SSRN Expands Law & Society Journal

SSRN's Legal Scholarship Network has expanded the
Law & Society journal by adding the following titles:

Law & Society: International & Comparative Law
Law & Society: Private Law
Law & Society: Procedural Law, Courts
Law & Society: Public Law
Law & Society: The Legal Profession

Cornell LII Legal Search Plug-Ins

Cornell Legal Information Institute now offers
free browser plugins that will allow you to search the LII
(or parts of it) from inside your browser. Currently, they work
with Firefox and Mozilla platforms. The plug-ins
that are now available for download from LII allow
you to:

Search the entire LII site
Search the US Code
Search WEX, the LII's legal encyclopedia
Search the Annotated Constititution of the United States
Search recent opinions of all the US Circuit Courts of Appeal

U.S. Senate Office of Public Records Lobby Filing Disclosure Program

The U.S. Senate Office of Public Records Lobby
Filing Disclosure Program allows the public to view
filings received by the Office of Public Records,
including images of lobby reports by: name
(registrant, client, lobbyist); client country;
state; filing year (1998-present); and other
criteria.

Hat tip to the Librarians' Index to the Internet.

"College Rankings Reformed: The Case for a New Order in Higher Education"

Education Sector, an independent education policy think tank,
has released College Rankings Reformed: The Case for a New
Order in Higher Education. The report analyzes what
it calls the "wealth-exclusivity-fame" paradigm of the U.S.
News rankings and goes on to detail an alternative approach
to rankings, describing "what the new measures can show,
how those measures can be combined into new college rankings,
and why the new rankings would benefit both students and
colleges."

A synopsis of the report appears on the TaxProf Blog
(September 22, 2006).

The Chronicle of Higher Education (9/22) has an article about
the new rankings, "Researcher Proposes Basing College
Rankings on Different Criteria," by Eric Hoover.

IFEX: International Freedom of Information Exchange

IFEX is a global network of more than 70 non-
governmental organisations that work to defend
and promote freedom of expression and press freedom.
It operates an Alert network, which circulates alerts
on free expression violations around the world. Users
may view information about the aims of the organisation
and its recent campaigns and activities on the website.
This includes access to press releases, an archive of alerts
dating back to 1995, plus communiques, newsletters and full
text reports.

Topics covered include: press censorship worldwide,
Internet censorship, anti-terrorism legislation and
press freedom, journalism ethics, women and the
media, attacks against journalists and jorurnalist safety.

Legal Scholarship Articles on the Yale Law Journal "Pocket Part"

The Yale Law Journal "Pocket Part" has
recently published several throught-
provoking articles on legal scholarship
and the Internet.

Here are a few examples to whet your appetite:

That’s So Six Months Ago: Challenges to Student
Scholarship in the Age of Blogging (Stephen I. Vladeck)
http://thepocketpart.org/2006/09/06/vladeck.html

Online Legal Scholarship: The Medium and the Message
(Jack Balkin)
http://thepocketpart.org/2006/09/06/balkin.html

Why Blogs Are Bad for Legal Scholarship (Brian Leiter)
http://thepocketpart.org/09/20/06/leiter.html

What the Internet Age Means for Female Scholars
(Rosa Brooks)
http://thepocketpart.org/09/20/06/brooks.html

Super Mario at Harvard Law

An article by Xenia P. Kobylarz in Law.com
(9/26/2006) reports that Professor Charles Nesson
at Harvard Law School was inspired by the Super
Mario video game in development of his course,
CyberOne: Law in the Court of Public Opinion.

From the article:

"Held in both the real Harvard Law School and the virtual
world of Second Life, an online community where players
can create digital alter egos and interact, the course teaches
students how to use virtual universes like that, plus Web sites,
blogs and wikis, to make persuasive arguments."

Judicial Conference Moves to Enhance Judges' Accountability

From a press release issued on the US Courts
web site, 9/16/2006:

"The Judicial Conference of the United States today
approved two policies aimed at aiding and enhancing
judges' compliance with established ethical obligations.
The Conference voted to require all federal courts to use
conflict-checking computer software to identify cases in
which judges may have a financial conflict of interest and
should disqualify themselves. It also approved a new policy
requiring greater disclosure by both those who provide
privately funded educational programs for judges and the
judges who attend such programs."

Free Cyberweek Conference: Future of Online Dispute Resolution & Online Justice

From Robert Ambrogi at LawSites:

The annual, all-online and entirely free Cyberweek
conference (which starts today, 9/25/2006) focuses on the
future of online dispute resolution and online justice.
The conference is organized by the University of
Massachusetts Center for Information Technology and
Dispute Resolution and InternetBar.org.

