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In this article from Harper's Magazine, author Kevin Phillips argues that official federal policy has altered the way that the government collects and reports statistics in order to artificially lower the reported unemployment rate and the rate of inflation. This "Pollyanna creep" misleads governments, businesses, and individuals making decisions about the U.S. economy, which is in much worse shape than we realize.
Posted by Robin Gault
DNA evidence is in the news lately. The Washington Post has two articles on "Genes and Justice."
This article discusses how law enforcement agencies are using DNA collected from people who are not suspected of a crime to identify relatives who might be suspects. Police were suspicious of Dennis Rader, but they did not arrest him as the BTK killer until they examined DNA from a Pap smear taken from his daughter several years earlier. Privacy advocates are concerned about using DNA samples in this way, and the states are moving in different directions, some specifically authorizing it and other banning it.
In another article, the Post examines the new practice of using DNA as evidence of genetic problems that might be considered mitigating factors, such as a genetic propensity for violent behavior. This "DNA defense" may or may not impress jurors. In some cases, it might work against the accused by suggesting an increased possibility of repeating the crime.
Posted by Robin Gault
In today's technological society, digitization and the internet offer immediate access to all types of 
media. Formerly unavailable music, art, performances, designs, symbols, and
stories from around the world are being disseminated and enjoyed. For educators, artists, and students
this opens up new opportunities to learn about varied peoples and cultures. It can also help provide ways to preserve fast-disappearing traditional ceremonies and language, and even help stimulate the economic development of ethnic populations. But in the legal community, questions of intellectual property rights can be raised. Where does the celebration of a culture end, and exploitation of its artists begin?
Who owns the data collected? Who is authorized to distribute or publish it? Does it matter if it is for
scholarly use rather than commercial? What constitutes misappropriation of the cultural heritage of
indigenous peoples?
In response to researchers and field-workers in native cultures, and tribal communities themselves, the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) is developing the Creative Heritage Project as a way of exploring answers to these questions. When fully established, the project will include
So whether you're a intellectual property specialist, ethnomusicologist, student of tribal design, collector of folklore, anthropologist, or world citizen sensitive to the commercial exploitation of indigenous peoples, the Creative Heritage Project offers assistance and guidelines to make the best decisions for everyone concerned.
Click here for a pdf brochure on the Creative Heritage Project, and here to browse the database of existing codes, guidelines and practices.
Posted by Patricia Bingham-Harper
The Urban Institute in Washington D.C. has issued the report: "Is There an iCrime Wave."
The recent increase in violent crime defies easy explanation, and many hypotheses have been put forward for debate. In this brief, we propose that the rise in violent offending and the explosion in the sales of iPods and other portable media devices is more than coincidental. We propose that, over the past two years, America may have experienced an iCrime wave.
See a summary here.
The report is here.
Posted by Jon Lutz
Elyn Saks, a professor of law and psychiatry at the University of Southern California, has written a memoir titled: The Center Cannot Hold: My Journey Through Madness. Elyn Saks has suffered from schizophrenia since she was a small child and her book provides a gripping account of her ordeal. Saks published articles focus on finding policy solutions for modern mental health related issues.
Her book can be seen on Amazon.com.
A good article on her is published in the Yale Daily News.
Posted by Jon Lutz
Remember the plight of Nathanial Hawthorne's fictional Hester Prynne? She was condemned to wear a red "A" for adultery as a shameful reminder of her past sin. George Washington University Law Professor and internationally known privacy expert Daniel J. Solove has written that:
"The Internet is bringing back the scarlet letter in digital form -- an
indelible record of people's misdeeds... We must protect privacy to
` ensure that the freedom of the Internet doesn't make us less free."
(The Future of Reputation, p.11)
Chances are you remember reading about the young South Korean girl riding on the subway with her little dog. The dog did what dogs do, and things got ugly when she refused to clean up after him. Indignant fellow passengers posted pictures of the "incident" on a popular South Korean blog, and the girl was soon identified, parodied and ridiculed in media around the world.
