BarclayBlog Hiatus

The BarclayBlog will go on hiatus until after
the New Year. Happy Holidays!

"Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer: A Tale of Copyright Transfer"

Was Rudolph an undervalued victim of corporate copyright
transfer? Randy Picker at the University of Chicago Law School
Blog (12/19/2006) examines the beloved tale of Rudolf the
Red-Nosed Reindeer from a copyright law perspective.

DOJ Releases "Capital Punishment 2005" Report

On 12/06/2006, the Department of Justice, Bureau
of Justice Statistics, released its "Capital Punishment,
2005" report. The report "presents characteristics of
persons under sentence of death on December 31, 2005
and of persons executed in 2005. Preliminary data on
executions by States during 2006 are included. The report
also summarizes the movement of prisoners into and out
of death sentence status during 2005. It presents data on
offenders' sex, race, Hispanic origin, education, marital status,
age at time of arrest for the capital offense, legal status at
time of the offense, methods of execution, trends, and time
between imposition of death sentence and execution."

The 2005 report is available in PDF, ASCII text, and Excel
spreadsheets (compressed). Previous editions are available
online from 1983-2004.

Creation of a National Organization for Law Students with Disabilities

The ABA Section of Individual Rights and
Responsibilities, Commission on Mental and
Physical Disability Law, and Law Student Division are
co-sponsoring a meeting in January to create a new
national organization for law students with disabilities.

All interested law students are invited to attend this
planning conference, which will be held January 27-28
at American University Washington College of Law in
Washington, DC. For additional information or to register
for the conference, call the American Bar Association
Commission on Mental and Physical Disability Law at
(202) 662-1030.

New Research Articles on LLRX

Selected new research articles on LLRX:

Bloggers Beware: Debunking Nine Copyright
Myths of the Online World - Updated (Kathy Biehl)

Deep Web Research Research 2007 (Marcus P. Zillman)

Criminal Justice Resources - Criminal Justice Blogs
(Ken Strutin)

A Compilation of State Lawyer Licensing Databases
(Trevor Rosen and Andrew Zimmerman)

CongressLine by GalleryWatch.com: Voting in Congress
(Paul Jenks)

Reference from Coast to Coast: An Overview of Selected
SEC Resources on the Web (Jan Bissett and Margi Heinen)

The Government Domain: 2007 Calendars and Schedules

FOIA Facts: Rapid Response Team for FOIA (Scott A. Hodes)

See the LLRX web site for the complete list.

FEC to Launch Web Tool for Searching Advisory Opinions

From the beSpacific blog (12/14/2006):

An FEC Press Release has announced that
"The Federal Election Commission was provided
with a demonstration of a new Internet tool for
searching Advisory Opinions which is scheduled
for launch on the Commission’s website in February."

Coast-to-Coast Legal Podcast: Interview with JAG Officer

In this week's Coast-to-Coast podcast, co-hosts Robert
Ambrogi and J. Craig Williams speak with Major John A.
Engels and discuss his role as a JAG officer stationed in
Iraq. In 1998 Major John A. Engels was commissioned as
a Judge Advocate in the Minnesota Army National Guard,
and is currently serving in Iraq with the 1st Brigade
Combat Team, 34th Infantry Division.

Additional information and access may be found on
Ambrogi's LawSites blog (12/14/2006).

Paint.net Free Alternative to Photoshop

Paint.net is a image and photo manipulation software
currently available for free download. It performs
many of the same functions as Photoshop and is easy
to use, especially if you are familiar with MS Paint.
If you work with images, this might be worth checking out.

Hat tip to InterAlia.

Google Patent Search

Google has launched Google Patent Search, a web
search engine that allows researchers to retrieve the
entire collection of patents made available by the
USPTO from the 1790s through those issued through
mid-2006. The site does not currently include patent
applications, international patents, or U.S. patents issued
over the last few months, but Google hopes to expand
coverage in the future.

