Index to C-SPAN Video Recordings

"The C-SPAN Congressional Chronicle is an index to the
C-SPAN video recordings of the House and Senate floor
proceedings. The video recordings are matched with the
text of the Congressional Record as soon as the Record is
available. It only includes members who appeared on the
floor to deliver or insert their remarks. The text included
here is what the member submitted. Each appearance has
a video link where users can watch and listen to the actual
remarks."

Hat tip to beSpacific.

Impeachment of State Court Judges

Ron Jones at the Law Librarian Blog (2/28/2008)
points us to an interesting article in Gavel to Gavel (pdf)
about the unprecedented number of resolutions introduced
in the last two legislative cycles to have state court judges
removed from office over their decisions.

Little Lightweight Laptop for Happy Travelers

If you are looking for a small, inexpensive, lightweight laptop that
is perfect for travel, check out Bette Dengel's article,
Happ-eee with my Eee PC, on LLRX (2/27/2008) to learn
about the Asus Eee 4G 7 PC Mobile Internet Device.

For around $400, the Asus Eee comes with a Webcam, Linux
preloaded, and an assortment of open source software, including
a word processor, a spreadsheet, a pdf reader, some games, some
educational software, and video, music and photograph software.
This little gem has a 4 GB flash drive in lieu of a hard drive, making
it a sturdy, but lightweight companion.

SCOTUSblog Releases U.S. Supreme Court 'StatPack'

The SCOTUSblog has released a new edition of
its 'StatPack,' which includes the following categories:

1. Justice Agreement (First time this Term)
2. Decisions by Final Vote (First time this Term)
3. Frequency in the Majority (New Addition)
4. Grant Rates by Conference
5. Circuit Scorecard
6. Opinion Authors by Sitting
7. The Court’s Workload

The blog entry includes a disclaimer that "these charts ought
to be taken with a large grain of salt: so much is still left
outstanding this Term, and they could (and likely will)
change drastically by the time the Court recesses for the
summer."

FastCase - Public Library of Law

From the Law Librarian Blog (2/15/2008):

"FastCase has just launched their Public Library of Law, a
free resource (registration required for caselaw) that brings
together all the available online caselaw, statutes, regulations,
court rules and constitutions from the federal and state
governments."

Contents currently include:

U.S. Reports: Vol. 1-546, inclusive (1757 to present)
F.2d Vol. 178-999, inclusive (1950 to 1995)
F.3d Vol. 1-491, inclusive (1995 to present)
State cases from 1997 to present
Statutes, regulations, court rules, and constitutions federal
and all 50 states
Commonly used legal forms

I love Julie Jones' comment on the Law Librarian
Blog post - "A bit more competition for our two party system."

Lawyer2Lawyer Podcast: "The Lawyer Candidates"

In this week's Lawyer2Lawyer podcast, Robert Ambrogi and
J. Craig Williams will be discussing "how well did the legal careers
of Senators Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton prepare
them to become our nation's chief executive?"

Joining the hosts are:

Professor Paul Finkelman, the President William McKinley
distinguished professor of law and public policy at
Albany Law School and Robert J. Spitzer, distinguished service
professor of political science at SUNY Cortland.

You can access the podcast here.

New Foreign & Comp. Law Research Guides from GlobaLex

GlobaLex (NYU) announces that the following new and
updated legal research articles have been posted to its web site:

UPDATE: Guide to Legal Research in Belarus
(Nadia Shalygina)

Legal Research in Germany between Print and Electronic
Media: An Overview (Rita Exter and Martina Kammer)

The Law and Legal Research in Lesotho
(Buhle Angelo Dube)

An Overview of Malaysian Legal System and Research
(Shaikh Mohamed Noordin and Lim Pui Keng)

Advice on Submitting Articles to Law Reviews

Elizabeth Nowicki (Tulane) is soliciting opinions, thoughts,
and anecdotes regarding the law review submissions process.

Questions (and readers' responses) include:

1. When do you submit your winter/spring draft to law reviews
for publication consideration?

2. Do you submit in “rounds,” whereby you submit to certain
publications first to gauge their interest, and then submit to
different journals beyond that?

3. Do you pull a piece if you do not get a law review placement
that you want?

4. Do you submit your drafts in the traditional manner using the
mail, do you e-mail your articles to law reviews, do you use
Expresso, or do you use some other service?

5. Do you judge your colleagues or your peers based on the
placement of their law review articles?

6. Has your “best” article (in your own professional view)
received the “best” placement of all your law review placements?

7. What is the most important tip you would give a junior colleague
on your faculty on the law review submission and placement process?

Worth Noting: Google News Archive Search

"[Google] News archive search provides an easy way
to search and explore historical archives. In addition
to helping you search, News archive search can
automatically create timelines which show selected
results from relevant time periods."

For example, you can easily locate the New York Times'
notice (of Feb. 6, 1990) of Barack Obama's election as the first
black president of the Harvard Law Review.

Web Site for Depressed Lawyers

Attorney Daniel T. Lukasik has developed a
web site for Lawyers with Depression. Lukasik
writes that he launched the site to "establish, in one
place, articles, materials and research that may
help others in the profession with depression."