How many of us have seen the numerous "humorously" doctored videos of the repeatedly-humiliated high schooler dirisively called "Star Wars Boy" on You-Tube?
And hasn't everyone heard horror stories of pictures and descriptions of long-ago youthful indiscretions surfacing via a Google search when the transgressor applies for a job or professional license?
Today anyone can post anything about themselves or others, good or bad, true or untrue via blogs, e-mail, social networking Websites, and photo and video sharing Websites that invite any and all submissions. Where does my need to express myself end, and your right to privacy begin? Now that I have the potential for a worldwide audience, should I still have the freedom to share information that may prove to be of perpetual humiliation to others? To again quote Professor Solove:
"What makes the issues so complex is that there are important values on both
sides. Protecting people's privacy sometimes can be achieved only by
curtailing free speech...The difficulty is that we often want both...There is
no clear winner in the battle between privacy and free speech. Both are
essential to our freedom." (The Future of Reputation, p.12)
The College of Law Research Center has three of Daniel Solove's books on privacy --
Check them out to read what Solove has to say about establishing a balance between privacy and free speech. You can also read Professor Solove's musings on "The Law, the Universe, and Everything " on his blog "Concurring Opinions."
Posted by Patricia Bingham-Harper
Two Million pages of Legal Documents have been made available for free.
Creative Commons announced tonight that in partnership with Public.Resource.Org and with legal representation from the Electronic Frontier Foundation, it has purchased and has now made available at no charge the equivalent of nearly two million pages of legal documents. If printed and piled on top of each other, the documents would make a stack of books 348 feet tall. Included are all U.S. Supreme Court decisions and all Courts of Appeals decisions from 1950 on.
Though these texts have always technically been in the public domain, the organizations had to purchase the electronic version from a private company that had compiled it. Now available at this link, they have also been converted to XHMTL so that anyone can develop user interfaces and search engines against the information.
Read more about it here.
Try it here.
Posted by Jon Lutz
Do you aspire to be a sports agent, or have a student who does? Darren Heitner and his team of Blogging All-Stars have put together a lot of good information at SportsAgentBlog.com, a nifty Website subtitled "I Want to be a Sports Agent."
Tops on the list is a feature called "Interview with the Agent," a series of conversations with industry pros exploring topics such as:
Recent interviewees include Peter Webb, an agent in the golf division of Gaylord Sports Management; Mark Steinberg, Director of Global Golf Business at IMG; Angelo Wright, founder of SportsWest Football; and Ian Singer, President and Director of Basketball Operations for Guardian Sports Group.
Other features of special interest:
-- "Nightmare Clients of the Week" -- reports on and discusses "newsworthy egregious acts by a client or agent" and explores the ramifications to the agent/athlete relationship.
-- "The Wash Up" -- issues in international sports agent news.
-- "What Would You Do?" -- a column that presents hypothetical situations related to athlete representation. Current and aspiring agents are invited to respond, creating a lively and interesting dialogue.
There are sections of the site devoted to links to "Sports Agencies Listed by State," and "Sports Agency Internships." Other areas aggregate links to:
So whether you'd like to break into the business, or just spend some time learning from the pros, click on by and see what sports agency is all about.
Posted by Patricia Bingham-Harper
About.com defines a Status or Forces Agreement as:
An agreement which defines the legal position of a visiting military force deployed in the territory of a friendly state. Agreements delineating the status of visiting military forces may be bilateral or multilateral. Provisions pertaining to the status of visiting forces may be set forth in a separate agreement, or they may form a part of a more comprehensive agreement. These provisions describe how the authorities of a visiting force may control members of that force and the amenability of the force or its members to the local law or to the authority of local officials. To the extent that agreements delineate matters affecting the relations between a military force and civilian authorities and population, they may be considered as civil affairs agreements.
You can read more about Status of Forces Agreements on the US. State Department web site here and on Wikipedia here.
