CMLawLibraryBlog

Buckeye Firearms Foundation, Inc. filed a lawsuit in Cuyahoga Common Pleas Court against the City of Cleveland, saying its enforcement of local gun ordinances is unconstitutional. The ordinances are allegedly unconstitutional because they are against the general laws of Ohio. The ordinances restrict gun ownership and concealed carry, although there is a state law preempting such ordinances. See HB347, 126^th General Assembly. This state law has been upheld by the Ohio Supreme Court. See our prior post In Close Decision, Ohio Supreme Court Strikes Down Ordinance Banning Guns in Public Parks.

Source: Gonwer News Service, Gun Rights Group Files Lawsuit Challenging Cleveland's Enforcement of Local Weapons Ordinances. Volume #78, Report #39, Article #6-- February 26, 2009 The Gongwer article has a link to a copy of the complaint.

Image: 'P38' www.flickr.com/photos/74006048@N00/100190420

According to the Federal Depository Library Program folks:

"A New Era of Responsibility: Renewing America's Promise (FY10 Budget Overview Document) is now available from the U.S. Government Printing Office. This document provides a description of the Obama Administration's fiscal policies and major budgetary initiatives. This document is an overview of the full Fiscal Year 2010 Budget, expected to be released this spring.

The authentic online version is available through a direct link on the Latest Resources panel on GPO's Federal Digital System (FDsys) at:
<http://www.fdsys.gov>."

Direct link to the 146 page pdf version:

For a great article on job hunting in a recession see Remain 'Bold and Valiant' in Your Job Search by Steve Langerud at the National Law Journal site. Langerud says that candidates should be able to tell stories about their skills and experiences and express what type of professional life they desire. Those that need help determining what type of job they desire may want to look at An Upside of Recession: Opportunity for Reevaluation by Bill Chamberlain.

Thanks to the Career and Professional Development Blog.

Image: 'if it's the reason for a sale+it+must+be+true'
www.flickr.com/photos/11117541@N00/2454721571

1,212 downloads can't be wrong! That is how many Audio Case Files have been downloaded by Cleveland Marshall students since August. Audio Case Files records opinions from many of the major case books.

To sign up for an account, go to the Audio Case Files site. Click on Sign up and register using your law school email.

This new book by Jon L. Mills is useful to understand current privacy law, but also provides a thought provoking discussion on whether these current laws are adequate. The book examines legal tools used to protect the right to privacy, such as constitutional, tort, statutory, and even property actions. Numerous cases are discussed where these tools failed. The author proposes changes to current privacy law and policy. The call number for this book is KF1262 .M55 2008, Atrium Level.

For materials on Internet privacy, see our Cyber Law Guide. You may also want to visit the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse or NCSL's State Laws Related to Internet Privacy.

One of the topics covered in last Thursday's Administrative Law Research Seminar was how to stay up to date on new final and pending regulations.

For federal regulations, try these free options:

Justia Regulation Tracker - create an RSS feed of new proposed and/or final regulations, limited by agency, agency department and keyword. For example, create a feed for OSHA regulations concerning cranes used in construction.

OpenRegulations.org - create an RSS feed by agency. While you can not limit by key word, you can use an easy filtering tool such as Feed Sifter to limit your feed results. See our prior post RSS Feed Filtering Made Easy.

For Ohio the only "free" option is to set up a WatchThatPage on the Register of Ohio site or an agency site.

For both state and federal regulations, try a LexisNexis / Westlaw Alert. Set up an alert of the federal register database or Ohio databases such as OH-REGTXT (Westlaw) or OHRTXT (Lexis). See Ohio Administrative Law Guide for more suggestions. Also try Lexis Regulatory Impact. See our prior post New from Lexis: Legislative and Regulatory Impact.

Image: 'Footsteps on the Wall'
www.flickr.com/photos/82581848@N00/1132461388

Feed Sifter is a fast, simple and free way to restrict an RSS feed by search terms. It is easier to use than Yahoo Pipes and other filters, which we wrote about in a previous post, RSS Feed Lists News CSU Library Books. With Feed Sifter, simply type in the feed url and some search terms, and voila!, you create a filtered feed.

