Legal Writing and Research Commons^™

New Research Uses For Patent And Trademark Data, Roger V. Skalbeck

Law Faculty Publications

In this article, I examine alternative uses for information found in patent and trademark filing databases, suggesting ways to locate a law firm's clients, perform competitive intelligence, and locate or investigate expert witnesses. Finally, I talk about an interesting non-law use of patent data, i.e., historical research.

Virginia Law: It’S Online, But Should You Use It?, Timothy L. Coggins

Law Faculty Publications

A judge asks you to present her with a copy of the Virginia Code section you are referencing in court, or she asks you to provide a copy of the Supreme Court of Virginia opinion you cited. You used Virginia state government websites to find both the code section and the court opinion. This is easy, right? You give her the copy of what you found online. But could there be a problem? Is the court opinion that you retrieved from the court website considered an official version of the court opinion? Has the Virginia Code section that you provided …

From The Treasurer: Aall Funds Initiatives, Joyce Manna Janto

Law Faculty Publications

Report of AALL financial status at the end of FY 2005-2006.

Have You Reddit? Exploring Ways To Digg Some Del.Icio.Us Stories, Roger V. Skalbeck

Law Faculty Publications

Almost anybody who has read an online newspaper or blog recently has probably seen the names del.icio.us, Digg, or reddit. These are three of the most popular social networking sites included in the concept that makes up part of the buzzword Web 2 .0.

Beyond Jetting you collect and share information, these services also have great research and marketing potential. In this article, we explore some of these concepts and how to use them.

Cold Case - One Ordinary Law Librarian Assists In Solving A 53-Year-Old Mystery And Learns A Lesson About How Law Students Treat Legal Research, Joyce Manna Janto

Law Faculty Publications

One ordinary law librarian assists in solving a 53-year-old mystery and learns a lesson about how law students treat legal research.

Law And Technology Podcasts, Roger V. Skalbeck

Law Faculty Publications

This article lists a select handful of useful podcasts covering topics such as technology policy, law, and web development.

From The Treasurer: Another Positive Year For Aall., Joyce Manna Janto

Law Faculty Publications

This article reports on the fiscal health of the American Association of Law Libraries in 2006, including statements of assets and activities.

Barriers In The Land Of The Free, Gary L. Mcdowell

Jepson School of Leadership Studies articles, book chapters and other publications

The best way to get judges to write books is apparently to lure them to the lecterns of prominent lecture series, then turn their remarks into something more permanent. Perhaps the most successful of these schemes was Judge Benjamin Cardozo's 1921 Storrs lectures at the Yale Law School that appeared in the same year as The Nature of the Judicial Process . While a judge on the New York Court of Appeals, before he was elevated to the US Supreme Court in 1932, Cardozo saw two further series of lectures appear in print as The Growth of the Law (1924) …

Is There A New Digital Collection In Your Future?, Roger V. Skalbeck

Law Faculty Publications

In this article, we take a look at a handful of the bigger law-related digital collections available today. We present the core elements of each collection to give readers an idea of what is out there. In addition, we look at some broad-based questions presented by acquiring access to digital collections. Finally, briefly, we look at issues of access, ownership, copyright, interlibrary lending, catalog records, and cost.

From The Treasurer: Aall Current Reserve Fund Restored, Joyce Manna Janto

Law Faculty Publications

This article reports on the fiscal health of the American Association of Law Libraries in 2005, including a comparative statement of revenues and expenses.

Easing The Path For Newer Colleagues: Conference For New Law Librarians Helps Beginners Learn Aall's Ropes, Joyce Manna Janto

Law Faculty Publications

The author provides advice for prospective attendees of the Conference of Newer Law Librarians (CONELL).

Reporting On Terrorism: Choosing Our Words Carefully, Jeffrey A. Dvorkin

University of Richmond Law Review

No abstract provided.

How Dewey Classify Oclc's Lawsuit, Roger V. Skalbeck

Law Faculty Publications

In order to understand the nature of the rights asserted here, it is important to properly classify the Dewey Decimal lawsuit. To these ends, this article presents analysis aimed to better define its scope and legal framework. This is not an analysis of the merits of the claims, let alone a prediction as to the outcome. The issues are considered in the following three sections. In closing, I offer a lighthearted suggestion as to how this suit might be resolved outside of litigation or settlement.

Norms And Signals: Some Skeptical Observations, Paul G. Mahoney

University of Richmond Law Review

Law and Social Norms is just what the growing field of norms scholarship needed. Legal scholars have generated an impressive body of observations about the myriad situations in which individuals pressure one another to act civilly. Eric Posner's book provides a simple, elegant model with very few working parts and promises to go a long way toward connecting these observations to form a coherent whole.

