Category Archives: Factual Research

Times Machine

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From an e-mail I received today from The New York Times:

 

As a home delivery subscriber you receive free access to Times Machine, our online archive of The Times from 1851 to 1922 – reproduced exactly as it originally appeared.

With Times Machine, see history come back to life:
        
        Just choose a date and see every headline, article and photo
        
        Flip electronically through page after page of history as it was happening
        
        Read about the Civil War or the sinking of the Titanic, or look through the first 70 years of advertising in The Times

Times Machine is only available for home delivery subscribers. . . .

Wikipedian Justice

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“Wikipedian Justice”

RAGHAV SHARMA, National Law University, Jodhpur

This short article highlights the increasing reliance by Indian courts on Wikipedia. The Supreme Court seems to have accepted Wikipedia as a reliable source of information. The article discusses how far such judicial reliance is warranted on Wikipedia.

Source: LSN Law & Courts Vol. 3 No. 21,  03/10/2009

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

The Curious Appellate Judge: Ethical Limits on Independent Research

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“The Curious Appellate Judge: Ethical Limits on Independent Research”

 ELIZABETH G. THORNBURG, Southern Methodist School of Law

Appellate judges in the twenty-first century find themselves in a world in which litigation – both civil and criminal – involves a vast array of complex and technical factual disputes. These lawsuits, in turn, may cause judges to seek a greater level of expertise in order to deal competently with the evidence that will be relevant to the disputes. At the same time, advances in communication technology have brought the world’s library to the courthouse, requiring no onerous trips across town or index searches but only the click of a mouse. This combination of felt need and ready access has turned a once-marginal concern into a dilemma that affects courts and litigants daily. The problem of judicial research has always been with us, lurking in the margins, and yet we do not have a workable framework for discerning when it is and is not permissible. We can no longer fail comprehensively and rigorously to engage this question, because it is now taking on a central importance to proper judicial decision-making in an increasing number of cases. The stakes are high. Whether and when judges independently may research cuts to the very heart of our adversary system of justice: these questions implicate directly the ethical role of the judge, the balance between fairness and efficiency, the rights of the parties, and how we view the rule of law. This article therefore argues that states should reject the current proposal and adopt instead a rule that provides clear guidance to judges, notice to litigants, and transparency to the judicial system.

 

Source: LSN Law & Courts Vol. 2 No. 61,  10/28/2008

The Citation of Wikipedia in American Judicial Opinions

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“The Citation of Wikipedia in American Judicial Opinions”

LEE F. PEOPLES, Oklahoma City University School of Law

Wikipedia has been cited almost 300 times in American judicial opinions as of September, 2008. Courts cite Wikipedia for a wide range of purposes. Some citations are merely mundane references to everyday facts well known by the general public. In other opinions Wikipedia is cited as a basis for the court’s reasoning or to support a conclusion about an adjudicative fact at issue in the case. In a notable recent case, Badasa, v. Mukasey, 2008 WL 3981817 (8th. Cir. 2008), The Eighth Circuit remanded a Board of Immigration Appeals decision because it upheld a lower court’s finding based on information obtained from Wikipedia.

This article will comprehensively examine citations to Wikipedia in American judicial opinions. The impact of references to Wikipedia in judicial opinions on law of evidence, judicial ethics, the judicial role in the common law adversarial system, the de-legalization of American law, and the future of stare decisis will be explored. Best practices for the citation of Wikis in judicial opinions will be discussed.

 

Source:  LSN Law & Society: The Legal Profession Vol. 3 No. 30,  10/14/2008

The Future of Reading and Researching the Pacific Northwest tree octopus

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Today’s New York Times has a front-page feature “Literacy Debate: Online, R U Really Reading?,” by Motoko Rich.  “This is the first in a series of articles that will look at how the Internet and other technological and social forces are changing the way people read.”  The article contains numerous instances of using the internet for research and the resulting potential liabilities; for example:

Web readers are persistently weak at judging whether information is trustworthy.  In one study, Donald J. Leu, who researches literacy and technology at the University of Connecticut, asked 48 students to look at a spoof Web site (http://zapatopi.net/treeoctopus/) about a mythical species known as the “Pacific Northwest tree octopus.” Nearly 90 percent of them missed the joke and deemed the site a reliable source.

The article also mentions Nicholas Carr’s article in The Atlantic, “Is Google Making Us Stupid,” the subject of a post here, “Jet Ski research” – Is Google Making Us Stoopid?  The New York Times article offers a good example of some “Jet Ski research” as performed by a 16-year old boy:

When researching the 19th-century Chief Justice Roger B. Taney for one class, he typed Taney’s name into Google and scanned the Wikipedia entry and other biographical sites.  Instead of reading an entire page, he would type in a search word like “college” to find Taney’s alma mater, assembling his information nugget by nugget.