Note that Yahoo Pipes and FeedRinse allow for more sophisticated filtering. With these two tools, you can find the search terms in the author or post title fields, or exclude certain terms.

The library created a new Cyber Law Guide, useful for anyone researching issues pertaining to copyright and trademark violations, obscenity or defamation on the Internet; e-commerce; jurisdiction; privacy and more. The guide includes suggestions for finding paper topics in this fast growing area of law.

( Image: 'circuit board' www.flickr.com/photos/87273935@N00/2389195738)

A new two-year session of the Ohio General Assembly , the 128th General Assembly, started this January. Any bills not passed in the 127th General Assembly have to be reintroduced. The first bills of this new assembly were introduced a few days ago. To see newly introduced bills, go to Ohio Capitol Connection, and click on Legislation link. The bills range from the film tax credit to establishing an Ohio Turfgrass week.

To keep up with Ohio legislation, try the following:

Library Subscription Databases (available remotely to students/faculty and in the library)

• Gongwer : Create e-mail alerts by bill number, keyword, Revised Code section and/or legislative sponsor. To do so, create your own account through the Register option at the top of the page. Upon logging in, click on My Gongwer to create alerts. You may also subscribe to the Gongwer RSS feed for state house news.
• LexisNexis and Westlaw Alerts - Search the OH Bill Tracking and OH-BILL TRK databases and/or set up an alert. See LexisNexis / Westlaw "Saved Searches" (must have law student/faculty account)
• Ohio Capitol Connection -We don't subscribe to the ActionTrack feature which sends emails regarding the status of a bill. Check the site manually for updates. Educational use only.

FREE web database: Search the Ohio General Assembly's web page by bill number, keyword or sponsor.

There is no free tracker for Ohio similar to GovTrack.us , which is for federal statutes. Make your own tracker

 (More)

Charles Darwin was born Feb. 12, 1809, and his Origin of Species was published 50 years later. Although we frequently focus more on the trials and court decisions which have occurred over the years, it's nice to have an opportunity to learn about the biological aspects of Darwin’s theory of evolution. The CSU University Library and College of Science has an informative display through February on the 1^st Fl. Univ. Library. On Thurs Feb. 12^th from 12 noon – 1 pm, the CSU community is invited to celebrate with cake and pizza.

(Image: 'Darwin's Arch, Galapagos' www.flickr.com/photos/72926532@N00/13439126)

Additional background info:

• The Complete Works of Charles Darwin Online
• Evolution Resources (from the National Academies)
• Understanding Evolution (Berkeley)
  

If you are more into the legal aspects, here are some resources:

 (More)

In the last couple of years, we’ve made concerted efforts to acquaint our students with electronic alternatives to Lexis and Westlaw, based on advice from local law firm librarians that they expect new associates to take advantage of free or low cost sources before graduating to the big guns. Especially for non-billable research, firms would like their associates to be as prudent and cost effective as possible. More evidence of this trend comes from a recent blog entry from Above the Law which reports the 700 member firm of Locke, Lord, Bissell and Liddell now requires attorneys to use the firm’s subscription to the low cost Loislaw database as the source of first resort. The guidelines state:

*All non-billable legal research involving case law, statutes or regulations at both the state and federal level should first be performed using Loislaw.
* Loislaw should also be used for billable research where appropriate, resulting in a much lower cost to the client.
* If additional research is required on Lexis or Westlaw that research must be billed to a client/matter..

Loislaw is a subscription database, which your potential employer may or may not make available to you. Members of the Ohio State Bar Association have free access to Casemaker, and members of the Cleveland Metropolitan Bar Association have free access to Fastcase. We recently offered training opportunities in Casemaker: if you missed out, contact Sue Altmeyer for advice on getting started. See also our Efficient and Cost Effective Legal Research and Internet Legal Research Guide for tips on becoming the information savvy and frugal researcher your potential employers will expect. Our March 5^th Research Certificate Seminar, Free and Cost Effective Research: Alternatives to Lexis and Westlaw is fully subscribed, but please contact Laura Ray if you would like to be put on the waiting list.