Posted by Jon Lutz
On animal cloning, the FDA has issued a report that concludes that meat and milk from cow, pig and goat clones and the offspring of any animal clones, are safe.
The FDA has produced a report titled: Animal Cloning: A Risk Assessment. (This document is 968 pages long and may take several minutes to download.)
More information can be found on the FDA cloning web site here.
Posted by Jon Lutz
Best Practices for Legal Education by Roy Stuckey and Others has been posted to the Web.
Read the report here.
Posted by Jon Lutz
According to a Wall Street Journal online report the FDA is getting ready to declare that milk and meat from cloned animals is safe to eat.
Read the article here.
Posted by Jon Lutz
The National Law Journal (subscription required) has selected Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry as its Lawyer of the Year. The article appears in the December 12th issue and is titled "Inspiration in a Troubled Land" Here's an excerpt:
Chaudhry, the chief justice of Pakistan who was dismissed from office by President Pervez Musharraf after the imposition of emergency rule, has been a strong voice for the preservation of the rule of law in Pakistan — one of the United States' key allies in the war on terror.
Though currently held under house arrest, Chaudhry has spoken out against emergency rule and has inspired thousands of his lawyer-brethren to protest in the streets in their traditional black suits and ties. He has become an international symbol of an independent judiciary and of resistance to the excesses of military rule. Hundreds of attorneys have also turned out to protest on his behalf in cities across the country.
Posted by Jon Lutz
The EVEREST: Evaluation and Validation of Election-Related Equipment, Standards and Testing: Final Report has been released. This is an Ohio study released by the Ohio Secretary of State and prepared by teams from Pennsylvania State University, the University of Pennsylvania and WebWise Security. Excerpt of conclusions:
- Insufficient Security - The systems uniformly failed to adequately address important threats against election data and processes. Central among these is a failure to adequately defend an election from insiders, to prevent virally infected software from compromising entire precincts and counties, and to ensure cast votes are appropriately protected and accurately counted.
- Improper Use or Implementation of Security Technology - A root cause of the failures present in the studied systems is the pervasive mis-application of security technology. Failure to follow standard and well-known practices for the use of cryptography, key and password management, and security hardware seriously undermine the protections provided. In several important cases, the misapplication of commonly accepted principles renders the security technology of no use whatsoever.
- Auditing - All of the systems exhibited a visible lack of trustworthy auditing capability. In all systems, the logs of election practices were commonly forgeable or erasable by the principals who they were intended to be monitoring. The impact of the lack of secure auditing is that it is difficult to know when an attack occurs, or to know how to isolate or recover from it when it is detected.
- Software Maintenance - The software maintenance practices of the studied systems are deeply flawed. This has led to fragile software in which exploitable crashes, lockups, and failures are common in normal use. Such software instability is likely to increase over time, and may lead to highly insecure and unreliable elections.
Read the Report here.
Posted by Jon Lutz
From February 20-23 at Georgia State University College of Law. For its point of departure the Conference with examine the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching Educating Lawyers report. See this post for more information on this report.
Click here for more Conference information.
Posted by Jon Lutz
Joe Hodnicki had an interesting post on Law School Innovation on the book The University of Google:
Education in the (Post) Information Age. Here's an excerpt:
Angry, humorous and practical in equal measure, The University of Google is based on real teaching experience and on years of engaged and sometimes exasperated reflection on it. It is far from a luddite critique of the information age. Tara Brabazon celebrates the possibilities of digital platforms in education, but deplores the consequences of placing funding on technology and not teachers. In doing so, she opens a new debate on how to make our educational system both productive and provocative in the (post-) information age.
Read the whole post here.
Posted by Jon Lutz
Bill Henderson at Empirical Legal Studies recommends a recent article on the design of empirical research projects, Methodological Fit in Management Field Research, as "a must-read for the legal empiricists who lack formal social science training." Read Prof. Henderson's comments here.
