New Law Library of Congress Web Site

"The Law Library of Congress is pleased to announce
the release of its newly designed web site . The web
site includes information on a range of legal issues and
research topics as well as our services and logistics of
using the Reading Room. In addition to established
products such as the Global Legal Information Network
(GLIN), Guide to Law Online and the Global Legal Monitor,
new Law Library products are available as well."

"Does Law School Curriculum Affect Bar Examination Passage?”

Douglas Rush, a former lawyer and assistant dean at
the St. Louis University Law School, and research
methodology associate professor Hisako
Matsuo have written the paper “Does Law School
Curriculum Affect Bar Examination Passage?” The paper,
scheduled for publication in the upcoming Journal of
Legal Education, is currently available at the bePress
Legal Repository.

The article, which is also the subject of a New York
Times blog opinion piece (9/24/2007), describes the study
conducted of all 2001 -2005 graduates of St. Louis
University School of Law who took the Missouri
bar as their first bar examination between 2001-
2006.

Their findings? The authors found that "no statistically
significantly relationships were found between bar
examination subject matter courses taken and bar
examination passage for graduates ranked in the first,
second or fourth quartiles of their graduating class."

Hat tip to Out of the Jungle.

2006 FBI Crime Statistics Released

The FBI's 2006 Crime in the United States report
is available on the FBI web site. The report is a "statistical
compilation of offense and arrest data as reported by law
enforcement agencies throughout the nation."

Data can be browsed on the web site or downloaded
by category (complete file in Excel and PDF -compressed; compressed files
in PDF grouped by type; data tables in Excel; Data declarations and
overviews in PDF; and, figures in PDF).

Earlier editions (1995-2005) of the report are also available
on the site.

Senator Obama Interviewed on ImmigrationProf Blog

Senator Barack Obama answers questions on immigration
law and policy on the ImmigrationProf Blog (9/25/2007).

Secrecy Report Card from OpenTheGovernment.org

OpenTheGovernment.org has released its 2007
Secrecy Report Card. According to a press release
issued by the organization, the report found
"a troubling lack of transparency in military
procurement, assertions of executive privilege,
and expansion of 'sensitive' categories of
information, among other areas."

OpenTheGovernment.org is a coalition of organizations
and individuals dedicated to reducing secrecy in
government and advancing the public's right to know.

Hat tip to the Law Librarian Blog.

Lawer2Lawyer Podcast: Toy Safety, the View from China

On this week's Lawyer2Lawyer podcast, co-hosts
Robert Ambrogi and J. Craig Williams speak with two
experts (resident in China) about "their perspective on
how governments and manufacturers can help ensure
toy and product safety."

Guests are:
Peter Dean, a professor of product and toy design in the School of
Design at Hong Kong Polytechnic University and a former U.S.
toy industry executive.

Arthur Kroeber, managing director and head of research at
Dragonomics in Beijing and a regular contributor to the opinion
page of the Financial Times.

Listen to or download the full program at this page.

Worth Noting: LexisNexis Total Litigator

Attention law clinic and trial practice professors!

Legal researchers are familiar with traditional LexisNexis
searching based on databases organized by jurisdiction,
source category, or broad subject matter. LexisNexis
Total Litigator offers an entirely different approach
to searching the same content. Organized according to
the civil litigation workflow, it helps researchers access
information by the specific tasks they follow throughout
the litigation process.

The service is divided among a number of categories,
including:

Early Case Assessment
Intelligence Gathering
Draft, File & Serve
Discovery
Research
Trial Preparation
Discovery

The Total Litigator is not easily accessed through the
LexisNexis Law School Research tab, so researchers
with valid User ID's and Passwords should bookmark
the separate LexisNexis Total Litigator web site.
Please note that academic users may not have access
to the full suite of services listed on the menu.

All Transcripts of Fed Court Proceedings To Go Online

A news release from Administrative Office of the U.S.
Courts (9/18/2007) announced that the Judicial
Conference of the United States has voted to make transcripts of
all federal district and bankruptcy court proceedings available
online through the Judiciary's Public Access to Court Electronic
Records (PACER) system.

Transcripts created by court reporters or transcribers will be
available for inspection and copying in a clerk of court’s office
and for download from PACER 90 days after they are delivered
to the clerk. During the initial 90-day period, transcripts will be
available at the clerk’s office for inspection only, or may be
purchased from the court reporter or transcriber.