Patent Search works like Google Book Search. Google has
converted the entire image database of U.S. patents into a
searchable format. You can search the full text of U.S. patents
from the Google Patent Search homepage, or visit the
Advanced Patent Search page to search by criteria like
patent number, inventor, and filing date.

DOJ Launches Tribal Justice and Safety Website

The United States Department of Justice has launched
a new website developed specifically for Indian country,
Tribal Justice and Safety. According to the site, "the goal
of this resource is to provide a user-friendly, current, and
comprehensive resource for American Indian and Alaska
Native Tribal governments to further improve the safety
of their communities. It also is designed as a resource to assist
the general public and other Federal agencies learn more
about Tribal justice and safety issues in Indian Country."

The resource guide includes educational materials, DOJ
initiatives and activities, and tribal justice and public safety
resources for Indian Country. This site also includes funding
resources, grant opportunities and management, civil rights
laws, and other key documents.

Supreme Court Times

Robert Ambrogi (LawSites, 12/13/2006) brings our
attention to Supreme Court Times, a web resource
edited by Law Memo's Ross Runkel. The site lists all cases on the
court's docket. Each case is linked to a page that includes
"a plain-English summary of the case, the questions
presented, and links to blog commentary, the lower-court
opinions, the oral argument transcript, all briefs, the decision
when issued, counsel for each party, and outside resources."

AsianLII Offers Free Access to Asian Legal Information

From "About" AsianLII:

Developed by the Australasian Legal Information Institute
(AustLII), AsianLII is a non-profit, free access website for
legal information from all 27 countries and territories in Asia.

AsianLII offers searching and browsing of the following
databases: legislation, case-law, law reform reports, law
journals and other legal information (where available)
for each country in the region. It currently provides access
to nearly 100 databases from almost all 27 Asian countries.
Over 140,000 cases from at least 15 countries, and over 15,000
pieces of legislation from at least 18 countries will be searchable.

All databases can be searched simultaneously, or searches can
be limited to one country’s databases or other combinations.
Search results can be ordered by relevance, by date, or by
database. For every country, AsianLII contains an extensive
catalog of law-related websites for that country, and a ‘Law
on Google’ facility assists users to search Google for legal materials
from that country.

Law Review v. Law School Rankings

Paul Caron at the Tax Profs Blog (11/21/2006) has
posted a comparison of the Top 25 general-interest
student-edited law reviews in the updated Washington
and Lee law review rankings and their schools'
U.S. News ranking. The post also includes a table of
law reviews ranked 26-55 by W&L (and their schools'
U.S. News rankings) and a table of law reviews with the
biggest discrepancies from their schools' U.S. News rankings.

Dwindling Supreme Court Docket

Linda Greenhouse addresses the dwindling
Supreme Court docket in today's The New York
Times. According to Greenhouse, the number
of signed opinons issued by the Court fell to
sixty-nine in the latest term, the lowest since
1953 and fewer than half the number the court
was deciding as recently as the mid-1980s.
Reasons posited for the decline include: fewer
enacted statutes to interpret; increase in the
number of cases won by the government in the
lower courts, and; justices' reluctance to take
cases which might place them on the losing side.

The issue is also addressed in depth by Tom Goldstein
in a November 30 SCOTUSblog post.

(It is worth noting that the U.S. Supreme Court
took five new cases yesterday.)

International Center for Transactional Justice

From the ICTJ Mission Statement:

"The International Center for Transactional Justice
(ICTJ) assists countries pursuing accountability for
past mass atrocity or human rights abuse. The Center
works in societies emerging from repressive rule or
armed conflict, as well as in established democracies
where historical injustices or systemic abuse remain
unresolved."

The site describes past and current programs in Africa,
the Americas, Asia, Europe, and the Middle East. Content
includes ICTJ reports and studies, press releases, and a
bi-weekly newsletter.

Hat tip to the Librarians' Internet Index.