Posted by Robin Gault
Transforming Legal Education: Learning and Teaching the Law in the Early Twenty-first Century by Paul Maharg.
Highly recommended -- Joe Hodnicki on Law School Innovation.
Posted by Jon Lutz
Brian Leiter's Law School Rankings has listed the 10 or 20 (depending on field) most cited faculty by specialty. FSU College of Law faculty J.B. Ruhl was listed under Environmental Law and Adam Hirsch was listed under Wills, Trusts and Estates.
You can see the entire listing here.
Posted by Jon Lutz
Be careful what you post on the web. Having damaging information online might be a deal breaker when applying for a job. A recent report indicated that 83% of job recruiters used search engines to learn about job candidates, while 43% of recruiters indicated that they had eliminated somebody based on what they found online.
eWeek Careers has a Special Report on this which includes tips on how to improve your Google reputation. Here's one example:
2. Join The easiest way to improve search results for your name is to join online networks and add to conversations in prominent places. LinkedIn, a business-oriented social networking site used for professional networking with more than 10 million users and a high page rank, is an easy place to start.
"My business blog and LinkedIn profile are both in the top ten on Google for my name, even though it's a relatively common name. Honestly, it didn't take that much work to accomplish this," Peter Meyers, president of User Effect, focusing on Web site usability, told eWEEK.
Read the whole report here.
Posted by Jon Lutz
A recent press release from
Reporters without
Borders ranks countries for press freedom.
Iceland scores the highest while Eritrea is last at 169th place. The US is in 48th place according to this report.
Read the whole report here.
Posted by Jon Lutz
New York Law School has created the Visual Persuasion Project to explore the effect of "visual rhetoric" on the representation of legal issues and to train students in more effective advocacy using visual technologies. In the Neuroethics and Law blog, Christopher Buttafusco suggests that there may be fundamental differences in the way that the brain processes different types of visual information that could raise questions about the need for different standards of admissibility based on format.
Posted by Robin Gault
From the Blog Lawyer Information this post on how lawyers can benefit from having a professional coach. Here's an excerpt:
Coaching is a collaborative process that is focused and results oriented. A Professional Coach can help lawyers overcome challenges, increase strategic thinking and improve communication skills. In addition, many lawyers hire Coaches to help them develop a savvy professional image, cultivate ongoing career and personal goals and to achieve greater work-life balance. Unlike a consultant, a Coach doesn't come in and solve the problem for you. Instead, a Coach partners with you to assess how best to resolve issues and achieve your goals.
Read the whole post here.
Posted by Jon Lutz
A small Boston law firm has banned the billable hour and refuses to take clients who want to pay by the hour. This is discussed in a recent Boston Globe article. An excerpt is below:
But the Shepherd Law Group is one of the few firms to voluntarily abandon the billable hour system entirely.
Shepherd, a five-lawyer firm that specializes in employment law, charges its clients a flat annual fee or flat price per task. Clients can call the firm as often as they want to discuss legal issues, although some services, such as training and litigation, cost extra. The new approach helps clients determine legal costs in advance and often prevents legal problems from escalating because clients are no longer reluctant to seek advice out of fear of incurring a hefty bill, said Jay Shepherd, the firm's founder.
"Hourly billing is wrong and it's anti-client," Shepherd said. "There's a disincentive to be efficient since you get paid more if you take longer to finish a matter - even though the client wants it to be finished as fast and efficiently as possible."
The American Bar Association concluded in a 2002 report that hourly billing is at the root of much that is wrong with legal practice: brutal hours, lack of collegiality (since time spent chatting with colleagues is time not spent billing), fraudulent billing, lawyers who intentionally stretch the time it should take to finish a matter, unpredictable costs for clients, little time for friends and family, little time for community service, and a system that rewards lawyers for quantity over quality.
Read the whole article here.
