Law Library

The United Nations Statistics Division (UNSD) of the Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA) has launched a new internet-based data service for the global user community. It brings UN statistical databases within easy reach of users through a single entry point (http://data.un.org/) from which users can now search and download a variety of statistical resources of the UN System. Access at UNdata

Policy Archive, the first free comprehensive online archive of public policy research was launched recently by the non-profit Center for Governmental Studies in partnership with the Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) University Library and support from major U.S. charitable foundations. At its launch the archive contains 12,000 policy documents from over 220 think tanks and other research organizations with the plan to increase to 20,000 by the end of 2008. Access at Policy Archive

SCOTUSblog has published its "Super StatPack" compilation of statistics with charts, lists, and observations about the just-concluded Supreme Court Term. Find the the complete report (pdf) at StatPack

Ann MacLean Massie, Suicide on Campus: The Appropriate Legal Responsibility of College Personnel, 91 Marq. L. Rev. 625 (2008), available at SSRN; Westlaw

Brian C. Murchison, The Fact-Conjecture Framework in U.S. Libel Law: Four Problems, 13 Media & Arts L. Rev. (forthcoming 2008), available at SSRN.

The law library subscribes to both the print and the online versions of U.S. Law Week. For online access go to the law library research page and click on "BNA" which lists the BNA publications subscribed to by the law library. The BNA page also has links for e-mail notification, which for U.S. Law Week includes a choice of "Supreme Court Today" (daily updates summarizing U.S. Supreme Court docket activities) and "U.S. Law Week" (weekly highlights summarizing major federal/state cases and general legal news).

Scott E. Sundby, John H. Blume & Sheri Lynn Johnson, Competent Capital Representation: The Necessity of Knowing and Heeding What Jurors Tell Us About Mitigation, 36 Hofstra L. Rev. 1035 (2008) available at Westlaw

Viewed as Google's answer to Wikipedia Knol, also a user-generated encyclopedia was opened last week to the public. Unlike Wikipedia Knol authors are identified and can even earn a profit from their articles. Access at Knol

Casemaker is a database of cases and statutes similar to VersusLaw and Loislaw all of which are low-cost competitors to Lexis and Westlaw. Casemaker has primarily marketed their services through state bar consortiums, but is now offering their case/statute databases without charge to law students/faculty/staff (as also does Loislaw and VersusLaw with their similar databases). Although these services offer little that cannot be found in Lexis and Westlaw, students may like to experiment with them as examples of low-cost legal research useful after graduation. Casemaker is also developing a legal jobs bulletin board that may be of future interest. Access at Casemaker

Competition is in the news again. This from AP:
Anna Patterson's last Internet search engine was so impressive that industry leader Google Inc. bought the technology in 2004 to upgrade its own system.

She believes her latest invention is even more valuable — only this time it's not for sale.

Patterson instead intends to upstage Google, which she quit in 2006 to develop a more comprehensive and efficient way to scour the Internet.

The end result is Cuil, pronounced "cool." Backed by $33 million in venture capital, the search engine plans to begin processing requests for the first time Monday.

Cuil had kept a low profile while Patterson, her husband, Tom Costello, and two other former Google engineers — Russell Power and Louis Monier — searched for better ways to search.

Now, it's boasting time.

For starters, Cuil's search index spans 120 billion Web pages.

Patterson believes that's at least three times the size of Google's index, although there is no way to know for certain. Google stopped publicly quantifying its index's breadth nearly three years ago when the catalog spanned 8.2 billion Web pages. Access at CUIL

Russell A. Miller and Rebecca Bratspies, eds., Progress in International Law (Martinus Nijhoff Press 2008).

Russell A. Miller, ed., U.S. National Security, Intelligence and Democracy: From the Church Committee to the War on Terror (Routledge 2008).

Timothy Stoltzfus Jost, Medicare: What are the Real Problems? What Contribution can Law Make to Real Solutions?, 1 St. Louis J. Health L. & Pol'y 45 (2007).

Sarah K. Wiant, Developments in Copyright Law: The Search for Balance Goes On, in The Bowker Annual of Library and Book Trade Information 46 (53d ed. 2008)

In Jacobsen v. Katzer (No. 2008-1001, Aug 13, 2008), the U.S. Court of Appeal for the Federal Circuit reversed a lower court's ruling that copyright protection is not available for software distributed free-of-charge under an open source license. Read the opinion

Scott Sundby and Maria Angeles Perez Cebadera, Caminando Sobre La Cuerda Floja Constitutcional: La USA Patriot Act Y La "Guerra Contra el Terror", Revista General de Derecho Procesal 15 (2008).


Oyendo Al Jurado A Traves De La Puerta: Una Perspectiva De La Aplicacion De La Pena De Muerta En America, Revista General de Derecho Procesal 15 (2008).

Robin Wilson,"Unauthorized Practice": Regulating the Use of Anesthetized, Recently Deceased, and Conscious Patients in Medical Teaching, 44 Idaho L.Rev. 423 (2008)

A. Benjamin Spencer, Acing Civil Procedure, 2d Ed. (Thomson West 2008).

A. Benjamin Spencer, Civil Procedure: A Contemporary Approach, 2d Ed. (Thomson West 2008).

Timothy S. Jost, et al., Liability and Quality Issues in Health Care, 6th Ed. (2008 Thomson West).

Timothy S. Jost, e al., Bioethics: Health Care Law and Ethics, 6th Ed. (2008 Thomson West).

Timothy S. Jost, et al., The Law of Health Care Organization and Finance, 6th Ed. (2008 Thomson West).

The Mississippi Supreme Court ordered one of its sitting justices not to publish his dissent with the Court's majority decision. Apparently the Court stopped its court clerk from filing Justice Oliver Diaz's opinion into the record. Here's a copy. In the opinion, Justice Diaz writes "A majority vote to censor a justice of the court and prohibit the issuance of a dissenting opinion may be unprecedented in the history of American jurisprudence.”By not being part of the record, Justice Diaz's opinion has no legal status.
It was published by Folo, a blog.

Robert T. Danforth & Mark Archer, Federal Income Taxation of Trusts and Estates, 3rd Ed., (Carolina Academic Press 2008).