge Monopoly Of Law Librarianship Under The Dikw Pyramid, Alex Zhang

Scholarly Articles

This article uses the Data-Information-Knowledge-Wisdom (DIKW) pyramid to help identify the exclusive knowledge base and practical skills that law librarians must possess to solve practical problems. Paragraphs 4–24 trace the historical debates on whether law librarianship is a profession, which focus on autonomy as a key component of a profession. The consensus is that autonomy boils down to two major issues: identifying problems and providing solutions through exclusive methods that are restricted to a profession. Both require a solid and exclusive abstract knowledge base. Paragraphs 25–77 discuss the epistemological approaches employed thus far to identify a knowledge basis for library …

Unh School Of Law Ip Library: 20th Anniversary Reflection On The Only Academic Ip Library In The United States, Jon R. Cavicchi

Law Faculty Scholarship

[Excerpt] The UNH School of Law Intellectual Property Library celebrates its twentieth anniversary this year. It is a fortuitous time for this look back and for strategic considerations for the future. This anniversary comes at a time in the history of legal education when conditions over the past few years have intensified the analysis of mission and resources for law school libraries. This article is a retrospective review of the history and dynamics surrounding the founding and first twenty years of growth. It is also an analysis of the future growth and mission of the IP Library during times that …

Rejected For Exposure, Jessica Hanes, Seth Quidachay-Swan

Law Librarian Scholarship

A story published recently in the Detroit News about a Michigan man “asserting a constitutional right to take ‘ballot selfies’ by challenging the state’s long-standing ban on voting station and polling place photography” sparked our interest in whether generational social media preferences might be the driving force for citizens who seek to overturn such laws. After all, the plaintiff is among the earliest born into the Millennial generation, over half of which (55%) have shared a selfie on social media as of 2014, a practice that has become ubiquitous even in politics.

Third Circuit Court Reports (1789-1879), Joel Fishman

Law Faculty Publications

The history of court reporting of the federal lower judiciary dates from the early days of the Republic. Mr. Fishman helps to document that history by reviewing the publication of the reports for the Third Circuit ( circuit and district courts) covering the nominative reports from the late-eighteenth to the late-nineteenth century, before their republication in Federal Cases by West Publishing Company. A bibliography is appended.

Sailing Through Law School: Assessing Legal Research Skills Within The Information Literacy Framework, David H. Michels

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

In this study I ask the question: Can standardized information literacy tests help assess and benchmark the learning of information skills by Canadian law students? This study replicates an earlier study that found that a standardized test of information literacy competencies, SAILS, was not an effective measure of law student information literacy levels. By applying the same test under similar conditions to another group of law students, I found that while the test did not measure legal research competencies, it was effective in measuring basic information literacy skills in law students with often surprising results. I argue that legal research …

Discovering The Knowledge Monopoly Of Law Librarianship Under The Dikw Pyramid, Alex Xiaomeng Zhang

Faculty Scholarship

Historical debates demonstrated that knowledge monopoly is a key to a profession. This article explores the exclusive knowledge base of the law librarianship profession through the lens of the Data-Information-Knowledge-Wisdom (DIKW) paradigm.

Law School Institutional Repositories: A Survey, Kincaid C. Brown

Law Librarian Scholarship

There has been a dramatic rise in the number of law libraries managing institutional repositories for their law schools. In 2011, there were some 30 law schools with such repositories; now, 80 of the top 100 law schools have their own or participate in a university-wide repository wherein the law school has an identifiable, school-specific collection or community. This article discusses a survey of the of the top 101 law schools, in hopes of facilitating an understanding of the breadth of material to be found in law school institutional repositories.

Discovering The Knowledge Monopoly Of Law Librarianship Under The Dikw Pyramid, Xiaomeng Zhang

Law Librarian Scholarship

Historical debates demonstrated that knowledge monopoly is a key to a profession. This article explores the exclusive knowledge base of the law librarianship profession through the lens of the Data-Information-Knowledge-Wisdom (DIKW) paradigm.

Book Review. Locating U.S. Government Information Handbook, 3rd Ed. By E. Herman And T. Belniak, Jennifer Morgan

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

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

Other Faculty Publications

Colorado legal researchers have a new tool for statutory research. The University of Colorado's William A. Wise Law Library (Law Library or CU Law Library) has completed a digitization project of Colorado session laws. The collection contains PDF files of session law volumes from 1861 (when the Territory of Colorado was created) through 1992. The collection is available at lawlibrary.colorado.edu/colorado-session-laws. This article describes the need for such a collection, how it was created, and how to search it.

Podia And Pens: Dismantling The Two-Track System For Legal Research And Writing Faculty, Kristen K. Tiscione, Amy Vorenberg

Law Faculty Scholarship

At the 2015 AALS Annual Meeting, a panel was convened under this title to discuss whether separate tracks and lower status for legal research and writing (“LRW”) faculty make sense given the current demand for legal educators to better train students for practice. The participants included law professors, an associate dean, and a federal judge.2 Each panelist was asked to respond to questions about the “two-track” system—a shorthand phrase for the two tracks of employment at many law schools whereby full-time LRW faculty are treated differently than tenured and tenure-track faculty. The panelists represented differing views on the topic. This …

W&L Law Fall Scholarship Celebration 2015, Brant J. Hellwig

Library Events

On September 30, 2015, the Washington and Lee Law Library hosted a Fall Scholarship Celebration. The event took place in the Law Library's third floor reading room from 4:30 to 6:30 p.m.

On display were dozens of scholarly articles, books, chapters, and amicus briefs authored by the W&L Law faculty and student body during 2014 and 2015, with hundreds of additional works accessible online through the Scholarly Commons institutional repository.

