Monthly Archives: January 2009

Administering CPR to the Gray Lady

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We spend a full day talking about newspapers and their role in legal research in our class.  And throughout the class we make frequent reference to newspapers (such as, for example, searching for news coverage when legislation passes hurdles in Congress).  Of course no one in our class has actually ever purchased a newspaper (except, maybe, on November 5, 2008 ) and we read constant stories about the industry’s demise.  A really interesting (to me, anyway) article in New York magazine discusses various attempts to resuscitate the venerable “paper of record,” the New York Times, known to some as the “Gray Lady” with new applications of technology, features and deep content.

The article mentions various and intriguing uses of new technology (the “Word Train,” “Lifestream” strip and several others), but also touches upon one of the themes of our class:  authority.

The article also mentions the inclusion of primary source documents as “data dumps” along with the “reporter’s cache” of materials.  This has always been a dream of mine — to be able to read a newspaper story about a complaint filed, bill introduced, judicial opinion issued, settlement agreement signed, regulation promulgated and then find a link from the story to the actual document discussed — and not just for “hot documents” but for every legal document noted (I can dream, right?).

Here are a few paragraphs dealing with these ideas:

Perhaps most interesting, there were data dumps of documents. As Guantanamo records emerged, the Times‘ website posted the entire set of legal documentation, affixed to a search engine. Readers could click on William Glaberson’s reportage, but they could also dive into original materials, searching for a particular word or prisoner amid transcripts of legal hearings.

It is of course impossible to see into the future . . .   But Pilhofer has an application in at the Knight Foundation, a proposal for which he’s teamed up with the nonprofit newsroom ProPublica, seeking funding for software called Document Cloud. Like many innovations, it’s hard to describe until it exists, but from Pilhofer’s account, it would let news organizations display documents on the web–rich transcripts, polling, and other research tools–rendering them easily searchable, commentable, sharable. It could become a journalistic form in itself: the reporter’s cache, embedded in commentary from every corner.

“One of the New York Times” roles in this new world is authority–and that’s probably the rarest commodity on the web,” explains Pilhofer . . . . “That’s why in some respects we’re gung-ho and in other respects very conservative. Everything we do has to be to New York Times standards. Everything. And people are crazy about that. And that’s a good thing.”

(Emphasis added)

 

 

“Goosing the Gray Lady: What are these renegade cybergeeks doing at the New York Times? Maybe saving it,” by Emily Nummbaum.  New York, January 19 – 26, 2009, p. 28

New Bolivian Constitution

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Bolivian voters approved a new constitution in a national referendum on Sunday, January 25. This constitution should be of interest to students of Latin American law, indigenous rights, minority language rights, and sustainable development law.

Full-text (Spanish)  of the new Constitution can be found here:

http://www.cne.org.bo/proces_electoral/RefConstitucion2009/documentos/TextoCPE.pdf

http://www.cne.org.bo/proces_electoral/RefConstitucion2009/textos.aspx

New York Times article on the constitutional referendum:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/26/world/americas/26bolivia.html?ref=world

GPO Study of Regional Depositories — Federal Depository Library Program (FDLP)

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The U.S. Government Printing Office (GPO) has posted a new (December 2008/transmitted January 6, 2009) study of its 51 regional library depositories (in 43 states; 33 (62%) of which are academic libraries, 14 (30%) of which are state libraries, and 4 (8%) of which are public libraries) in the Federal Depository Library Program (FDLP), addressing — among other things — organizational, financial and technological conditions and recommending (to the Joint Committee on Printing (JCP), the joint committee of the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate that oversees the GPO):

1. Support continued appropriations for GPO’s initiative to create machine-readable bibliographic records for the tangible collection of pre-1976 depository publications to ensure its completion in a timelier manner.

2. Undertake a more in-depth look at the organizational, financial, and technological issues affecting the FDLP in its entirety, regionals and selectives alike, and analyze the results to develop recommendations for policy and/or statutory revision that will provide for effective operation of the FDLP in the 21st century; and

3. Continue to support GPO’s initiatives to authenticate the Government’s digital information dissemination products.

Hat tip to today’s Law Librarian Blog.