Here is a conference description from LawSites,
9/22/2006:

"Cyberweek consists of many different kinds of activities
and opportunities, from Skypecasts to meetings in virtual
worlds to Podcasts to discussion forums and more, all related
to the topic of Online Dispute Resolution (ODR). ..We invite you
join us in both asynchronous and real-time events. Last year, we
had several hundred participants from over forty countries and
we are working to have a most ambitious program this year."

The schedule of events runs through the week.

Stone/Posner Debate: NSA's Surveillance of International Phone Calls and Emails

On the Chicago Law School Faculty Blog,
Geoffrey Stone and Richard Posner are debating
about the NSA's surveillance of international phone
calls and emails. Part of the blog's Head to Head (H2H)
debate series, this round is in recognition of the
publication of Judge Posner's latest book, Not A Suicide
Pact: The Constitution in a Time of National Emergency.

Click here to access the initial blog post in the debate.

New Research Guides from GlobaLex

GlobaLex (Hauser Global Law School Program at
NYU School of Law) announces the following
new legal research guides:

Sustainable Development Law (SDL) Research Guide

A Guide to the Republic of Azerbaijan Law Research

A Guide to the Republic of Slovenia Legal System
and Legal Research

A Guide to the Turkish Public Law Order and Legal Research

Legal Research Podcasts

The Carolina Blawg at the UNC Law Library
(9/20/2006) tells us that West Law School
Publishing is making legal research "meister"
Bob Berring's legal research lectures available
as podcasts. Berring, who is Walter Perry Johnson
Professor of Law at the University of California- Berkeley
School of Law, has completed the following podcasts
to date:

*Topics, Key Numbers and Searching for Cases By Subject
*Legislative Histories
*Legal Periodicals and How to Find Them

You can read more about the podcasts, download them
and subscribe to them here.

LexisNexis Discontinues West Headnote Coverage in Shepard's Citations

LexisNexis has announced (LexisNexis InfoPro
for Legal Information Specialists) that, as of
September 1, 2006, it will no longer include West
headnote analysis for most case law in Shepard's
Citations. According to the news item, LexisNexis
"can no longer justify the resources required to keep
up the labor-intensive process of performing analysis
for headnotes that we do not have online."

U.S. Supreme Court To Release Oral Argument Transcripts on Day of Argument

A press release from the U.S. Supreme Court
(9/14/2006) announces that, beginning
with the October 2006 Term, the Court will make
the transcripts of oral arguments available free to
the public on its Web site, www.supremecourtus.gov,
on the same day an argument is heard by the Court.

The CIRI Human Rights Data Project

From the beSpacific blog (9/13/2006):

"The Cingranelli-Richards (CIRI) Human Rights Dataset
contains standards-based quantitative information on
government respect for 13 internationally recognized
human rights for 195 countries, annually from 1981-2004.
It is designed for use by scholars and students who seek to
test theories about the causes and consequences of human
rights violations, as well as policy makers and analysts
who seek to estimate the human rights effects of a wide
variety of institutional changes and public policies including
democratization, economic aid, military aid, structural
adjustment, and humanitarian intervention."

You must register (free) to access the data.

SSRN Announces New Mirror Site

SSRN President Gregg Gordon (SSRN general
announcements listserv, 11/13/2006) has announced
the creation of its fourth mirror site for the downloading
of papers, hosted by the University of Chicago Graduate
School of Business. The mirror server sites provide
regional download capabilities to help reduce download
times and a continually updated, online archive of the
SSRN eLibrary. With the addition of this new mirror site,
SSRN now offers download capabilities from:

SSRN Headquarters (New York, USA)
http://ssrn.com

Chicago GSB (Illinois, USA)
http://chicagogsb.edu

European Corporate Governance Institute (Europe)
http://ecgi.org

Korea University Business School (Korea)
http://biz.korea.ac.kr

Stanford Law School (California, USA)
http://law.stanford.edu

"Chapman School of Law Hits #1 in Key Scholarly Output Ranking"

Check out the Law Librarian Blog (9/12/2006) for
an indepth post about law school scholarship rankings and
what the blog terms 'info-antics.'

The article begins by quoting a September 8 press release
issued by the Chapman University School of Law announcing that
the school has been "ranked #1 in the nation in terms of the number
of scholarly articles posted in the past 12 months on the
Social Sciences Research Network." Harvard ranks second
in the list. The article goes on to analyze the data with
number-crunching panache and lots of colorful graphics.

This is an entertaining look at ranking 'fever' in the
academy.

Coast-to-Coast Legal Podcast: Vioxx Litigation

This week's Coast-to-Coast legal podcast from the
Legal Talk Network discusses the latest in Vioxx litigation.
Joining Robert Ambrogi and J. Craig Williams are two
lawyers representing plaintiffs in Vioxx cases,
Thomas V. Girardi of Girardi Keese in Los Angeles
and J. Paul Sizemore from the firm Beasley, Allen, Crow,
Methvin, Portis & Miles in Montgomery, Ala.

