Law Library Blog

Carbon Markets: an International Business Guide by Arnaud Brohé, Nick Eyre, and Nicholas Howarth. Published by Earthscan in 2009 as a “CO2 neutral book.”  Shelved at HC79.P55 B76 2009.

Everything anyone ever wanted to know about carbon markets and how they reduce greenhouse gas emissions is packed into this comprehensive work. With chapters on the Kyoto Protocol, as well as emissions trading and carbon markets around the world, the book provides a thorough introduction to the topic with  graphs and charts that explain the way it all works. Each chapter has a helpful list of references for further research,

The premise of the book is that business will play a key role in reducing greenhouse emissions. “Rather than seeing industry only as the culprit of environmental damage to be punished through taxes or regulations, carbon markets give business an opportunity to be environmental champions, harnessing the more positive power of innovation and entrepreneurship through the chance to make money from reducing emissions.”

A valuable web tool — tinyThom.as — that makes the links on the Library of Congress’ legislative website, THOMAS, permanent, has been introduced recently; see:

Mighty Tiny Thomas

Cross-posted on LegalResearchPlus.

[Cross-posted from Legal Research Plus]

Here’s a new site is designed mainly for the press but access is free to all. Cases are summarized by professors with support from law students.  For the Ninth Circuit, for example, the content contributors are:

University of San Diego School of Law  and
University of Arizona James E. Rogers College of Law

 Here’s the site: http://new.abanet.org/SCFJI/Pages/MediaAlertsOnFederalCircuitCourts.aspx 

Here’s the press release:

Release: Immediate

Contact: Dave Jaffe

Phone: 312-988-6139

E-Mail: jaffed@staff.abanet.org)

Online: http://www.abanews.org

or

Contact: Tina Vagenas

Phone: 312-988-5105

E-Mail: vagenask@staff.abanet.org

NEW ABA WEB SITE TO HIGHLIGHT RULINGS BY FEDERAL APPELLATE COURTS

CHICAGO, Nov. 18, 2009 – The American Bar Association today launched a new Web site intended to inform the media and public of important cases in the nation’s federal appellate courts. The site was officially unveiled at the Newseum in Washington, D.C., where judges and journalists were gathered for a conference hosted by the First Amendment Center. 

Media Alerts on Federal Courts of Appeals, as the site will be known, is sponsored by the ABA’s Standing Committee on Federal Judicial Improvements. It represents a collaborative effort to broadly disseminate timely, accurate and unbiased information about noteworthy and legally significant cases in the federal courts of appeals. The site will be updated daily with postings on key decisions and alerts on upcoming cases.

Circuit Judge M. Margaret McKeown of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, a founder of the project and immediate past chair of the Standing Committee on Federal Judicial Improvements, said the site targets the media, but also will serve as a resource for lawyers, educators and the public.

“The case information not only serves a practical need, it also promotes transparency and public access, which go hand in hand with judicial accountability and judicial independence,” McKeown said. “Greater access to and understanding of the judicial process fosters public confidence in our judicial system.”

“There is nothing more important to our democracy and freedom than a well informed press and public,” said U.S. District Judge Nancy Atlas of the Southern District of Texas, chair of the standing committee. “The Media Alerts on Federal Courts of Appeals site should enhance the media’s ability to help us achieve this goal.” 

Federal courts of appeals, which are at the level just below the United States Supreme Court, hear direct appeals from both federal trial courts and federal administrative agencies. Of the 11 geographically drawn circuits, the new Web site initially will highlight decisions from the Third, Fifth, and Ninth Circuits, then eventually expand to include the rest of the circuits. 

In conjunction with the ABA, cases are selected and summarized by a panel of distinguished law professors, supported by their students. The ABA is working in conjunction with professors at the law schools of Temple University (Craig Green and David Sonenshein), the University of Texas (Stephanie Lindquist and Dean Leslie Oster), the University of San Diego (Shaun Martin), and the University of Arizona (David Marcus). The academic teams will be choosing from the more than 25,000 cases filed annually in the three courts of appeals. The project aims to select a manageable number of cases so that the site will be of practical use to reporters. 

The project grew out of a shared concern between journalists and the judiciary that reporting about federal courts has been declining. The concern is due in part to new trends in media coverage, including the steadily shrinking pool of news staff in traditional media and the rise of Internet-based news sites, blogs, and other media outlets. 

