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In A Tale of Two Case Methods University of Tennessee Law Professor Benjamin Barton argues that the business school approach to the case method provides a better model for law school instruction than the traditional law school version. Marked by its emphasis on the problem solving process, real-life issues, team work, and continuous feedback, the business school case method, in his view, would prepare lawyers more effectively for the realities of legal practice. He also offers some controversial thoughts on why law schools and even legal practitioners might resist the reforms he advocates.

The Legal Implications of Throwing Eggs on the Wall Street Journal Law Blog is a humorous look at the legal consequences of time-honored Halloween traditions, including smashing pumpkins, stealing candy and "toilet papering". Enjoy!

“I knew I saw it somewhere.” Unfortunately, that’s not a valid Bluebook form. Even if you’ve documented the url where you found your information, you may discover that it’s no longer an active web page. Gregg R. Notess, at his web site Search Engine Showdown: The User’s Guide to Web Searching, provides a table describing how to find archived page from various services, with notes on the likely depth and content of the archives. See Finding Old Web pages for helpful hints, and bookmark it for future reference. The fluid character of the web guarantees you will need it.

Here are some sources for new Ohio cases, legislation and other legal developments. Keep in mind that you can create your own e-mail updates to online news websites by using Watchthatpage.com.. Watch That Page will send you an e-mail every time the website changes :

• If you like blogs and RSS feeds, try the Cleveland Law Library Blog, Ohio Supreme Court News and Ohio Supreme Court Opinion Summaries (new Ohio Supreme Court opinions).
• If it's new case opinions from all court levels you are looking for, try the classic Ohio State Bar Association Report. The OSBA Report is available online for OSBA members, and in print at the library. It is often called the "green book". The OSBA Report contains court rule changes, new bills introduced and new cases. Students can join the OSBA for free. See Law School Student Associate Membership page.
• The OSBA's homepage also contains the Legal E-Wire, a list of links to current news articles on Ohio and national law.

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Try out your research skills on this short Halloween-themed research challenge. The first seven people to submit correct answers to the information services desk, in person, will win a free bag of treats.

1. Find the California Supreme Court case where an actor's son sued to recover profits made by a movie studio for the licensing of the Count Dracula character, which the actor had portrayed. What is the citation? How many ALR articles cited this case?

2. Find the California case which held that a seller of a home could be liable for fraudulent concealment, when seller failed to disclose to the buyer that the house was the site of multiple murders.

3. In Ohio, what is the maximum fine and prison sentence for the offense of abuse of a corpse? If you need a hint, look at Criminal Sentences in Ohio by the Cleveland Law Library.

4. "Words and Phrases" lists two bankruptcy cases defining "ghost-writing". What are the citations for these cases? (You can also find the answer on Westlaw by using the words-phrases field, but you will get three cases.)

5. What is the citation for the Florida case where parents sued to bar certain symbols and costumes from Halloween celebrations in public schools, on the basis that these symbols and costumes violated the establishment clause because they promoted the wiccan religion.

The Ohio Supreme Court's amended Rules of Practice requires parties filing documents in the Ohio Supreme Court to redact social security and other personal identification numbers before filing. An unredacted copy can be filed under seal, if necessary. Rule VIII, Section 6. Thus, if private information is accessed via the Supreme Court docket and misused, it is the parties' responsibility. The rule aims to avoid identity theft via online court records, such as happened with the Hamilton County online court records. See Concurring Opinions blog, Mar. 8, 2006. For more information concerning access to court records and privacy issues, see courtaccess.org.

The amended Ohio Supreme Court Rules of Practice also state that documents filed with the court are public records, unless under seal or a motion to seal is pending. Rule XIV, Section 1(B). "This provision places the burden upon the filers to review their filings with an eye toward public dissemination and, if warranted, asking the Court to seal them." Supreme Court Adopts Amendments to Rules of Practice, Court News, Oct. 22, 2007.

The amendments also permit service by email. Rule X, Section 9; Rule XIV, Section 2(B)(1).

Thanks to Marie Rehmar for the tip.

• New York Times Topic Links: United States Attorneys
• Jurist Posts
• Attorney General – Statutory Authority
• U.S. Attorneys Mission Statement
• The first of the series of Senate Judiciary Committee hearings entitled Preserving Prosecutorial Independence: Is the Department of Justice Politicizing the Hiring and Firing of U.S. Attorneys? Senate Hearing 110-161 Feb. 6, 2007, is now available.
• See LexisNexis for summaries or transcripts of the other related hearings. (password required)
• The Joint Statement of the Former United States Attorneys Before the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, March 6, 2007
• U.S. Attorneys Who Have Served Less than Full Four-year Terms, 1981-2006. CRS Report for Congress, Feb. 22, 2007.