Denial of Funds to Yale Law School Upheld

The New York Law Journal reports that the 2nd Circuit
Court of Appeals has ruled that Yale Law School can be
denied federal funding for barring military recruiters from
its campus.

"Plaintiffs ... have no First Amendment claim that is not either
lacking in merit or that has not already been rejected by the
Supreme Court," said 2nd Circuit Judge Rosemary S. Pooler joined
by Reena Raggi in Burt v. Gates, 05-1732-cv.

The NYLJ article provides an overview of the court cases leading
up to the 2nd Circuit opinion.

Chemerinsky Rehired as UC Irvine Dean

According to today's LA Times.com, Erwin Chemerinsky
has been rehired as Dean of UC Irvine law school. The article
quotes a joint statement made by Chermerinsky and UC Irvine
Chancellor Michael Drake after the two met this past
weekend: "Many issues were addressed in depth, including
several areas of miscommunication and misunderstanding.
All issues were resolved to our mutual satisfaction."

"Times to Stop Charging for Parts of Its Web Site"

The New York Times has announced that it
will stop charging access fees to parts of its web site,
effective at midnight Tuesday night (9/18). The Times
web site will also make its archives available from
1987 to the present and from 1851 to 1922.

Hat tip to Research Buzz.

Iraq Benchmark Assessment Report and Related Documents

beSpacific (9/14/2007) summarizes and links to the
Iraq Benchmark Assessment Report (PDF), the
President's Address to the Nation on the Way Forward
in Iraq and to the AP Fact Check on Bush's Speech (from
Editor & Publisher, 9/13/2007).

Brian Leiter Blogs About UC Irvine/Chemerinsky

Blogs are abuzz about the abrupt dismissal of
Erwin Chermerinsky as the founding Dean of
UC Irvine law school. Brian Leiter has been
tracking the story (Part I and Part II), with
quotes and links to breaking news stories, including
statements from Chermerinsky and UC Irvine
Chancellor Michael Drake.

Want to know more about the controversy? Check out
Google News search results and Google Blog search results
on "L'Affaire Chermerinsky."

Lawer2Lawyer Podcast: Human Rights Lawyers

This week's Lawyer2Lawyer podcast focuses on
international human rights. Joining co-hosts
Robert Ambrogi and J. Craig Williams are:

Christina M. Storm, founder and director of
Lawyers Without Borders and partner with the
Hartford, Conn., firm Byrne & Storm.

Jerome J. Shestack. His former positions include: U.S.
ambassador to the U.N. Commission on Human
Rights under President Jimmy Carter, president
of the International League for Human Rights, founder
of the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights (now
Human Rights First), general counsel to Amnesty
International in the United States, ABA president
(1997-1998). Shestack is currently of counsel to
Wolf, Block, Schorr & Solis-Cohen in Philadelphia.

World Law Bulletin (2000-2006) Now Online

The Federation of American Scientists' Project
on Government Secrecy is making the World
Law Bulletin available online for the years 2000-
2006.

From the Project web site:

"The World Law Bulletin is a monthly publication of the
Directorate of Legal Research at the Law Library of Congress.
The Bulletin, which is distributed to members of Congress
and staff but not the public, provides updates on foreign law
developments...In May 2006, the Law Library began
publishing the Global Legal Monitor, which partially replicates
the contents of the World Law Bulletin in publicly releasable
form."

Hat tip to beSpacific.

Snippy: Mark, Copy & Paste a Section of a Web Page Into a Document

Snippy is a handy little free tool that lets you mark a
section of a web page, copy it onto the clipboard, and
then paste it into a document. Click here to download the
software (it's only 84 KB) and learn more about Snippy.

"What Can Law Schools Do Better?"

The latest issue of The Complete Lawyer addresses
the question, "What Can Law Schools Do Better?"
Articles include:

Practicing Lawyers Can Change Legal Education,
Roy Stuckey (Webster Professor of Clinical Legal
Education, University of South Carolina School of Law)

We Need To Produce Lawyers, Not Technicians,
Lisa A. Kloppenberg (Dean and Professor of Law at
the University of Dayton School of Law)

Law School Innovations Result In Broader Students,
Larry D. Kramer (Richard E. Lang Professor and Dean
at Stanford Law School)

Educating Law Students For Leadership,
Donald J. Polden (Dean and Professor of Law at
Santa Clara University)

Developing A Personal And Professional Identity
In Law School, Daisy Hurst Floyd (Dean and Professor
of Law at Mercer University Walter F. George School
of Law)

Turning Law Students Into Lawyers, Kenneth R.
Margolis (Professor of Law, Director of the CaseArc
Integrated Lawyering Skills Program and Co-Director
of the Milton A. Kramer Law Clinic Center at Case
Western Reserve University School of Law)

Hat tip to Robert Ambrogi.

