Author Archives: Erika Wayne

About Erika Wayne

Erika V. Wayne is deputy library director and lecturer in law at Stanford Law School. Along with George Wilson, Kate Wilko and Paul Lomio, Erika Wayne has co-taught Advanced Legal Research for 3 years. Erika's interest in Open Access dates back to the 1996 when she helped in the development of the Securities Class Action Clearinghouse -- the first court designated internet site for public posting of securities litigation filings. And, she hates to pay for *anything* that should be free. She has a law degree from Penn and a library degree from Illinois.

How to Win a CALI Award: Some Personal Advice from Two Law Students Who Have Done It

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Stephen E. Schilling and Rebecca M. Greendyke won a multiple CALI awards, which are awarded at a number of law schools to the student with the highest grade in a class.

But they did something else, they wrote an article (published in the University of Dayton Law Review, Winter 2011) on how to win the award.  In their article, “How to Win a CALI Award: Some Personal Advice from Two Law Students Who Have Done It,” they provide helpful tips for academic success in law school.

I suggest reading the article for yourself, but I want to mention a few of the best bits of advice.

For starters, a student should “know thyself, know thy professor  and know thy class.”

“Knowing yourself means knowing how you learn best and doing things to make yourself the best law student you can be.  Knowing your professor means learning how your professors teach, how they test, and what their expectations are.  Knowing your class means knowing your material.  This entails practicing  and working problems, using outside sources, and being prepared with tips and tricks to make your exam answers stand out.”

I really liked the suggestion to “be your own professor” — in other words, try to teach yourself the material.  The article also provides tips on how to ‘target’ the right courses for success, from reputation, exam mode to class size.

But, I was most pleased by the suggestion to “use outside sources.”  The authors were highlighting the importance of picking the right study aids, but there is much more to looking beyond your assigned readings.  We’ve seen in our ALR class that some of our strongest students are those who look beyond the traditional (or expected) resources.   And, browsing through our course reserves collection (which is often stocked with those ‘suggested’ other readings by professors) can be incredibly valuable and time-saving.

Good tips worth thinking about.

 

Distinguishing Judges: An Empirical Ranking of Judicial Quality in the United States Courts of Appeal

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I just happened across this new article in the Spring 2011 issue of the Missouri Law Review, “Distinguishing Judges: An Empirical Ranking of Judicial Quality in the United States Courts of Appeal,” by Robert Anderson IV.

The abstract reads:

“This article presents an empirical performance ranking of 383 federal appellate judges who served on the United States Courts of Appeals between 1960 and 2008.  Like existing judge evaluation studies, this Article uses citations from judicial opinions to assess judicial quality.  Unlike existing citation studies, which treat positive and negative citations alike, this Article ranks judges according to the mix of positive and negative citations to the opinions, rather than the number of citations to those opinions.  By distinguishing between positive and negative citations, this approach avoids ranking judges higher for citations even when the judges are being cited negatively.  The results are strikingly different from those found in the existing citation count-based studies of judicial performance.  When the mix of positive and negative citations is taken into account, many of the most highly cited judges from the citation-count studies are only average and some of the average judges in the citation-count studies emerge as the most positively cited.  The results suggest there is an objective performance measure that can measure judicial performance and provide incentives for fidelity to the rule of law.”

 

Databases and Dynamism

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In his article, “Databases and Dynamism,” Michal Shur-Ofry writes: “By highlighting the dynamic dimension of databases, this article calls for a more cautious and conscious approach toward copyright protection of selections and arrangements.  It further hopes to form a starting point for further discussion that will shift at least part of the focus of the copyright-databases debate from access to information to selection and arrangement”

Databases and Dynamism
Author: Michal Shur-Ofry
44 University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform 315 (2011)

Abstract:

Databases are generally perceived in legal scholarship as static warehouses, storing up valuable facts and information. Accordingly, scholarship on copyright protection of databases typically concentrates on the social need to access their content. This Article seeks to shift the focus of the debate, arguing that the copyright-databases debate is not merely a static “access to information” story. Instead, it is a dynamic story of relations, hierarchies, and interactions between pieces of information, determined by database creators. It is also a story of patterns, categories, selections, and taxonomies that are often invisible to the naked eye, but that influence our perceptions of the world in manners of which we are seldom aware.

Relying on socio-psychological literature and communication theories concerning complexity, categorization, and stereotyping, this Article examines the dynamic dimension of databases. It argues that this narrative should direct legal attention toward the protection afforded by copyright not to contents of databases, but rather to their “selection and arrangement”-an element which has been largely ignored by legal scholarship. While the Article does not advocate a complete expiry of copyright in “selections and arrangements,” it does hope to spark a discussion with respect to their social and economic role, and add a new dimension to the copyright-database debate.

Databases and Dynamism
Author: Michal Shur-Ofry
44 University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform 315 (2011)

 

 

War Cry of the Tiger Librarian?