Posted by Jon Lutz
A recent New York Time's article discusses curriculum reform in Law Schools. Here's a quote from the article:
For years, law students have focused on judicial opinions, explaining why a case was decided in a particular way. But many lawyers today must read laws and regulations that have not been explained by a judge and advise clients on how to comply with them.
So both Harvard Law and Vanderbilt University Law School have modified their traditional first-year requirements, like contracts, civil procedures and torts, to include a class that teaches students how to interpret statutes and regulations.
Stanford Law and other schools are also making it easier for students to take courses in other graduate-level programs at their universities, recognizing that lawyers often need specialized knowledge in areas like business, technology, biology, international relations, engineering and medicine. Many lawyers today practice across international borders and must be familiar with foreign laws and legal systems.
“Globalization means you have to better prepare lawyers to work in a global context,” said Larry Kramer, dean of Stanford Law.
Read the entire article here.
Posted by Jon Lutz
A press conference is planned for today in Vatican City to introduce the newly published Processus Contra Templarios, an exclusive facsimile edition of the Chinon Parchment, dated August 17-20, 1308. "Misfiled" in the Vatican Secret Archives for over 700 years (a cataloging error?!), the document was first brought to light by scholar Barbara Frale in 2004. It is an account in Latin of the early 14th century trial and investigations into the alleged heresy and blasphemous misconduct of the Knights Templar. After the suppression of the Templars by papal edict, the burning at the stake of many Knights, and centuries of infamy, the Chinon document proves that the Templars and Grand Master Jacques de Molay were secretly absolved of heresy by Pope Clement V in 1308. Read an article on the forthcoming publication here, and a translation of the Chinon Parchment here.
Posted by Patricia Bingham-Harper
As the Rocks & Sox gear up for the 2007 World Series this week, our hearts and minds turn to baseball. For books to answer all of your questions regarding baseball and the law, browse the Research Center's collection at KF3989 and thereabouts. Legal enquiries thus assuaged, you can get ready to settle in and watch the boys flash some leather, and hit 'em where the grass doesn't grow!
Posted by Patricia Bingham-Harper
This is a good review of a Harvard lunch time presentation by Prof. Daryl Levinson to students interested in
entering legal academia. An excerpt:
Instead of fancy grades, clerkships, and practical experience, the modern credential of choice for law school hiring committees is a graduate degree in an allied field such as economics, political science, and even English or psychology. Approximately twenty-five percent of entry-level professors hired last year had Ph.D.'s, and a large number had Master's degrees. While this is the biggest credential a candidate can have, don't despair if you haven't found the spare five to ten years to earn a terminal degree in molecular biophysics to help you compete for that intellectual property professorship you have your eye on. Levinson reassured the attendees that fewer than half of last year's hires had any graduate training. Law schools value Ph.D.'s because they indicate that candidates have certain qualities. If a candidate lacks the credential, he or she can still present those qualities independently.
Read the whole article here.
Posted by Jon Lutz
Can magicians keep others from replicating a trick or illusion that they've developed? Or keep others from divulging the secrets behind the illusion that make it marketable?
Magicians have an uneasy relationship with Intellectual Property Law. Copyright Law can protect written scripts, stage directions, and recordings of a performance, but not the process or method of the illusion itself. To patent a process is possible, but the magician would have to furnish a detailed explanation of how the illusion is done, thus destroying the "magic." Magicians need to protect their secrets from the public, but not necessarily from each other. It's a widespread practice to share tricks of the trade with other master magicians and publish methodology in magicians' journals. Once information is shared within an industry, Trade Secret Law no longer applies.
These questions and more are addressed in a paper by Yale Law School's Jacob Loshin: "Secrets Revealed: How Magicians Protect Intellectual Property Without Law." This interesting and entertaining article will eventually be published in the upcoming Law and Magic: A Collection of Essays (Carolina Academic Press, 2008). In the meantime, to make a working draft appear, click on this link and whisper "Abracadabra..."