One of the effective ways to study for midterms and final exams is practicing with your Professor’s old exams. If you have used all of their exams and are looking for other final exams, you may want to consider other law schools online exam banks. Three schools that have posted their Professors’ exams are:

William Mitchell College of Law

American University - Washington College of Law

There’s nothing like a good movie: film makes mere words tangible, so that the viewer truly experiences the story and arrives at a level of understanding touching all the senses. Do we ever say that about a brief or legal memorandum? One legal writing professor thinks we ought to strive for such impact: Elyse Pepper, in “The Case for 'Thinking Like a Filmmaker': Using Lars Von Trier's Dogville as a Model for Writing a Statement of Facts" (St. John's Legal Studies Research Paper No. 07-0083 Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1019524 October 2007, Journal of the Legal Writing Institute, forthcoming) posits that adopting film story telling techniques may help legal writers learn to construct powerful and persuasive fact statements.

Pepper’s students viewed and analyzed the film Dogville for the exercise in learning to tell the facts compellingly and from different points of view. If, upon reading the article, you would like to try her method with another film, you’ll likely find a suitable candidate in the Law Library’s Audio-Visual Collection Catalog.

You probably noticed that the law school and law library web page have a new look. Not only is the web site more visually appealing, navigation features have been added to make information easier to find. Note the links to main categories on the left, and subcategory links on the right.

You may be trying to find where some of your favorite sources have been relocated. For a brief list of where certain items have been relocated on the library's page, click the <More> link, below. If you have trouble finding other items, please do not hesitate to ask the library staff.

Those curious about how the U.S. Supreme Court decides which cases to hear may want to access Justice Harry Blackmun's pool memos in the Blackmun Archive Browser. A pool memo is written by a Supreme Court law clerk, who summarizes the facts and issues in a case, and recommends whether or not the court should grant certiorari. The pool memorandums are confidential Supreme Court documents. Justice Blackmun's papers became available five years after his death, and the pool memorandums written by his clerks were part of those papers.

The pool memorandums provide insight into whether the "cert pool" process is working. The "cert pool" process has been criticized because it presumably places too much power in the law clerk who wrote the pool memo, who is typically a recent law school graduate. The process is thought to have a built-in bias for denying certiorari. See Demystifying the U.S. Supreme Court's Cert Granting Process , Howard J. Bashman, Law.com, Oct. 15, 2007.

For an article on the release of Justice Blackmun's papers in 2004, see Blackmun Contributions to History: Papers and Oral History, Richard G. Kopf, The Historical Society of the United States Courts in the Eighth Circuit Newsletter, Vol. 10, 2005. Cleveland Marshall College of Law Professor Dena Davis examined Justice Blackmun's sermons, also released in his personal papers, to provide insight into his theory of Constitutional interpretation. See "Moral Ambition: The Sermons of Harry A. Blackmun", Dena S. Davis, LexisNexis® 72 Brooklyn L.Rev 211. This article points out that Blackmun's Constitutional interpretation and Biblical interpretation are both based upon compassion and protecting outsiders and the marginalized.

In the introduction to the second edition of his concise and handy book, Writing Essay Exams to Succeed Not Just to Survive, author John C. Dernback points out that “[a] law school essay exam is not like a standard undergraduate liberal arts essay exam.”

I sure wish I would have known that myself when I took my first-year contracts exam in law school. When I stopped in to see my professor after grades were released, she commented that my exam read like an art history exam! Ironically, I had taken quite a number of art history classes in undergrad, and – unfortunately for my contracts grade – I still wrote like I was taking one.

It’s not hard to avoid making this same mistake in law school if you prepare yourself to take law school exams. Writing Essay Exams to Succeed Not Just to Survive is one of the many books that the Law Library offers that can help you write a law school exam instead of an undergraduate essay. This book and many others are available for check out in room AO66 of the Law Library.

Local fans glorying in the Indians’ success against the New York Yankees while trying to maintain focus on the study of law in this post-season can be grateful that the sport of baseball has provided much fodder for legal scholarship and judicial discourse. Just a few titles from the Library’s collection (Legal Issues in Professional Baseball , ed. by L. Kurlantzick, Academic Press, 2005; Legal Bases : Baseball and the Law , by R. Abrams, Temple University Press, 1998 ; Courting the Yankees : Legal Essays on the Bronx Bombers , ed. by E. Ward, Carolina Academic Press, 2003; Baseball and the American Legal Mind , ed. by S. Waller, N Cohen, P. Finkelman, Garland, 1995) ought to assure you that an obsession with the sport over the next few days (and weeks, we might hope) is perfectly consistent with pursuing a legal education.

Of course one should not lose sight of the fact that we are talking about a game: To relieve the tension of waiting for Borowski’s next pitch, how about trying your luck at a game of crosswords with a baseball theme: First, read the classic case of Flood v. Kuhn , 407 U.S. 258 (1972). All the puzzle answers are contained (or implied!) therein – then try the interactive puzzle (click on the boxes to reveal clues). Be patient, wait for your pitches, and you may not need the answer key.