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Tiger mom I am not.  Just spend an hour with my family.  Garbage describes the stuff that doesn’t get recycled or composted.  And, the closest we get to music lessons are our regular iPod dance parties.

That being said, I think I might be a bit of tiger librarian (or would it be lion?).   And, I think it is a good thing.

Tiger librarians love the hunt: the hunt for information; roaming the stacks or the web.   Stalking the answer is half the fun.

Tiger librarians also ferociously scrutinize invoices and bills.  Double-digit increases make us roar and complain and nag in a way that makes most tigers look like house cats.

Tiger librarians spend their ‘free’ time doing things like building web sites, blogging, advocating for better access to government information.

Tiger librarians aren’t quiet, either.

Are you a tiger librarian?  Tell me why in the comments below.  (We’ll talk t-shirts later.)

Kindle and Libraries

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In yesterday’s New York Times, Claire Cain Miller and Miguel Helft reported on Apple’s tighter control of the App store.    TechCrunch then added that Apple’s moves may “foreshadow war with Amazon Kindle.” 

As Jason Kincaid writes: ” instead of beating Amazon on price or features, it looks like Apple might just cut them off. Or force them to use in-app payments, which give Apple a 30% cut and would kill Amazon’s margins. Amazon has avoided using Apple’s in-app payments system by kicking users to a browser to complete their transaction, but according to the NYT report . . .  it sounds like this will be banned.”

Just last week, Amazon announced a major event: Kindle book sales had finally passed paperback books sales on Amazon.com. (Last year, Kindle book sales outpaced hardcovers.)

With all of this swirling about (and very little mention of what this means for libraries), what should I see on our shelving truck? 

Gregory K. Laughlin has a new article in the University of Baltimore Law Review: “Digitization and Democracy:  The Conflict Between the Amazon Kindle License Agreement and the Role of Libraries in a Free Society.” (Volume 40, Number 1, Fall 2010)

Laughlin asks “whether libraries may lend e-books to patrons without violating the copyright owners’ exclusive right of distribution.”    He continues:

“Amazon, in the license agreement to which a purchaser of a  Kindle e-book must assent prior to downloading the e-book, retains ownership of the “Digital Content” (i.e. the e-book), and imposes a number of restrictions that are inconsistent with transfer of ownership to the purchaser, including prohibiting redistribution.  If libraries are not owners of the Kindle e-books they acquire, then by the explicit terms of the Amazon license agreement, as well as Section 106 of the Copyright Act, they may not lend the e-books to their patrons.”

….

“Are the license terms prohibiting the lending of e-books (and other digital content) enforceable under existing law? . . . If so, should the Copyright Act be amended to provide libraries with an inalienable right to lend e-books that is equivalent to their current right to lend printed books?”

Laughlin argues: “The right of libraries to lend e-books to their patrons should be inalienable…. There is still time for society as a whole to establish definitively what rights a library has to lend e-books that it acquires.  Congress should guarantee that the interests of the reading public are protected; and it should do so in a way that guarantees the same freedom of access to e-books that the public has enjoyed with physical books for well over a century.”

Rudovsky v. West Publishing Goes to Trial

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The Legal Intelligencer reports:

…a federal court jury began hearing testimony Monday in a defamation suit brought by two law professors against West Publishing.

Professors David Rudovsky of the University of Pennsylvania Law School and Leonard Sosnov of Widener School of Law claim that West harmed their reputations when it falsely identified them as the authors of a poorly researched treatise update.

According to the complaint, the professors “were unable to reach agreement on the financial terms” for creating either a new edition of their treatise or an updated pocket part.  And, “in December 2008, without providing any notice to the Plaintiffs,” West published a pocket part to the treatise with the professors listed as authors (and “in smaller print, also identified ‘The Publisher’s Staff’ as an author”).

Now at trial, “Rudovsky testified Monday that he was “shocked” when he learned that West went forward in December 2008 and published a pocket part that still carried his and Sosnov’s names as authors — even though they had done no work and received no pay.”

According to an ABA Journal article, West’s lawyer argued that, “the two profs weren’t damaged by the publication of the initial 2008 pocket part, because they can’t prove either that their reputation was harmed or that they suffered financially.   However, the profs’ attorney, . . .  argued that damage to their professional reputation is assumed and doesn’t need to be proven, because this is a defamation per se situation, and Senior U.S. District Judge John Fullam agreed.”

U.S. District Judge John P. Fullam issued a two-page order that provides more detail on the Judge’s take on the law of defamation per se.  It also states:

“It is for the jury to determine whether the intended audience of the pocket part would conclude that plaintiffs authored an inaccurate and out-of-date supplement to the treatise.  If they so conclude, then I hold this would tend to damage the plaintiffs as legal authors and authorities on Pennsylvania criminal law and constitute defamation per se.”

The trial continues.  Get your popcorn ready, this should be interesting.