Posted by Patricia Bingham-Harper
A new book titled Virtue Jurisprudence by Colin Farrelly and Lawrence Solum has just been published. Here's the publisher's description:
In moral theory, virtue ethics offers a third way - an alternative to the deontological and consequentialist approaches that dominated modern moral philosophy until very recently.
What would happen if we transplanted virtue ethics into normative legal theory? The essays in this anthology are part of a growing body of work that answers that question. According to the advocates of virtue jurisprudence, the final end of law is to promote human flourishing - to enable humans to lead excellent lives. Can the virtue ethics tradition really help us address the fundamental concerns of legal theory-like judicial review, criminal and tort law? The authors of this volume believe it can. By shedding the constraints of consequentialist and deontological theories, these authors illustrate how the virtue ethics tradition can enrich legal theory in distinctive and diverse ways.
Posted by Jon Lutz
Author and "beyond organic" farming educator Joel Salatin recently visited North Florida, sparking local interest in his newly published book "Everything I Want to Do is Illegal." Expanding on his 2003 article in Acres (the national journal of sustainable agriculture), Saladin illustrates how the regulations and laws of the United States "favor industrial global corporate food systems, and discourage community-based food commerce."
What's ok? What's not ok? How is a fledgling farmer, or any interested person to navigate the many legalities of commercial agriculture?
Happily, the National Agricultural Law Center provides easy access to a wealth of material. User-friendly and efficiently organized, it's a great resource for links to primary law and in-depth analysis of the industry. Especially nifty is a collection of 33 electronic "Reading Rooms," each devoted to an agricultural or food law topic, such as "Animal Feeding Operations," "BioSecurity," "Corporate Farming Laws," and "Food Safety." Each electronic room has links to major statutes, regulations, case law, research articles, government and Congressional publications, and other resources. Other features of the site include:
-- full texts of all the United States Farm Bills, 1933 to the present
-- a section indexing Congressional Research Service Reports on agricultural and food law topics
-- a bibliography of scholarly articles and books organized under 48 legal subject categories
-- the online National AgLaw Reporter newsletter
-- in-depth analytical reports written by practicing attorneys and legal scholars
-- an online "Reference Desk" of resource links
Whether you're a commercial farmer, a hobby farmer, a law student, or an attorney with an interest in agriculture regulation, the National Agricultural Law Center is a handy website to visit. And for a living example of a local-market, environmentally-friendly farm operation, take a look at Joel Salatin's Polyface Farm!
Posted by Patricia Bingham-Harper
The legal status in Iraq of security firms such as Blackwater is an interesting question. The laws of the US probably don't apply, since they are not members of the military military laws don't apply and due to Order #17 of the Coalition Provision Authority they are immune from the Iraqi legal process:
Unless provided otherwise herein, the MNF, the CPA, Foreign Liaison Missions, their Personnel, property, funds and assets, and all International Consultants shall be immune from Iraqi legal process.
Read the entire order here.
Posted by Jon Lutz
This is the title of a thought-provoking address given at the American Psychological Association by FSU's own Dr. Roy Baumeister. Dr. Baumeister focuses on how culture exploits men and women in different ways, and how this influences behavior. (He also explains why, even though each individual has one father and one mother, people in general have approximately twice as many female ancestors as male ancestors.)
Posted by Robin Gault
In April of 2007 the World Organization for Human Rights USA filed a law suit against Yahoo for complicity in sharing identification information of internet users with Chinese authorities. Two Chinese journalists are serving 10 year prison sentences for publishing material that government authorities considered subversive.
The case is filed in the US. District Court California Northern District: Civil Docket # 407-cv-02151-CW
Read the complaint here.
Good overviews of the case can be found here and here.
Posted by Jon Lutz
Time.com's article on Homegrown Terror notes that "the most sophisticated government analysis of the homegrown terrorism threat to be made public in the United States came out this week, and it didn't come from Washington — not from the FBI, the Director of National Intelligence or the Department of Homeland Security. It came from the New York City Police Department, and with any luck, its release will spur the federal government ostensibly leading the war on terror to show more faith in the general public's ability to digest serious intelligence."