“For the past decade federal judges and journalists around the country have shared their perspectives and concerns through a series of meetings sponsored by the First Amendment Center,” said U.S. District Judge D. Brock Hornby of the District of Maine, chair of the Judicial Branch Committee of the Judicial Conference of the United States, which has cosponsored the programs. “This Web site is a real and tangible outgrowth of our meetings, and one that I think will bring greater public access and understanding to the work of the U.S. Courts of Appeals.” 

Following launch of the Web site, the standing committee will continue to explore opportunities for the exchange of views among judges and journalists. In 2010, the committee plans to sponsor a forum on media and the courts in conjunction with the William H. Rehnquist Center at the University of Arizona James E. Rogers College of Law. 

 The Media Alerts Web site is at http://new.abanet.org/SCFJI/Pages/MediaAlertsOnFederalCircuitCourts.aspx

With nearly 400,000 members, the American Bar Association is the largest voluntary professional membership organization in the world. As the national voice of the legal profession, the ABA works to improve the administration of justice, promotes programs that assist lawyers and judges in their work, accredits law schools, provides continuing legal education, and works to build public understanding around the world of the importance of the rule of law.

[Cross-posted from Legal Research Plus]

See Google post below.  And stay tuned for another announcement tomorrow, which will be yet another big day for Free Law.   And we here at Stanford have something cooking too.  Stay tuned.

Take a look at this posting and its comments too, from the Supreme Court of Texas Blog.

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/11/finding-laws-that-govern-us.html

Finding the laws that govern us
 
11/17/2009 09:05:00 AM

As many of us recall from our civics lessons in school, the United States is a common law country. That means when judges issue opinions in legal cases, they often establish precedents that will guide the rulings of other judges in similar cases and jurisdictions. Over time, these legal opinions build, refine and clarify the laws that govern our land. For average citizens, however, it can be difficult to find or even read these landmark opinions. We think that’s a problem: Laws that you don’t know about, you can’t follow � or make effective arguments to change.

Starting today, we’re enabling people everywhere to find and read full text legal opinions from U.S. federal and state district, appellate and supreme courts using Google Scholar. You can find these opinions by searching for cases (like Planned Parenthood v. Casey), or by topics (like desegregation) or other queries that you are interested in. For example, go to Google Scholar, click on the “Legal opinions and journals” radio button, and try the query separate but equal. Your search results will include links to cases familiar to many of us in the U.S. such as Plessy v. Ferguson and Brown v. Board of Education, which explore the acceptablity of “separate but equal” facilities for citizens at two different points in the history of the U.S. But your results will also include opinions from cases that you might be less familiar with, but which have played an important role.

We think this addition to Google Scholar will empower the average citizen by helping everyone learn more about the laws that govern us all. To understand how an opinion has influenced other decisions, you can explore citing and related cases using the Cited by and Related articles links on search result pages. As you read an opinion, you can follow citations to the opinions to which it refers. You can also see how individual cases have been quoted or discussed in other opinions and in articles from law journals. Browse these by clicking on the “How Cited” link next to the case title. See, for example, the frequent citations for Roe v. Wade, for Miranda v. Arizona (the source of the famous Miranda warning) or for Terry v. Ohio (a case which helped to establish acceptable grounds for an investigative stop by a police officer).

As we worked to build this feature, we were struck by how readable and accessible these opinions are. Court opinions don’t just describe a decision but also present the reasons that support the decision. In doing so, they explain the intricacies of law in the context of real-life situations. And they often do it in language that is surprisingly straightforward, even for those of us outside the legal profession. In many cases, judges have gone quite a bit out of their way to make complex legal issues easy to follow. For example, in Korematsu v. United States, the Supreme Court justices present a fascinating and easy-to-follow debate on the legality of internment of natural born citizens based on their ancestry. And in United States v. Ramirez-Lopez, Justice Kozinski, in his dissent, illustrates the key issue of the case using an imagined good-news/bad-news dialogue between the defendant and his attorney.

We would like to take this opportunity to acknowledge the work of several pioneers, who have worked on making it possible for an average citizen to educate herself about the laws of the land: Tom Bruce (Cornell LII), Jerry Dupont (LLMC), Graham Greenleaf and Andrew Mowbray (AustLII), Carl Malamud (Public.Resource.Org), Daniel Poulin (LexUM), Tim Stanley (Justia), Joe Ury (BAILII), Tim Wu (AltLaw) and many others. It is an honor to follow in their footsteps. We would also like to acknowledge the judges who have built this cathedral of justice brick by brick and have tried to make it accessible to the rest of us. We hope Google Scholar will help all of us stand on the shoulders of these giants.