Comparison of Legislative Resources on GPO Access and Selected Government and Non-Government Web Sites

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A valuable, 13-page, October 2008 Comparison of Legislative Resources on [the U.S. Government Printing Office's] GPO Access and Selected Government and Non-Government Web Sites is available that discusses free and commercial, fee-based online resources.

Hat tip to The Internet Guide for the Legal Researcher Newsletter, vol. 4, no. 1 (January/February 2009).

Horse-and-Buggy Dockets in the Internet Age…

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Lyle Denniston, courthouse and legal news reporter since 1948, writes about the woeful state of courthouse dockets (and documents) and the difficulties this presents for accurate courthouse reporting in his article “Horse-and-Buggy Dockets in the Internet Age, and the Travails of a Courthouse Reporter,” 9 Journal of Appellate Practice and Process 299 (2007).  The first page of the article opens:

“With rare — too rare — exceptions, however, the news-gatherer on the courthouse beat is still functionally inhibited by the backwardness of most courts in the design, operation, and maintenance of their electronic dockets. . . .

The underlying premise of this criticism is simple to state: No courthouse reporter can do his or her work without prompt–sometimes, virtually immediate — access to original documents. ”

As I read this article about the challenges facing reporters on the courthouse beat, I kept substituting the term “legal researcher” into the text.  The concerns about docket/document availability are shared by so many of us in the legal research world.  But, I confess, that I hadn’t really thought about the impact on news reporters. 

Denniston correctly applauds at the fine work of the Florida Supreme Court on the Bush v. Gore documents and the more recent improvements at the U.S. Supreme Court, as well as the great resources found on both the SCOTUS Blog and the SCOTUS Wiki pages.   But more needs to be done.

Perhaps, librarians should be working more closely with legal journalists to improve the access issues?  Especially in a day when media outlets and libraries are experiencing shrinking budgets, we might be wise to find new partners to help us liberate public documents.

WTO’s new Regional Trade Agreements Information System

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The World Trade Organization has released a new database of bilateral and regional trade agreements. The site provides full-text for most of the agreements , as well as the legal authority for the agreements under the GATT articles.  The database is researchable by country, date or topic. Many thanks to the WTO for offering this useful treaty research tool. 

WTO Regional Trade Agreements Information System (RTA-IS)

http://rtais.wto.org

Web Searches That Really Bear Fruit

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Today’s Wall Street Journal has an article by Katherine Boehret in which she reports on her test of “two free tools that attempt to make your Web searches more relevant by learning from users’ reactions to search results: Google’s SearchWiki and Surf Canyon Inc.’s namesake tool . . . “

It’s on page D6, on the “Gadgets” page in The Mossberg Solution feature, edited by Walter S. Mossberg:

“Web Searches That Really Bear Fruit

New Free Tools Aim to Make Online Results More Relevant by Tracking Your Reactions.”

By Katherine Boehret

Google’s SearchWiki lets users promote or remove search results; Surf Canyon uses bull’s-eyes to denote related links based on users’ search patterns.

The author’s conclusion:

Google’s SearchWiki is asking users to do extra work, which may not be practical for many users.  But if you do use it, this tool’s personalized, saved results could be a real boon.  Surf Canyon worked well for me with multiple surf engines, retrieving data from result pages I likely wouldn’t have opened.  Either way, your days of futile Web searching are numbered.

 

Harvard Law Library director again in the news

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News from the Berkman Center at HLS:

 

Internet Safety Technical Task Force Releases Final Report on Enhancing Child Safety and Online Technologies

Findings To Be Presented Today at State of the Net Conference in Washington, D.C.

January 14, 2009, Cambridge, Mass., and Washington, D.C. - The Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University today released the final report of the Internet Safety Technical Task Force, a group of 29 leading Internet businesses, non-profit organizations, academics, and technology companies that joined together for a year-long investigation of tools and technologies to create a safer environment on the Internet for youth.

The Task Force was created in February 2008 in accordance with the Joint Statement on Key Principles of Social Networking Safety announced in January 2008 by the Attorneys General Multi-State Working Group on Social Networking and MySpace.  The report was delivered to the 52 Attorneys General in December, 2008.