You may access the NYPD report from this link: Radicalization in the West: The Homegrown Threat on the official NYC Police Department website, http://www.nyc.gov/html/nypd/.
Quoted excerpt from http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1653566,00.html.
Posted by Marin Dell
Daniel Solove on Concurring Opinions has posted his now annual Law Professor Blogger Census. This census reports on how many law professor bloggers there are, their breakdown by gender, which schools have the most bloggers, what proportion of bloggers are at top ranked schools, etc.
Posted by Jon Lutz
Cornell's Law School's Legal Information Institute has created a digital library containing the codes or rules setting standards for the professional conduct of lawyers. It also includes commentary on the law governing lawyers. It is organized on a state to state basis.
The narratives and primary material that comprise the core American Legal Ethics Library have been structured to function as an integrated collection. All elements of the library can be the subject of a full text search or entered via a table of contents, but each element is linked to the rest of the collection in multiple ways permitting a user to track a specific issue or point from code to commentary in a single jurisdiction or vice-versa and to follow that same question into materials covering other jurisdictions. For example, a user interested in Florida's treatment of conflict of interest can readily find the appropriate code provisions, follow a link from them to the related portions of the state narrative, and through the narrative access comparable sections in the ABA Model Rules or Code or the legal ethics codes of other states.
You can view it here.
Posted by Jon Lutz
There is an interesting blog post by Lawrence Solum in the Legal Theory Blog titled Foxes, Hedgehogs, and the Legal Academy. The thread was started by Belle Lettre on whether, for an academic career, it's better to be a fox or a hedgehog.
Posted by Jon Lutz
The Institute for Higher Education Policy has published a report: College and University Ranking Systems: Global Perspectives and American Challenges.
Supported by Lumina Foundation for Education, this new report by the Institute for Higher Education Policy highlights the ongoing global phenomenon of college and university ranking systems and the urgent need for constructive dialogue about ranking. College and University Ranking Systems: Global Perspectives and American Challenges acknowledges that while college and university rankings are growing in their frequency and popularity, greater understanding about how these ranking systems function is needed to ensure accountability and greater transparency.
Posted by Jon Lutz
In the Wall Street Journal Online there is an interesting article Law Schools also Ranked by Blogs Now by Amir Efrati. The article discusses alternatives to the U.S. News & World Reports law school rankings.
Posted by Jon Lutz
The New York Times in the recently published article Some Colleges to Drop Out of U.S. News Rankings reported that dozens of liberal arts schools are no longer participating in the U.S. News and World Report college rankings.
The commitment, which some college presidents said was made by a large majority of participants, represents the most significant challenge yet to the rankings, adding colleges like Barnard, Sarah Lawrence and Kenyon to a growing rebellion against the magazine, participants said.
However, Law.com in the article Law Schools Unlikely to Boycott Magazine Rankings reports that a law school boycott is unlikely.
Nancy Rogers, president of the American Association of Law Schools, said that her group was not considering a move similar to that of the Annapolis Group.
"While the AALS believes that any composite rankings system is inherently flawed, the AALS supports the efforts of magazines or other entities to provide information to those interested in pursuing legal education," she said in an e-mail message.
Law schools generally fear the consequences of not participating, Levmore said, especially because the publication could go ahead and include much of the information that is available from the American Bar Association, absent input from the individual schools.
Posted by Jon Lutz
An interesting article, The New Metrics of Scholarly Authority by Michael Jensen, is in the June 15th, 2007 issue of the Chronicle of Higher Education. The article discusses the impact of the Web 3.0 standard on academic publishing.
It's available here.
Posted by Jon Lutz
Over the last 20 years, the government has routinely used the federal Stored Communications Act (SCA) to secretly obtain stored email from email service providers without a warrant. But a ruling yesterday found that the SCA violates the Fourth Amendment.