In addition to a plethora of self-help materials directed
specifically at attorneys, articles on the site analyze
why lawyers (and would-be lawyers) are frequent sufferers
of depressive illness and describe how colleagues
and co-workers can help.

"ABA OKs Conditional Admission to Bar for Would-Be Lawyers with Addiction, Mental Problems"

Edward Adams (ABA Journal.com, 2/11/2008)
reports on the ABA's adoption of a model rule that
would grant conditional admission to the practice of law
to applicants who have experienced chemical dependency
or mental health conditions that may otherwise have
rendered the applicants unfit to practice law.

The model rule states that applicants "may be conditionally
admitted to the practice of law if the applicant demonstrates
recent rehabilitation from chemical dependency or successful
treatment for mental or other illness, or from any other condition
this Court deems appropriate, that has resulted in conduct or
behavior that would otherwise have rendered the applicant
currently unfit to practice law, and the conduct or behavior, if
it should recur, would impair the applicant’s current ability to
practice law or pose a threat to the public. The [Admissions
Authority] shall recommend relevant conditions that the applicant
to the bar must comply with during the period of conditional
admission."

SCOTUSblog Launches a Wiki

The popular U.S. Supreme Court blog, SCOTUSblog,
has launched SCOTUSwiki, a collaborative web resource
where SCOTUSblog contributors, selected law students,
and legal experts are currently writing about cases set for
argument in the October sitting. Contributions for each
case set may include "detailed previews, recaps, and analyses,
as well as links to to briefs and other articles of interest."
You can also use the wiki to track updates on a case-by-case
basis (see Using the Watchlist).

SCOTUS plans to expand the site to include all 2007 October
Term cases and to archive old Supreme Court statistics and SCOTUS
blog “Petitions to Watch” entries. They are also looking at ways
to "tweak the user privileges to allow as much input as possible."

Sugar Law Center for Economic & Social Justice

Cornell Law Library's InSite current awareness
service (2/11/2008) brings our attention to the Sugar Law
Center for Economic & Social Justice. "The Center pursues
aggressive enforcement of Federal, state and local laws
governing corporate behavior." For example, current
projects include efforts to strengthen the federal Worker
Adjustment Retraining and Notification (WARN) Act.
The WARN page provides links to proposed legislation,
existing primary law, how to express support, and
additional resources.

Shortcut to Printing Multiple Documents on HeinOnline

This week, the HeinOnline Weblog offers a quick guide on how
to print more than one document at the same time from
HeinOnline databases.

Martindale-Hubbell Law Firm Videos ala UTube

LexisNexis has announced that its Martindale-Hubbell law
firm directory is adding videos to its martindale.com web site
and to its lawyers.com legal-consumer site.

From the announcement:

"The format and style of each video is determined by the
attorneys. Videos provide attorneys with an opportunity
to showcase their individual approach and can differentiate
their firms from potential competitors—giving viewers the
chance to make a more informed decision."

Citing Blogs in Legal Scholarship

Jack Balkin (Balkinization) comments on the increase
in citations to blogs in legal scholarship, noting that
"the legal academy is gradually becoming acclimated
to blogs as vehicles of scholarship and scholarly quality."
Balkin's view is that "blogs are not displacing standard
form[s] of legal scholarship; rather they are being assimilated
into the larger universe of legal writing and becoming part of
the web of citations and authorities along with cases, treatises,
law review articles, and casebooks."

Brian Leiter begs to differ, referring readers to his
Why Blogs Are Bad for Legal Scholarship in the Pocket
Part (Yale Law Journal Online).

'Google Generation’ is a Myth, Claims New Research

A new report commissioned by the Joint Information
Systems Committee (JISC) and the British Library
"counters the common assumption that the ‘Google
Generation’ – young people born or brought up in the
Internet age – is the most adept at using the web."

The report, Information Behaviour of the Researcher of the
Future, (issued by the CIBER research team at University
College London) claims that, "although young people
demonstrate an ease and familiarity with computers,
they rely on the most basic search tools and do not
possess the critical and analytical skills to assess the
information that they find on the web."

Hat tip to Joe Hodnicki at Law X.O.

State of the Union Addresses at askSam

AskSam has created a complete database of all State of the
Union Addresses from 1790-2008, plus seperate databases
containing the 2005, 2006, 2007, & 2008 State of the Union
addresses by George Bush divided by subject.

You can browse these databases online or download them to
your PC.

New Online Companion to Columbia Law Review

The Columbia Law Review has launched an online publication,
Sidebar, which will publish shorter, more informal
pieces to complement the print Law Review.

From the online announcement:

'With the new site, the Review joins a growing list of
renowned legal publications, practitioners, scholars, bloggers,
and others who are engaged in legal discourse online. In
addition, the site provides a new take on the issues tackled
by scholars in the pages of the Review's print edition, inviting
experts in a variety of fields to contribute their own views."

Recent posts include:

In Defense of Eminent Domain

Executive Branch Avoidance and the Need for
Congressional Notification

Procedures as Politics in Administrative Law

Hat tip to Robert Ambrogi.