To read the final report, including the executive summary, as well as reaction statements from members of the Task Force, visit:

http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/pubrelease/isttf,

 

John Palfrey, chair of the Task Force and faculty co-director of the Berkman Center, will discuss the findings of the final report today at 3:30 p.m. Eastern Time at the Congressional Internet Caucus Fifth Annual State of the Net Conference in Washington, D.C. (http://www.netcaucus.org/conference/2009) along with members of the Task Force.

 

 

Source:

Seth Young
Berkman Center for Internet & Society
Harvard University
+1.617.384.9135
<syoung@cyber.law.harvard.edu>

Why Grammar Matters

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A fascinating new article appears in the Loyola University Chicago Law Journal,  “Why Grammar Matters: Conjugating Verbs in Modern Legal Opinions,”  by Robert C. Farrell (Fall 2008).

The article opens with a series of questions [see if you know the answers]:

“Does it matter that the editors of thirty-three law journals, including those at Yale and Michigan, think that there is a “passive tense”?  Does it matter that the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth and Eleventh Circuits think that there is a “passive mood”?  Does it matter that the editors of fourteen law reviews think there is a “subjunctive tense”?  Does it matter that the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit thinks that there is a “subjunctive voice”?

There is, in fact, no “passive tense” or “passive mood.”  The passive is a voice.  There is no “subjunctive voice” or “subjunctive tense.”  The subjunctive is a mood.”

Does it really matter?  The article attempts to show that a knowledge of verb forms “is a very useful tool in the arsenal of legal argumentation.”

“The Virtual Tax Library: A Comparison of Five Electronic Tax Research Platforms”

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“The Virtual Tax Library: A Comparison of Five Electronic Tax Research Platforms“

Florida Tax Review, Vol. 8, No. 9, 2008
Loyola-LA Legal Studies Paper No. 2008-40

KATHERINE PRATT, Loyola Law School Los Angeles

JENNIFER M. KOWAL, Loyola Law School – Los Angeles

DANIEL MARTIN, Loyola Law School – Los Angeles

Improved LexisNexis and Westlaw tax research platforms and new electronic tax research platforms offered by BNA (BNA Tax Management Library), CCH (CCH Tax Research NetWork), and RIA (RIA Checkpoint) constitute a virtual tax library that offers tax researchers much of the content and functionality of a physical tax library, as well as some useful functionality features (e.g., direct linking of primary and secondary sources) a physical tax library cannot provide. The new virtual tax library offers tax researchers numerous benefits, including the convenience of a portable library, more reliable and current research results, and increased research efficiency. Many tax researchers have not adapted their tax research techniques to effectively utilize the virtual tax library, however, because they are unfamiliar with the new and improved electronic tax research platforms.

To reduce tax researchers’ costs of evaluating and comparing the five electronic platforms, this Article provides detailed comparisons of the content and functionality features offered by the platforms. This Article also explains how to access various types of primary and secondary tax sources on the platforms and provides detailed search pathways that will enable tax researchers to navigate around the electronic platforms.

Part I of this Article provides background information regarding the development of the new electronic tax research platforms and explains our project and methodology. Part II compares the primary and secondary source content offered on the five electronic platforms and compares various types of free tax information that are available on the internet. Part III compares the various functionality features offered on the five electronic platforms. Part IV illustrates the differences in search results obtained by using the various electronic platforms to research a topical tax research question. Part V discusses the factors that are relevant when designing an electronic tax research system and makes recommendations about combining the electronic tax research platforms to create a workable virtual tax library.

A chart in Appendix A provides a side-by-side comparison of the primary source content available on the five electronic tax research platforms. The chart includes search pathways and date restrictions for each type of content. A chart in Appendix B provides a side-by-side comparison of the functionality features offered by each platform. The chart includes quick reference guides for initiating various types of searches, as well as user support information for each platform.

The published version of this article includes new information (e.g., search pathways and date restrictions for the content information in Appendix A) that was not included in the draft version of this article.

Source: LSN Law Educator: Courses, Materials & Teaching Vol. 5 No. 1,
  01/09/2009