The government must have a search warrant before it can secretly seize and search emails stored by email service providers, according to a landmark ruling in the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The court found that email users have the same reasonable expectation of privacy in their stored email as they do in their telephone calls -- the first circuit court ever to make that finding.
Read the decision in Warshak v. United States
Posted by Trisha Simonds
Trafficking in persons is a modern-day form of slavery, a new type of global slave trade.
Perpetrators prey on the most weak among us, primarily women and children, for profit and gain. They lure victims into involuntary servitude and sexual slavery. Today we are again called by conscience to end the debasement of our fellow men and women. As in the 19th century, committed abolitionists around the world have come together in a global movement to confront this repulsive crime. President George W. Bush has committed the United States Government to lead in combating this serious 21st century challenge, and all nations that are resolved to end human trafficking have a strong partner in the United States.
Secretary Rice
Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act of 2000: Trafficking in Persons Report 2007 is available in HTML format here and in PDF format here.
Posted by Jon Lutz
AudioCaseFiles describes itself as the leader in AudioCaseFiles. From their website:
AudioCaseFiles provides law school students with digital audio recordings of the legal opinions they read to learn the law (patent pending). The company was founded on the principle that auditory delivery will enhance and supplement the law school learning process. We currently have hundreds of popular cases and are in the process of continuing to record the most frequently requested cases. Please check the site frequently.
The Company distinguishes itself from other study guides which detract from the law school learning process by spoon feeding students black letter law by offering content that challenges students to thoughtfully engage in the same analysis that reading requires. However, the key advantage that ACF affords is portability, as students can listen to the cases they are required to read for class while in the car, at the gym, or at home.
The Company also believes that it can save students money by allowing them to selectively download the cases they want and need for only .99 cents. Students are no longer deluged with the useless, irrelevant, and sometimes harmful information coming from study guides and can focus on learning and knowing the important cases emphasized by their professors.
Try it here.
Posted by Jon Lutz
With Congress making new efforts to pass comprehensive immigration reform, researchers have raised questions about the enforcement of the existing law. The TRAC (Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse) Immigration Project has analyzed records and produced reports on many aspects of enforcement. Most recently TRAC issued a report which compared the rhetoric of the Department of Homeland Security with the reality of charges filed by DHS in the immigration courts.
Posted by Robin Gault
Kudos to the Michigan State University College of Law! They've created a terrific Website dedicated to current and historical Animal Law, both in the United States and around the world.
Federal and state statutes, and over 700 full-text cases are indexed by state, topic (e.g. Exotic pets, genetic engineering, vet malpractice), and animal species. The current month's new topics, cases and articles are highlighted and summarized on the home page. The Publications page links the user to a library of articles addressing various topics in Animal Law, and a section of Pleadings, Briefs & Jury Charges has examples of legal documents indexed by case name and issue topics. A smaller section offers a pull-down menu of country names offering links to information about Animal Law worldwide. There's a Multimedia Podcenter where the user can download & play a selection of Podcasts. MP3 files are available on a variety of topics, including "Can I put my pet in my will?" and "The police shot my dog...do I have any recourse?" Especially nifty is a list of topics (e.g. Dogfighting, Equine Activity Liability Laws, Pet Trusts), each accompanied by a map of the United States. Click on a state to view that state's laws on the selected topic.
With its attractive and easy to use design, the Animal Legal & Historical Web Center is a portal to a wealth of information for lay persons and law professionals alike. As we say in the library profession: check it out!
Posted by Patricia Bingham-Harper
A study by the MIT Workplace Center of the career paths of women lawyers in large Massachusetts firms 2001-2005 indicates that family responsibilities still form a major obstacle to advancement. While firms may not hesitate to hire women, the time demands placed on those who seek to advance to partnership make it difficult for women who choose to have children. The study, Women Lawyers and Obstacles to Leadership, determined that most women who leave large firms because of family needs do not "opt out" of law practice but rather chose a form of practice that allows more time for family life.
Posted by Robin Gault