Faculty, librarians, staff, and administrators mingled with law students over hors d'oeuvres and wine to peruse the formidable scholarly output of the W&L Law community. Spouses, alumni, faculty from W&L's …

Possible Futures For The Legal Treatise In An Environment Of Wikis, Blogs, And Myriad Online Primary Law Sources, Peter W. Martin

Cornell Law Faculty Working Papers

Major law publishers have begun producing ebook versions of some of the legal treatises they own. Despite asserted advantages over both print and online versions of the same content, these represent a step back from what treatises have become within the major online services and even further from what they might become now that numerous sources of primary law are directly accessible via the Internet.

The article traces the corporate and technological developments that have placed existing treatises in their present posture. Drawing upon the author’s own work preparing a legal treatise designed for digital rather print delivery, it reviews …

The Open Access Advantage For American Law Reviews, Carol Watson, James M. Donovan, Caroline Osborne

Presentations

Open access within legal academia provides a case study for the effective use of digital formats to promote scholarship. The presenters review the background historical developments in this field, and consider the benefits and rationales for providing open access to legal scholarship, including the special faculty concerns arising from SSRN and its relationship to the institutional repository. Results from the presenters’ recent empirical study of the citation advantage for open access scholarship in American law reviews will be discussed and placed in broader context of the benefits of open access scholarship.

The Beginnings Of The Journal Of Food Law & Policy, Michael T. Roberts

Journal of Food Law & Policy

In the first sentence of the introduction to the inaugural edition of the Journal for Food Law & Policy, Margie Alsbrook, the founding Editor-in-Chief, and I, the founding faculty advisor, stated: "It is with great pride and pleasure that we present the inaugural issue of the Journal for Food Law & Policy." In celebration of the Journal's tenth anniversary, I am inclined to echo the same sentiment, but with the added proviso: "surprised!" I confess being gravely concerned ten years ago over the Journal's survivability. Food law and policy was then barely in its formative stage. The nascent, social food …

Inspiring Public Trust In The Domestic Legal System: The Impact Of The Extraordinary Chambers In The Courts Of Cambodia (Eccc), Jung Min Shin

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

No abstract provided.

Legal Research Using Technological Tools: Librarians' View, Lauren M. Collins, Susan Silver, Whitney Curtis

Law Faculty Contributions to Books

The technology revolution has impacted every aspect of our daily lives. It is hard to imagine a world without smartphones and the Internet. Where and how we access information has changed dramatically over the last decade. Gone are the days of traveling to the library check out books and read printed journal articles. No longer simply storehouses of print information, libraries but now serve as starting points for searching online information that can be be accessed anywhere, any time and on any device. Library research that used to take hours or days can now be done in minutes. Online materials …

Technology And Legal Research: What Is Taught And What Is Used In The Practice Of Law, Rebecca Sewanee Trammell

CCAC Theses and Dissertations

Law schools are criticized for graduating students who lack the skills necessary to practice law. Legal research is a foundational ability necessary to support lawyering competency. The American Bar Association (ABA) establishes standards for legal education that include a requirement that each law student receive substantial instruction in legal skills, including legal research. Despite the recognized importance of legal research in legal education, there is no consensus of what to teach as part of a legal research course or even how to teach such a course.

Legal educators struggle to address these issues. The practicing bar and judiciary have expressed …

An Incredible Legacy, Kristina L. Niedringhaus

Faculty Publications By Year

No abstract provided.

Every Document Its Depository: Lessons Learned From An Intercampus Transfer, Jennifer L. Behrens

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

In Defense Of Empirical Legal Studies, Christina L. Boyd

Scholarship@WashULaw

The empirical legal studies movement, or ELS, is positioned to provide an important scholarly impact. As noted ELS scholar Theodore Eisenberg once put it, “[a]cross a broad range of legal issues, empirical studies can inform policymakers and the public. Legally trained social scientists have unique opportunities to enhance description and understanding of the legal system.” By all accounts, this influence is well underway. ELS scholarship has been present in law schools since at least the 1920s and is on the rise in recent years, with important empirical insights gained into legal subjects such as error rates in capital punishment convictions, …

Open Legal Educational Materials: The Frequently Asked Questions, James Boyle, Jennifer Jenkins

Faculty Scholarship

There has been considerable discussion in academic circles about the possibility of moving toward open educational materials—those which may be shared, copied and altered freely, without permission or fee. Legal education is particularly ripe for such a transition, as many of the source materials—including federal statutes and cases—are in the public domain. In this article, we discuss our experience producing an open casebook and statutory supplement on Intellectual Property Law, and answer many of the frequently asked questions about the project. Obviously, open coursebooks are less expensive and more convenient for students. But we found that they also offer pedagogical …

Indiana's Government Information Day Focuses On Change, Access & Continuity, Jennifer Morgan, Sally Holterhoff

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

The Lexis Two-Step: After Two Major Updates In 2014, Lexis Advance Empowers Users With Improved Functionality, Beau Steenken

Law Faculty Popular Media

In this article, the author discusses improvements to the Lexis Advance research platform.

Uelma: The Uniform Electronic Legal Material Act, Marlene Coir, Virginia C. Thomas

Library Scholarly Publications

At the federal, state, and local levels, primary legal materials are increasingly being made available to the public in electronic format. It is a matter of great concern to attorneys and legal researchers that these electronic resources routinely include caveats and disclaimers regarding their authenticity and official status. Until recently, however, state and local governments have seldom guaranteed that these resources would be updated, maintained, and securely archived for the benefit of their citizens. In July 2011, the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws approved the text of the Uniform Electronic Legal Material Act (UELMA). As drafted, this …