The Wikipedia Zeitgeist

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One of the many joys of my job — and a reason why I’ll never retire — is the steady stream of interesting publications that pass my desk.  Today brought the August 2008 issue Super Lawyers, Corporate Counsel Edition, and it includes a profile of Wikimedia’s in-house counsel, Mike Godwin.

Godwin was the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s first lawyer, after catching its founders attention with a computer crime true story involving the Secret Service’s raid on Steven Jackson Games (which is documented in Bruce Sterling’s The hacker crackdown : law and disorder on the electronic frontier)

According to the Super Lawyers story, “The Wikipedia Zeitgeist: Why Mike Godwin disowns his own content,” by Larry Rosen, Godwin joined Wikipedia in July 2007 because he was “intrigued by Wikipedia’s impact on copyright liability and free speech.”

“We expressly disown our content,” he says.  “The legal framework set up in the ’90s protects publishers from liability for content they did not produce. . . . The thing we set out to do philosophically — provide free content and not own it — actually provides us with a lot of legal protection.”

Since Wikipedia includes articles about people who are still living, the protection is tested often.  “I do a lot of explaining,” Godwin says.

The explanation includes an invitation to join the Wikipedia community.  “Add your voice to it; correct the record,” he tells critics.  “We’ll show you how.”

The power of Wikepedia, and the entire Internet, is that “everyone now has a chance to correct the record.  But,” he cautions, “this is such a fundamental social change that it’ll take at least a generation to get accustomed to it.”

. . .

Sloppy Research at the United States Supreme Court?

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Adam Liptak has an article in the Week in Review section of today’s New York Times, “The Chief Justice, Dylan and the Disappearing Double Negative.”  The fun article, about music lyrics cited in judicial opinions, includes a sidebar, “Most-Cited Rockers in Judicial Opinions,” drawing from the research of law professor Alex B. Long.

Liptak reports that the Chief Justice cited Bob Dylan in his dissent in last Monday’s Sprint Communications Co. v. APCC Services, Inc.:

“The absence of any right to the substantive recovery means that respondents cannot benefit from the judgment they seek and thus lack Article III standing,” Chief Justice Roberts wrote. “‘When you got nothing, you got nothing to lose.’  Bob Dylan, Like a Rolling Stone, on Highway 61 Revisited (Columbia Records 1965).”

Professor Long is quoted in the article as saying, “this was almost certainly the first use of a rock lyric to buttress a legal proposition in a Supreme Court decision.”

But, as Liptak later points out, the Chief Justice got the cite wrong:

On the other hand, Chief Justice Roberts gets the citation wrong, proving that he is neither an originalist nor a strict constructionist. What Mr. Dylan actually sings, of course, is, “When you ain’t got nothing, you got nothing to lose.”

It’s true that many Web sites, including Mr. Dylan’s official one, reproduce the lyric as Chief Justice Roberts does. But a more careful Dylanist might have consulted his iPod. “It was almost certainly the clerks who provided the citation,” Professor Long said. “I suppose their use of the Internet to check the lyrics violates one of the first rules they learned when they were all on law review: when quoting, always check the quote with the original source, not someone else’s characterization of what the source said.”

We will cover this next year in advanced legal research.

 

 

IssueLab

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This week we cataloged IssueLab — http://www.issuelab.org/ — a site suggested by a faculty member here.  The site collects, archives, and freely shares research data generated by nonprofit organizations.

Here’s the catalog record:

Title: IssueLab [electronic resource]
URL: http://www.issuelab.org/
Imprint: Chicago : IssueLab.
Note: Title from caption (viewed on June 20, 2008).
Note: “Bringing nonprofit research into focus”–Caption subtitle <2008->
Scope and content: “IssueLab is an online publishing forum for nonprofit research. [Its] mission is to more effectively archive, distribute and promote the extensive and diverse body of work being produced by the third sector”–About Us page (viewed on June 20, 2008).
Notes: Mode of access: World Wide Web.
Subject (LC): Nonprofit organizations–Electronic information resources.
Subject (LC): Nonprofit organizations–Research–Electronic information resources.
 

10 Essential Web Sites for Litigators

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Genie Tyburski at The Virtual Chase has put together this great list, and we’re pleased and delighted to see Justia listed as a “top 10″ web site for litigators.

Justia: Relatively new to the legal Web scene, Justia deserves mention for several reasons. It stands alone in offering a free keyword-searchable database of federal district court filings. You will find court opinions from 2004 to present as well as other filings. (See also: Free Case Law Databases)

Other offerings worthy of special mention include a database of federal appellate court opinions, RSS feeds for monitoring civil court filings by the type of lawsuit (Select any available topic and go to the bottom of the page to find the feeds.), RSS feeds for tracking federal regulations, and a blog search engine for law-related blogs.