Posted by Anurag Acharya, Distinguished Engineer

St. Mary’s University School of Law in San Antonio has posted Supreme Court of Texas cases on iTunes.

See Supreme Court of Texas Cases Available on St. Mary´s iTunes U by Beth Barbee (10-November-2009):

Supreme Court of Texas Cases Available on St. Mary´s iTunes U
Date: 2009-11-10     Author: Beth Barbee

Since 2006, St. Mary’s University School of Law and the Supreme Court of Texas have partnered to provide the Court’s oral arguments to the public through access to live and archived webcasts.  Now, the archived arguments are available on iTunes U.

In all, 399 video, audio and transcripts tracks are available for public consumption. This service is provided by St. Mary’s School of Law and the Supreme Court of Texas for students, the legal community and general public.

Before the arguments are posted on iTunes U, the live webcasts are available on St. Mary’s School of Law Web site, www.stmarytx.edu/law,  and recordings are usually posted within a few hours of the oral argument. The Supreme Court typically holds oral arguments on three days of each month, with three cases per day. Each party is given 20 minutes to argue its case, for a total of 40 total minutes.

A source of free educational content, iTunes U stores lectures, presentations, videos and podcasts from all over the world that can easily be viewed on iTunes.

There are several ways to get to the St. Mary’s School of Law/Supreme Court of Texas iTunes U content:

www.stmarytx.edu/itunesu  (click on the Launch Public Access button)

or

http://deimos.apple.com/WebObjects/Core.woa/Browsev2/stmarytx.edu  (click on the Supreme Court of Texas seal.)

Note: iTunes is required to download and view the files on Mac, PCs, iPods, iPhones or other smartphone devices.

[cross-posted on Legal Research Plus]

“De Minimis Curat Lex: Secrets to Success for 1st Year Law Students,” by Professor John H. Scheid, 37 Capital University Law Review 632 (2009).

“To say the least, the study of law for entering students can be frustrating.  However, there are tricks of the trade,” writes Professor Scheid in the beginning of the article.

Here is the list of the “Seven Steps to Success” excerpted from the work.  The author provides examples and reasons for the following steps:

A. Brief the Cases Before You Come to Class

B. In Each Case Come to Some Conclusion as to the Principle(s) or Rule(s) of the Case

C. Within an Hour Before Class, Review Your Briefs for That Day

D. Take Class Notes in a Separate Book, Preferably on Loose-Leaf Paper, but Definitely Not on the Brief Itself

E. Take Class Notes Only on One Side of the Spiral Notebook.  Leave Plenty of Room Between Notes.  As Soon as You Leave Class Go to the Library and Fill in Your Notes

F. Before Briefing Cases for Tomorrow’s Subject, Review the Class Notes of the Last Two Weeks for That Subject

G. Brief the Cases for the Next Day

The Presidential Pardon Power by Jeffrey Crouch. Published by University of Kansas Press in 2009.  KF9696 .C76 2009

The presidential power to pardon is granted under Article II, Section 2 of the Constitution:”The President … shall have power to grant reprieves and pardons for offenses against the United States, except in cases of impeachment.”   The Constitution provides no standards or guidelines, and only one limitation — no pardons for the impeached.

Professor Crouch explores all aspects of the pardon from historical ones to those of recent times, arguing that more recent cases have demonstrated a disturbing misapplication of power. The framers of the Constitution wanted the President to be able to use the clemency power to act quickly to defuse volatile situations that required one person to act quickly. Alexander Hamilton, in Federalist paper 74, said: “… in seasons of insurrection or rebellion, there are often critical moments, when a well-timed offer of pardon to the insurgents or rebels may restore the tranquility of the commonwealth.”

He argues that recent presidents have misused the clemency power to pardon subordinates or reward supporters. He suggests that rather than amending the constitution to “fix” the problem of pardons that abuse the system, the Congress should use the impeachment clause of Article II, Section 4 of the Constitution to punish presidents who exploit the clemency power. However, the temptation to abuse the clemency power is strongest during the final days of a presidential term, as for example, President Clinton’s 140 pardons and 36 commutations made in the two hours before he left the presidency. Crouch concludes that “we need to decide, as a nation, that last-minute clemency abuses will not be tolerated. When a president abuses the clemency power, we need to decide that his actions will trigger real sanctions… It is only by punishing presidents who exploit the clemency power that we can uphold the rule of law, and–ultimately–preserve and defend our Constitution.”

