Researching Across the Curriculum: The Road Must Continue Beyond the First Year

“Researching Across the Curriculum: The Road Must Continue Beyond the First Year”


Oklahoma Law Review, Vol. 61, 2009

BROOKE J. BOWMAN, Stetson University College of Law

In the ever growing movement to integrate skills and values across the law school curriculum, research instruction cannot be overlooked or forgotten. Research serves as the fulcrum upon which “skills and values” such as ethics and practical application of doctrinal studies, rests. Therefore, research instruction cannot be limited to what the students learn in their first-year legal research and writing classes. A concentrated effort must be made in all classes to ensure that what the students learn in the first-year research and writing classes will be further developed, refined, revisited and reinforced. This Article, Research Across the Curriculum: The Road Must Continue Beyond the First Year, offers a new paradigm for how research instruction should change in the upper-level classes from requiring all students to take Advanced Legal Research courses, for example, to integrating research instruction into specialized areas such as international law and tax courses.

Source:  LSN Law Educator: Courses, Materials & Teaching Vol. 5 No. 5, 03/06/2009

Twitter boosts public access to federal courtrooms

In an AP story today by Roxana Hegeman, “Twitter Boosts Public Access to Federal Courtrooms.”

The lead paragraph reads:

“In a victory for news technology in federal courts, a judge is allowing a reporter to use the microblogging service Twitter to provide constant updates from a racketeering gang trial this week.”

Thanks to Bob Ambrogi  for tweeting about this….

New Sunlight Labs Project for 50 States’ Legislation

Sunlight Labs, creator of OpenCongress, has started a new wiki project for obtaining data files for legislation,
legislators and votes in each of the 50 states. Volunteers are welcome!

Hat tip to today’s Law Librarian Blog.

Index of OLC Memoranda

Index of Bush-Era OLC Memoranda Relating to Interrogation, Detention, Rendition and/or Surveillance” is a newly updated chart available at the ACLU website.   The “Status” column in the chart details if the memoranda are still secret or public.  And, if a memo has been repudiated, there are details in the “Notes” column.

We love a good index.

Hat tip to TalkLeft.

Yes He Scan

Carl Malamud’s quest for the printing post made the New York Times.  In the Lede blog, Robert Mackey writes about the Yes We Scan campaign and mentions the great support Malamud has gotten on Twitter and in the blogosphere.  The Lede carries a great quote from Larry Lessig’s blog post on Malamud:

I can’t imagine a more exciting appointment. Sometimes an agency needs STASIS. Sometimes it needs CHANGE. Gov’t tech is certainly in the second category, and no one I know of could more effectively deliver on the commitment to open government than he.

Now, off to join the YesWeScan Facebook group…..

Google’s newspaper ads

From The Arts section of today’s New York Times

A Google Search of a Distinctly Retro Kind

To Satisfy a Lawsuit, Internet Powerhouse Must Turn to Print Ads

By Noam Cohen

To comply with a class-action suit by copyright holders affected by Google’s plan to offer all of literature online, old-fashioned legal notices in 70 languages are being placed in newspapers worldwide.

. . .

Old-fashioned legal notices prove best in tracking down far-flung authors

Towards an Open Source Legal Operating System

Here’s an article by Katie Fortney, who was an intern at our library.

Abstract:     
An informed democratic society needs open access to the law, but states’ attempts to protect copyright interests in their laws are a major roadblock. This article urges broader access, analyzes the implications and legal arguments for and against copyright in the law, and considers strategies for access advocacy.

Fortney, Katie,Towards an Open Source Legal Operating System(February 20, 2009). Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1347158

A New Era of Corruption?

The New Republic (3/4/09)  has two new articles focusing on the decline of newspapers and the impact on democracy/politics:

Goodbye to the Age of Newspapers (Hello to a New Era of Corruption) by
Why American politics and society are about to be changed for the worse.

and

CORRESPONDENCE: A New Era of Corruption? by
The newspaper’s decline does not portend anything resembling the end of democracy. Here’s why.

Oh say Scan we See

More on the YES WE SCAN campaign of Carl Malamud:

Carl Malamud has just tweeted about  his Scribd collection of online materials (articles, public.resource.org materials, and much more), as well as a link to his 8 books via google.  There was also a tweet about his timeline of published materials, too.

But most importantly, he provides a link for downloading that cool poster!

Tsinghua China Law Review

Tsinghua Law School, the MIT of China, has a new English language law journal: Tsinghua China Law Review. The first issue is due later this year.

tap tip to Carlton Willey, the editor -in-chief.

From the official announcment:

The Tsinghua China Law Review is a new law journal at the Tsinghua University

School of Law in Beijing, China. The TCLR is an English‐language academic journal

aimed at a global audience, publishing articles on legal topics relating to China. The

TCLR Board of Editors is a collaborative effort between foreign students in the

Tsinghua LLM Program in Chinese Law and Chinese students at the Tsinghua School

of Law. The journal will follow a U.S. law journal format. It will be published biannually

and distributed to subscribers in the U.S., China, and throughout the world.

 

Call for Submissions

The TCLR is currently seeking high‐quality scholarly articles for its upcoming issue.

Articles should be original works of legal analysis on topics relating to Chinese law

or other legal issues that pertain to China. Citations are required for all points of

law, assertions of fact, or references to other works. Citations should be in footnotes

and formatted in accordance with the Bluebook (http://www.legalbluebook.com).

Articles may be submitted by email, in Word format, to TsinghuaCLR@gmail.com or

in hard copy, along with a CD‐ROM electronic copy, to the Tsinghua School of Law.

Kindly email the preceding address for postal information. The current Call for

Submissions is open until April 3, 2009. Submitted articles will be considered on

a rolling basis.

 

A Note on the Language of Publication

The main body of articles should be written in English. However, Chinese‐language

legal terminology, citations, or references to laws or other original sources may be

provided in Chinese, and will be translated by the TCLR editorial staff. In addition,

for articles that regularly reference Chinese‐language laws or other materials, the

TCLR editorial staff will translate the materials to English so that they may be

included as appendices to the article for publication.

Website: The TCLR website will be hosted by the Eastlaw service, and is currently under construction.  Once complete, from the site one can view abstracts of published articles, submit articles, subscribe to the journal, and receive information about symposia events, etc.  If you would like to subscribe to our listserv to receive periodic email updates (only critical emails, perhaps one per month), kindly send an email to TsinghuaCLR@gmail.com with the phrase “[Subscribe TCLR listserv]” in the subject line.