You can listen, download and subscribe here.

Resources Highlighted in This Month's InSITE Newsletter

The Cornell Law Library highlights the following resources
in the September 11 issue of their electronic newsletter,
InSITE:

Immigration Equality (formerly, Lesbian and Gay
Immigration Rights Task Force)
http://www.immigrationequality.org/

Law, Social Justice and Global Development Journal (LGD)
http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/law/elj/lgd/

National Center for Adoption Law and Policy
http://www.law.capital.edu/adoption/

Public Knowledge
http://www.publicknowledge.org/

Women Watch (initiative of the Inter-Agency
Network on Women and Gender Equality)
http://www.un.org/womenwatch/

See the newsletter for descriptions of these resources
and information on how to subscribe to InSITE.

Google News Archive Search

Google has launched a News Archive Search that offers
online access to an historical archive of news stories (some free,
some for a fee). According to Google News, the features
of the service include: search diverse sources from one place;
browse timelines of events and stories related to specific queries;
identify key time periods relevant to persons/events/ideas;
discover a variety of viewpoints across time.

Sources include major English-language newspapers and
magazines, including some international sources.
For more information about the service and how to
search it, see the Google News Archive Search Help page.

New York Times Goes Mobile

The TechTalk blog (9/11/2006) points us to the
New York Times new mobile version, available
for free at http://mobile.nytimes.com. (Use this
URL in your regular web browser to preview the
service.)

The service offers the latest NYT news stories, plus links to
business and world news, sports, etc. According
to the Tech Talk post, story length is customized so that
stories load quickly on your phone.

More 9/11 Resources

In addition to the 9/11 resources developed for the
Department of State EJournalUSA (described in an
earlier post), the Librarians' Internet Index has
compiled an extensive annotated list of resources that
encompasses not only 9/11, but many related
topics as well.

Department of State EJournalUSA Commemorates 9/11

To commemorate the five year anniversary of 9/11,
the United States Department of State has dedicated
the August issue of its eJournalUSA to the "resilience
of people around the world" in the aftermath of 9/11
and other terrorist acts.

In addition to articles and a video, the issue includes a
useful list of web sources to documents, exhibits,
interviews and government information relating to
9/11 and terrorism.

University of Pennsylvania Launches Innovative Web Site that Links Academy and the Public

The University of Pennsylvania Law Review has
launched PENNumbra, an innovative web site
that the editors hope will be "accessible to legal
scholars and to the lay public alike, uniting the
internet and the academy at the nexus of two
different spheres: at the penumbra." (About
PENNumbra).

The web site, which functions like a blog, provides
articles from the print edition of the law review
as well as scholarly responses and online debates
between legal scholars. Visitors can post comments
to the site. The current featured article is Erwin
Chemerinsky's Assessing Chief Justice William Rehnquist.
The featured web debate is Is the United Nations Still Relevant?

Hat tip to Robert Ambrogi.

Podcasts from Scotusblog and First Amendment Center

Several popular legal web sites have launched podcasts.
The first podcast from the Scotusblog is "Practice
pointers on cert criteria" by Tom Goldstein.
Approximately 7 minutes in length, it offers an overview
of the factors that the Justices consider in granting cert.
Click here for more information about Scotusblog
podcasts.

The First Amendment Center is also podcasting.
Recent podcasts include: "What's the future of U.S. religious
freedom?", and "Sexual orientation in schools: how to find
common ground?" Click here for more information.

DOJ "Federal Criminal Justice Trends, 2003"

The beSpacific blog (8/30/2006) points us to a
new U.S. Department of Justice publication,
Federal Criminal Justice Trends, 2003.

According to a DOJ press release, the report
is "first in a new series to track changes in the
federal criminal justice system. It employed data
from eight federal agencies to describe the
enforcement of several thousand statutes in the
U.S. Criminal Code."

Research Guide on International Health Law

Research Guide on International Health Law
is the latest addition to GlobaLex (Hauser
Global Law School Program at NYU).

Stanford Law School Launches Constitutional Law Center

Stanford Law School has announced the launch of the
Stanford Constitutional Law Center, with former
Dean Kathleen M. Sullivan named as its
inaugural Director.

The press release states that the "Constitutional Law
Center has been established as a nonpartisan venue to
explore and improve public understanding of the most
pressing constitutional issues, with a particular focus on:

-- the separation and scope of legislative, executive and judicial powers;
-- the structure of constitutional democracy;
-- the freedoms of speech, press, and academic research; and
-- the right of privacy, including the privacy of personal data in a digital world."

For more information, see the Center web site.