Signaling Or Reciprocating? A Response To Eric Posner's Law And Social Norms, Dan M. Kahan

University of Richmond Law Review

There is an almost heretical disenchantment with law percolating within the legal academy. Conventional wisdom sees law as the natural solution to problems of collective action. When attaining some societal good-for example, a clean environment, a stock of useful technologies, a public education system, or a transportation infrastructure-depends on the willingness of individuals to behave in a manner that is not in their material interest, the law supplies incentives-such as tax abatements for nonpolluters, property rights for inventors, and punishments for tax cheats-that bring individual interests into alignment with collective ones. The problem, though, is that a regime of regulatory …

Meeting By Signals, Playing By Norms: Complementary Accounts Of Nonlegal Cooperation In Institutions, Edward Rock, Michael Wachter

University of Richmond Law Review

Professor Eric A. Posner has written a fascinating book about "Law and Social Norms." In it, he uses an informal signaling model (derived from Michael Spence's formal model) to explain a wide range of striking social behavior, and to show underlying connections among apparently disparate phenomena. Looking at topics as dissimilar as gift giving, family law, criminal law, voting and political participation, and commercial practice, he argues that much of observed social behavior can be understood as the result of attempts to signal that one is a good cooperator.

Predicting Defection, Elmer J. Shaefer

University of Richmond Law Review

Eric Posner's cooperation theory of social norms develops from rational choice theory an austere and powerful explanation of why people comply with social norms. He illustrates his theory with subtle analysis of a number of legal issues. The book will help anyone influenced by law and economics to incorporate into her thinking the work in sociology, psychology, and ethics that bears on human behavior. Most readers will find applications for Posner's theory.

Signaling, Legitimacy, And Compliance: A Comment On Posner's Law And Social Norms And Criminal Law Policy, Tracey L. Meares

University of Richmond Law Review

Although criminal law can be justified with respect to non-utilitarian goals such as retribution, no one can deny that one way to justify criminal law is with respect to the instrumental ends of deterrence. So, one question of interest to scholars in the field has been how to think about the kinds of criminal law policy that encourage compliance. My own work has focused on this important question. Specifically, I have been concerned with the ways in which different kinds of criminal proscriptions, along with certain methods of law enforcement, could affect crime rates in disadvantaged, urban neighborhoods. In undertaking …

The Signaling Model Of Social Norms: Further Thoughts, Eric A. Posner

University of Richmond Law Review

One of the most notable trends in legal scholarship is the explosion of writing on social norms. Just a few years ago one might have argued that the scholarship was marginal, of interest to only a handful of law professors, but expressions of skepticism about the value of this scholarship have become rare. At the same time, it would be wrong to say that "law and social norms" ("LSN") is a movement or school within legal scholarship: the writings about this topic are too diverse, and there is little of that sense of forward movement that is characteristic of more …

Print No More: U.S. Code, Code Of Federal Regulations, And The Federal Register, Timothy L. Coggins

Law Faculty Publications

If the United States Congress follows in the direction that it has been moving recently, the United States Code (2000 edition), the Code of Federal Regulations, the Federal Register, the official United States Reports, along with many other primary legal materials currently published and distributed to libraries through the Federal Depository Library Program (FDLP), will no longer be available in print for attorneys, librarians, legal assistants, and citizens. Congress has directed the Government Printing Office (GPO) to move toward electronic dissemination of materials and is reducing GPO’s funding so significantly that GPO soon may no longer publish these and other …

English Ideas On Legal Education In Virginia, William Hamilton Bryson

Law Faculty Publications

In 1700 the only methods of legal education in England and Virginia were apprenticeship to a practising lawyer, either a barrister, a solicitor or a court clerk, and independent reading of law books; most persons seeking active membership in the legal profession did an apprenticeship supplemented by reading and observing the courts in action. In 1700 the inns of court had long since ceased to provide legal instruction, and the universities in England and Virginia had not yet begun to do so. The obvious importance of legal education was, however, not overlooked on either side of the Atlantic Ocean.