Responses to Levinson's "Our Undemocratic Constitution"

From the Harvard Policy Review Online:

"In his new book, Our Undemocratic Constitution:
Where the Constitution Goes Wrong (And How We
the People Can Correct It), Sanford Levinson argues
that the structure of the Constitution impedes true
democratic self-government." At the Harvard Policy
Review Online, Levison summarizes his views and
Professors Frank Michelman, Mark Tushnet, Adrian
Vermeule, and Robin West offer their critiques.

"Legal Ed in a Networked World" Conference WebCast Tonight

The Berkman Center at Harvard will host
"(un)Common Knowledge : legal education
in a networked world" tonight at 6pm.

Panelists will address issues such as:

*What are the new skills demanded by a technology-enhanced practice?
*Who should teach these skills?
*How should they/we teach these skills?

The conference will be available as a Realmedia
webcast from the conference web page, and
participants will be able to submit questions
in real time to the panelists through the Question
Tool feature.

Harvard University Launches Web Immigration Collection

From the Google Librarian Center Newsletter (12/2006):

"Harvard University's Open Collections Program has
launched Immigration to the United States, 1789-1930,
a web-based collection of approximately 1,800 books and
pamphlets, 6,000 photographs, 200 maps, and 13,000
pages from manuscript and archival collections selected
from Harvard's library, archives and museums...[b]y
incorporating diaries, biographies and other writings
capturing diverse experiences, the collected material
provides a window into the lives of ordinary immigrants.
In addition to thousands of items now accessible, the
collection includes contextual information on
immigration and quantitative data."

More information
Harvard digital collections overview

This Day in Law on JURIST

JURIST's This Day in Law is a daily calendar
of significant historical events in the law. Today's
entry, "13th Amendment ended slavery in the
United States," includes a link to the 13th amend-
ment, a photo, and a link to a webcast of Professor
Michael Vorenberg's discussion of his book, Final
Freedom: The Civil War, the Abolition of Slavery
and the Thirteenth Amendment.

INFOMINE: Scholarly Internet Resource Collections

Looking for an authoritative, scholarly search engine
that may expand your Google search results?
Try INFOMINE.

INFOMINE is a librarian built virtual library of Internet
resources relevant to faculty, students, and research staff
at the university level. Developed by librarians at the
University of California, Wake Forest, Cal State and
the University of Detroit, this 'deep' search engine
contains databases, electronic journals, electronic books,
bulletin boards, mailing lists, online library card catalogs,
articles, directories of researchers, and other information.

Judicial Reports Blog Covers Developments in New York Judiciary

Judicial Reports.com , published by the
Institute for Judicial Studies, covers developments
within the state and federal judiciary of the New York
metropolitan region. The blog is also devoting extensive
coverage to proposed judicial reform in New York State.

Information about the core principles of the Institute
for Judicial Studies may be found under the web site's
mission statement.

Hat tip to the Internet Legal Research Weekly (12/3/2006).

New Research Guides from GlobaLex

The following new research guides are available on
GlobaLex (Hauser Global Law School Program,
New YorkUniversity School of Law) :

Researching Kenyan Law
(Leonard Obura Aloo and Tom Ojienda)

Sierra Leone Legal System and Legal Research
(Hanatu Kabbah)

Guide to Tanzanian Legal System and Legal Research
(Bahame Tom Nyanduga and Christabel Manning)

TrialJuries: Where Lawyers Can Test Their Cases Online

Here is another example of how technology is
impacting on law practice. Robert Ambrogi
(LawSites, 11/20/2006) points us to TrialJuries,
a web service (due to launch in early January) that
will allow lawyers to submit their
cases and have them decided by online "jurors."
According to Ambrogi,

"the lawyer submits a written statement
(or audio or video argument) of each side's case.
Exhibits may also be added. Finally, the lawyer submits
up to five verdict and five feedback questions using an
automated form builder and then sends the case to the jury.
Mock jurors review the submissions and answer the
verdict and feedback questions. When their review is done,
the lawyer receives their verdict and can review their comments
and feedback."

When available, the service will not be inexpensive (trial practice
students take note). According to the web site, the basic cost to
make a written submission to the jury is $1500.
However, there are several demos available that give you a good
idea of how this new service will work.