USA.gov, which provides official information and services from the United States Government, has recently organized federal government blogs by subject.

Under the current organization there are 11 categories:

1. Business and Economics Blogs: Small business owners, economics news…
2. Defense and International Relations Blogs: Military, foreign policy, veterans…
3. Environment, Energy, and Agriculture Blogs: Agriculture, environmental protection, saving energy…
4. Family, Home, and Community Blogs: Human services, community development, middle class…
5. Health and Nutrition Blogs: Medicine, public health…
6. History, Arts, and Culture Blogs: Museums, libraries…
7. Jobs, Education, and Volunteerism Blogs: Volunteering, employment…
8. Public Safety and Law Blogs: Security, law enforcement, disasters, emergencies…
9. Reference and General Government Blogs: Grants, White House…
10. Science and Technology Blogs: Information technology, Internet security…
11. Travel and Recreation Blogs: Transportation, parks…

Hat tip to: ResourceShelf.

Cross-posted in LegalResearchPlus.com.

The library has expanded its subscription service to the Legal Scholarship Network (part of SSRN). Now you can get all of LSN’s eJournals delivered directly to your email inbox. Simply follow the instructions below to sign-up (and feel free to contact the reference desk — reference {at} law.stanford.edu– if you’re having any trouble).

Here are the signup instructions for new users.  Those who already have SSRN user-names can skip ahead to step 4.

1. Go to http://www.ssrn.com

2. In the upper left hand corner, click on Free Registration and follow the prompts.

3. Your user ID and Password will be emailed to you within several minutes.

4. Go to http://hq.ssrn.com, enter your SSRN user ID and password, and click Submit.

5. Select Subscriptions in the menu to the left.

6. Scroll down to the bottom of the Subscriptions page to where it says “Click here to join a site subscription that has been acquired by your organization.”  Click on Join.

7. A window will pop up.  Enter stanford university in the Search Criteria box (do not enter Stanford Law School) and click Search.

On the next screen, click on See Departments on the button next to Stanford University.

8.  Scroll down the list of departments to find the Law School and click on the Join button.  You will now have to check your email inbox for a confirmation email.  If your email domain is <@law.stanford.edu> you will be added immediately.  Otherwise you may experience some delay.

9. When you receive the message from SSRN saying you have been added to the site subscription, return to the Network Subscription page by following the link in your email, or go to http://hq.ssrn.com.  Log in and click again on Subscriptions on the menu along the left side of the page.

10. Scroll down the list to find Legal Scholarship Network and click on the link that says “Click here” to make journal subscription selections.

11. Select Expand All to view the LSN e-Journal lists, and select e-Journals of interest by checking their box.  After you check a box, you need do nothing further.  Your e-Journals will be emailed to you once they are published.

The Presidential Pardon Power by Jeffrey Crouch. Published by University of Kansas Press in 2009. KF9696 .C76 2009

The presidential power to pardon is granted under Article II, Section 2 of the Constitution: “The President … shall have power to grant reprieves and pardons for offenses against the United States, except in cases of impeachment.” The Constitution provides no standards or guidelines, and only one limitation — no pardons for the impeached.

Professor Crouch explores all aspects of the pardon from historical ones to those of recent times, arguing that more recent cases have demonstrated a disturbing misapplication of power. The framers of the Constitution wanted the President to be able to use the clemency power to act quickly to defuse volatile situations that required one person to act quickly. Alexander Hamilton, in Federalist paper 74, said: “… in seasons of insurrection or rebellion, there are often critical moments, when a well-timed offer of pardon to the insurgents or rebels may restore the tranquility of the commonwealth.”

He argues that recent presidents have misused the clemency power to pardon subordinates or reward supporters. He suggests that rather than amending the constitution to “fix” the problem of pardons that abuse the system, the Congress should use the impeachment clause of Article II, Section 4 of the Constitution to punish presidents who exploit the clemency power. However, the temptation to abuse the clemency power is strongest during the final days of a presidential term, as for example, President Clinton’s 140 pardons and 36 commutations made in the two hours before he left the presidency. Crouch concludes that “we need to decide, as a nation, that last-minute clemency abuses will not be tolerated. When a president abuses the clemency power, we need to decide that his actions will trigger real sanctions… It is only by punishing presidents who exploit the clemency power that we can uphold the rule of law, and–ultimately–preserve and defend our Constitution.”