Program Planning-Ideas For Improvement, Joyce Manna Janto

Law Faculty Publications

Picture the scene: you're at the Annual Meeting, it's Tuesday, and you're listening to your fifth "talking head" presentation. At the front of the room are five librarians/speakers, each of whom has exactly 15 minutes to shower you with their words of wisdom on the selected topic. In the audience are scores of librarians, whose eyes are glazing over and whose thoughts are wandering to more congenial topics. Sound familiar? This describes way too many programs at the typical MLL Annual Meeting. Instead of a good, thought-provoking discussion, or vigorous give-and-take between panelists and audience, we get sound bites. Why …

Bringing The "Real World" To Advance Legal Research, Timothy L. Coggins

Law Faculty Publications

Nearly all U.S. law schools include an Advanced Legal Research course as an elective course for second and third-year students. The justification for the course is obvious, and proponents of advanced courses have succeeded easily in convincing law school curriculum committees to approve chem. Most Advanced Legal Research courses also use "real-world figures" (guest speakers) ro supplement and enhance the instruction provided by the professors of the courses.3 The experiences and current positions of rhe "real-world" speakers are diverse, including librarians, attorneys, publisher/vendor representatives, and government officials. This article discusses the reasons for using real-world figures in Advanced Legal Research …

The Aall And Its Government Relations Program: Part I And Ii, Timothy L. Coggins

Law Faculty Publications

The Government Relations Policy [hereinafter Policy] of the AALL outlines the objectives of its government relations program. The Policy emphasizes that a primary goal of this Association's program is to ensure timely and equitable access to government and legal information. This Policy represents the views of an association with more than 5,000 members who provide law library services to government officials, the bench, the bar, legal scholars and the public in nearly 1,900 libraries. AALL, its members and its users are affected by a broad span of public policy concerns "ranging from the development of the National Information Infrastructure and …

The National Conference On Legal Information Issues: Selected Essays, Timothy L. Coggins

Law Faculty Publications

During the past decade, information technology developments have the dissemination and use of legal and legal-related In 1995, the American Association of Law Libraries, a organization with more than 5,000 members, convened the first "National Conference on Legal Information Issues" in conjunction with its eighty-eighth meeting. National Conference provided a forum for members of the legal and information communities to discuss the challenging problems and issues arising from the dynamic technological changes that have impacted the creation, dissemination and use of legal information. The National Conference assembled more than 2,500 librarians, law faculty and deans, judges court administrators, practicing attorneys …

Information Redlining: A List Of Selected Readings, Timothy L. Coggins

Law Faculty Publications

In earlier essays Henry Perritt, Marvin Anderson, Gary Bass and Patrice McDermott discuss the increasing use of computers to access information through the information superhighway, the Internet and online services, the increasing reliance on electronic formats by publishers and the federal government and the continuing debate about "information redlining." They indicate that information redlining is broader than just the availability and effects of technology and enhanced online services on lower income, minority and rural communities. It also deals with what information will be available to these groups. As more and more data comes in digital form and when some information …

Manuscript Selection Anti-Manifesto, Carl W. Tobias

Law Faculty Publications

Joining a conversation begun by James Lindgren, An Author's Manifesto, 61 U. Chi. L. Rev. 527 (1994), Prof. Tobias discusses the process of submission, review, and editorial work on articles published in student-edited law reviews.

An Author's Manifesto (Manifesto) constructively criticizes the amazingly arcane process of law review publication and affords salient suggestions for its improvement. The essay treats two aspects of this process-the selection of manuscripts and the editing of articles which sustain that venerable institution: student-edited law journals. Manifesto regales readers with many terrible tales of travesties which involve article editing but recounts comparatively few sordid stories that …

Defending Pornography: Free Speech, Sex, And The Fight For Women's Rights, Melvin I. Urofsky

University of Richmond Law Review

One of the more interesting, and at times more strident, debates in recent years is between a faction of the feminist coalition, proposing new and harsher methods of eliminating pornography and of punishing those who produce and purvey it, and civil libertarians, including many other feminists, who oppose such measures primarily on First Amendment grounds. The debate extends well beyond the cloistered halls of academe, and is far from arcane or hypothetical.

Twentieth-Century Virginia Legal Periodicals: A Bibliography And Commentary, William Hamilton Bryson

Law Faculty Publications

Periodicals have played an important role in the Virginia legal community, serving as a medium for scholarly legal commentary and debate, for keeping practitioners abreast of developments in the law, and for providing information on current events and activities in the legal community. Although the fundamental purposes of the legal periodical have remained somewhat constant, the number and circulation of Virginia legal periodicals have expanded greatly and, as a result, so has their role in the Virginia legal community. A chronological examination of legal periodicals in twentieth-century Virginia reveals that the role of the legal periodical has significantly increased from …

"Speech Acts" And The First Amendment, Lawrence Friedman

University of Richmond Law Review

Of the 1989 student protests in Beijing's Tiananmen Square, one image lingers still: a lone figure standing motionless before a column of tanks, an extreme act of self-expression in defense of the right to express oneself. The makeshift Statue of Liberty erected by the students occupying the Square pointed to the country providing their inspiration. The foundations of that inspiration may in turn be traced to the handful of words---"Congress shall make no law...abridging the freedom of speech, or the press . . . "--which have become synonymous with American-style democracy.'