Prof. Brian Z. Tamanaha, the Chief Justice Benjamin N. Cardozo Professor of Law at St. John’s University School of Law, in Queens, New York, lectures on “The Realism of Judges – Past and Present,” Tuesday, Oct. 9^th at 5 p.m. in the Moot Court Room. Judicial decision-making is a basic matter, worthy of thoughtful consideration by the legal community, including students of the law. For more details, see the CSU Announcement.

Prof.Tamanaha is a graduate of the University of Oregon, Boston University School of Law, and Harvard Law School (S.J.D.) His legal career has even included work as Legal Counsel for the Micronesian Constitutional Convention, Summer, 1990.

For more information about his career, teaching, speaking, and scholarship, please see his Profile , CV, and list of Selected Publications.

For your convenience, click on (More) right below, for links to a selection of his articles, and to two of his blog entries. Some links are to title records in the Law Library collection ( if not ‘available,’ consider an OhioLINK loan.)

Try Oyez baseball, a quiz game where the object is to match U.S Supreme Court Justices to the baseball figure they are most like. Be sure to check out the Oyez site for Supreme Court justice bios, cases by topic, news and more. (Thanks to Out of the Jungle.)

Find out which Supreme Court justice is a NASCAR fan and which justices are "bench buddies" in this article: In the Chambers of the U.S. Supreme Court by Warren Richey, Christian Science Monitor, Sept. 25, 2007. (Thanks to the Law Librarian Blog)

14 Tips to Become a Lighter, Tighter Writer by Ross Guberman, Legal Times, Oct. 5, 2007 contains helpful suggestions for completing assignments as a law clerk or associate. Guberman points out that, "Great legal writing does not sound as though it was written by a lawyer." He advises moving conclusions to the beginning of the document for the benefit of busy partners. He even suggests what to do about writer's block.

Interested in following the U.S. Supreme Court this term? Check out SCOTUSblog. It provides links to petitions and reply briefs for newly-granted cases, as well as links to orders and opinions as they are issued. Scotus Blog provides news and commentary about particular cases and about the Supreme Court generally. This blog is written by attorneys from Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer and Feld, LLP, a law firm which has a special practice group handling U.S. Supreme Court cases.

Another source for Supreme Court news is an email subscription to US Law Week, which is free to students, faculty and staff. Sign up instructions can be found at the following blog post: U.S. Law Week Now Available Via E-mail.

A federal court in Michigan recently ruled that the state’s attorney conduct rules violate free speech, due process, and are overbroad and vague. (Fieger v. Michigan Supreme Court, E.D. Mich., Civ. No. 06-11684, 9/4/07 as reported in the ABA/BNA’s Lawyer’s Manual of Professional Conduct, 23 Law. Man. Prof. Conduct 470). Rule 3.5(c), forbidding “undignified or discourteous conduct” and Rule 6.5(a), requiring lawyers to treat others with “courtesy and respect” were declared unconstitutional. The case involved a challenge to a disciplinary action against an attorney for his criticism of the judiciary on a radio program.

In language similar to that of Michigan’s rules, Ohio’s Rules of Professional Conduct 3.5 (a)(6) specifies that a lawyer shall not “engage in undignified or discourteous conduct that is degrading to a tribunal.”

Check out live feeds of the Ohio Supreme Court, the Ohio Senate and House of Representatives and Governor in action on the Ohio Channel . Coverage, provided by Ohio PBS channels and the Statehouse Media Center, is unedited and commentary free, giving you an unbiased perspective. Both the Supreme Court and the House and Senate archive their sessions. The Supreme Court beginning in 2004 and the House and Senate in 1997. The Governor's Office archives the current administration.

House and Senate sessions may provide valuable insight into the legislative intent behind Ohio statutes. For additional information, see our Ohio Legal Research Guide/Legislative History .

Celebrate Banned Book Week ! In addition to the list of current and previously banned books, there is also a list of notable First Amendment cases compiled by the Office of Intellectual Freedom (policy arm of the American Library Association). Topics range from Freedom of Religion to Privacy and Anonymity. Of particular interest during Banned Book Week, are cases related to the Right to Read . Even Harry Potter was taken to court...Check out how he fared in Counts v. Cedarville School District (W.D. Arkansas 2003), 295 F.Supp.2d 996.

Frederick M. Gittes will speak on mandatory arbitration in employee contracts, “The Assault on the Right to Trial by Jury,” this Wednesday, Oct. 3^rd, at 5 p.m. in the Bartunek Moot Court Room, as part of the Cleveland-Marshall Employment and Labor Law Speakers Series.

A 1975 cum laude graduate of the Ohio State University College of Law, he was a founding member of Gittes & Schulte in Columbus, Ohio, and brings to this lecture several decades of workplace litigation experience. You’ve read about his background in the CSU news release.

For specific information about recent litigation in which he has been involved, see Westlaw’s Litigation History for 2002 – 2007.

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