Index of Presidential Signing Statements (2001-2007)

Kinkopf's Index of Presidential Signing Statements
(2001-2007) is now available on the American
Constitution Society's web site. The index "provides
a comprehensive list of every provision of a law objected
to by the White House in a signing statement, the reason
for the objection, and a link to the relevant signing
statement."

Neil Kinkopf is associate professor of law at Georgia State
University College of Law and former special assistant in
the Office of Legal Counsel at the Department of Justice.

Law Talk: Legal Scholarship Podcast

In the inaugural episode of Law Talk, a new series of podcast
interviews with legal scholars, Nate Oman (William and Mary)
interviews Steve D. Smith, the Warren Distinguished Professor
of Law at the University of San Diego and Co-Director of San
Diego's Institute for Law and Philosophy.

The focus in this episode is Smith's book, Law's Quandary, and
his recently published lecture, "The (Always) Immanent Death
of Law."

You can subscribe to Law Talk using iTunes or Feedburner.

Track Anonymous Wikipedia Entries With Wikiscanner

Wikiscanner is a web tool that lets you track anonymous
edits to Wikipedia entries. For example, according to
Robert Ambrogi's recent LawSites post on the topic,
"at the Nashville law firm King & Ballow, someone edited the
entry for law professor and blogger Ann Althouse to include:
'Professor Althouse is known for her aversion to the acknowledgment
of her own conservatism.' That comment has since been removed."

If your students are using Wikipedia, point them to
Wikiscanner for an entertaining and eye-opening look
into the popular web encyclopedia.

Legal Scholarship Blog

The new Legal Scholarship Blog features law-related
calls for papers, conferences, and workshops, with links
to relevant websites and papers as well as an event calendar.
It also offers scholarly resources for Research Deans and
current and prospective law professors.

The blog is a collaborative service from faculty and staff at
the University of Pittsburgh School of Law and the Gallagher
Law Library at the University of Washington School of Law.

For more information, contact legalscholarshipblog@gmail.com.

New on SSRN: Political Science Network

from David A. Lake and Mathew D. McCubbins:

The Social Science Research Network (SSRN) is pleased to
announce the creation of the Political Science Network (PSN).
PSN will provide a world-wide, online community for research
in all areas of Political Science, following the model of the other
subject matter networks within SSRN. We expect PSN to
become a comprehensive online resource for research in
Political Science, providing scholars with access to current
work in their field and facilitating research and scholarship.

PSN will be directed by David A. Lake and Mathew D. McCubbins
(UC San Diego).

"Is the Future of Legal Scholarship in the Blogosphere?"

In an article in the 8/31/2007 Legal Times,
Margaret Schilt (Faculty Services Librarian
at the University of Chicago's D'Angelo Law Library)
posits that the future of legal scholarship may lie, not
in traditional treatises or law reviews, but in the
legal blogosphere. Schilt argues that, "even if blogging
will never replace traditional legal scholarship, blogs
are where the scholarly dialogue increasingly takes place."

With the increasing importance of blogs and other
electronic sources of legal scholarship, she foresees an
increasing role for law librarians in preserving these
'born digital' materials.

Resources: Jena Six

Betsy McKenzie (Out of the Jungle, 8/28/2007)
has compiled a list of news sources about the
Jena Six, a group of six black high school students
charged with attempted murder for beating up a
white teenager during a schoolyard brawl in
Jena, Louisiana. The incident was the culmination
of a series of racially motivated events in the
local high school.

National Organization for Victim Assistance (NOVA)

Cornell Law Library's InSite current awareness
service brings our attention to the National
Organization for Victim Assistance (NOVA).
NOVA is a non-profit organization of victim and witness
assistance programs and practitioners, criminal justice
agencies and professionals, mental health professionals,
researchers, former victims and survivors, and others
committed to the recognition and implementation of
victim rights and services.