Earlier posts on the case available here:

http://legalresearchplus.com/2009/06/10/update-to-rudovsky-v-west-publishing-corp/

here,

http://legalresearchplus.com/2009/04/16/so-who-does-write-those-expensive-supplements-and-updates-to-big-name-treatises/

and here:

http://legalresearchplus.com/2009/04/25/rudovsky-v-west-publishing-corp-judge-writes-readers-were-not-informed-that-some-cases-cited-in-earlier-volumes-had-since-been-reversed-or-modified/

New Web Resource: SCOCAL: The Supreme Court of California, Annotated

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We are pleased to announce the launch of our new Supreme Court of California website, SCOCAL (http://scocal.stanford.edu).

SCOCAL is a joint project between the Robert Crown Law Library at Stanford Law School, and  Justia, Inc.

The site provides free access to the full text California Supreme Court opinions from 1934 to the present, along with detailed annotations of selected cases written and edited by students in our Advanced Legal Research class here at Stanford.  For selected cases related California Supreme Court briefs, other documents and news items are also available, all free of charge. Users may subscribe to separate RSS feeds of new opinions, annotations, Court news and follow the site on Twitter.

Special thanks to FastCase for providing a large number of the California Supreme Court opinions available on the site.

Bloomberg Lays Down the Law

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From Crain’s New York Business, “Bloomberg LP lays down the law: Financial data giant storms legal research in its typically big way.”

Hilary Potkewitz writes: “The financial data and news juggernaut has quietly hired nearly 500 lawyers over the past year, making it the largest source of new legal jobs in New York.”

What do Westlaw and Lexis make of Bloomberg‘s ambitions in the legal research arena?

““We’re not seeing much of a change in the marketplace [because of Bloomberg]. We’re feeling very strong and comfortable,” says Mike Dahn, chief U.S. marketing and product development officer for Eagan, Minn.-based Westlaw….

LexisNexis Vice President Clemens Ceipek is more blunt. “Bloomberg has a lot of money, and that’s why we can’t ignore them,” he says, “but it’s going to be really hard for them, just like it would be really hard for us to compete in the financial markets.””

The article continues that “cost-conscious law librarians” are taking notice of Bloomberg’s less expensive flat fees and extended free trials.

“The 200 largest law firms spend an average of $2.7 million per year on Lexis and Westlaw combined, according to The American Lawyer.”  How much of that will go to Bloomberg over time?  Other contenders?  Watch and wait….

Supreme Court Oral Argument Audio Recordings

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This from SCOTUS Blog:

“Starting next week, the Court will release on its own website the audiotape recordings of all of the arguments at the end of each argument week. This will be much faster release than under the prior policy, when they were not available for months — unless, as in a few high-profile cases, the Court released them on the same day of argument — a policy now discontinued.”

Starting with the October Term 2010, visitors to the Supreme Court site can download the FREE MP3 files by clicking on the “Oral Arguments” link from the home page and then clicking on the “Argument Audio”.  The argument audio will be posted on Fridays after Conference.

More details about this new policy are available in the Supreme Court’s press release.

Two Million Dollar Gift for Law.Gov

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Today, Google announced the winners of their Project 10^100 , giving 10 million dollars in total to ideas that will help change the world.  (Short video of the winning ideas here.)

Law.Gov is one of the winners.  As the Google posting states:

Public.Resource.Org is a non-profit organization focused on enabling online access to public government documents in the United States. We are providing $2 million to Public.Resource.Org to support the Law.Gov initiative, which aims to make all primary legal materials in the United States available to all.

What great news!

Carl Malamud writes on the O”Reilly Radar today: “This grant is going to help Public.Resource.Org continue our work on Law.Gov and Video.Gov. For Law.Gov, this is going to mean a shift into real production, building on the very solid consensus that was reached earlier this year on the Core Law.Gov Principles.“

Carl Malamud also shared a status update for Law.gov efforts in that post.  Beyond the amazing gift from Google, the big updates include:

  1. Before the Law.Gov Report can be finished, video from the 15 Law.Gov workshops needs cleaning up and cataloging. ” Point.B Studio and Foolish Tree Films have been hard at work creating a 15-DVD set of workshop proceedings with approximately 70 pieces of video. The video will all get released as a final mix on the net as well as on DVDs printed at Lulu, and this core will form the basis for the next steps of the report.”
  2. To help further the National Inventory of Legal Materials,  there will soon be a “bug tracker where people can enter their survey results, in particular creating trouble tickets for jurisdictions that violate the Law.Gov Core Principles.”
  3. Carl Malamud is close to “a final agreement with UC Hastings and the Internet Archive to scan 3 million pages of 9th Circuit briefs.”  And, Malamud has sent California’s Title 24 out to be “double-keyed, turning it from PDF scans into valid marked up hypertext.”   Carl Malamud is also working on an effort to make fully available online the local codes of his surrounding North Bay Area communities.

More developments are coming up.