Thanks for the tip to Joe Hodnicki at the Law Librarian Blog

Local Attorney Marc Stolarsky created a Pet Trust Blog. Particularly helpful posts are National Chart:Pet and Animal Trusts in the United States , a 50 state chart of pet trust statutes and Pet Trusts in Ohio.

Image: 'Cowboy Paco'
www.flickr.com/photos/35423169@N00/24559448

In an uncannily timely happenstance, the Law Library has just received Naomi R. Cahn’s Test Tube Families: Why the Fertility Market Needs Legal Regulation. Published by New York University Press in 2009, the author might need to issue a supplement to cover the Nadya Suleman case.

Doing legal research using free Internet websites? Jureeka!, a Firefox Add-on, may help:

1. Type a citation into the toolbar and the case is returned if a free version is available on the web. (but see caveats, below)

2. On web documents, Jureeka looks for legal citations and links them to free web copies of the case, statute, etc. It can convert pdf documents to html to enable link creation.

Jureeka has good coverage of federal sources, including cases, U.S. Code sections, public laws and regulations. See Jureeka source coverage spreadsheet . The service does not cover Ohio Appellate cases, and only covers Ohio Supreme Court cases from 1992. Ohio WebCites (ex. 2008-Ohio-2189) work but Ohio Official Citations, such as Ohio St.3d and N.E.2d do not.

The toolbar works for Ohio Revised Code and Ohio Administrative Code sections. Use the following formats: ohio rev. code 2901.01; ohio admin. code 109:4-3-01.

On some webpages, Jureeka does more harm than good by inserting a link to N.E. regional reporters. These links basically go nowhere. The webpage may contain a working link to an Ohio WebCite, but the reader is distracted by nonworking N.E. reporter links. For an example, look at Ohio Constitution - Court Decisions after installing Jureeka.

Jureeka is improving all the time, so these problems may go away. See Jureeka blog. The current version is 82% accurate. There is a new version "in the sandbox" which is 92% accurate. The new version ignores regional reporters which it knows can not be found.

Source: Steven M. Cohen, Better Browsing, Information Today, 1/30/09 and LawLibTech blog. Also thanks to Wisblawg.

“Roe’s Roots: The Woman’s Rights Claims that Engendered Roe v. Wade” is the topic of our 86th Cleveland-Marshall Enrichment Fund Visiting Scholar Lecture, presented by Reva Siegel, Deputy Dean and Nicholas deB. Katzenbach Professor of Law and Professor of American Studies at Yale Law School, on Tuesday, Feb. 9, 2009, at 5 p.m. in the College of Law’s Moot Court Room. It is a free public lecture, with 1 hour of CLE credit.

Check out Prof. Siegel’s Yale Law Faculty Page and Publications links to her many articles. Her Directions in Sexual Harassment Law (ed. with C.A. MacKinnon) (Yale Univ. Press) is available in the Law Library at KF 4758 .D57 2004. She is one of the authors of Processes of Constitutional Decisionmaking: Cases and Materials, 5^th ed. (Aspen) and a co-editor of the forthcoming The Constitution in 2020 (Oxford University Press.)

Learn a little more about two of Cleveland-Marshall’s most renowned alums, Carl and Louis Stokes, on TV Monday, Feb. 9^th, at 9 p.m. (or the repeat on Sat., Feb. 22^nd at 5 p.m.) as WVIZ/PBS ideastream® debuts Stokes: An American Dream. This documentary was produced in partnership with the Western Reserve Historical Society. The Historical Society had developed a major exhibit about the two brothers who made history in Cleveland and nationally. If you can’t get over to the WRHS to see the exhibit (Visitor Information), take a look at the WRHS web exhibit Carl & Louis Stokes – From the Projects to Politics . Some additional remembrances of Carl Stokes can be found at http://www.cleveland.com/stokes/.

By the way, Carl Stokes’ 1973 book Promises of Power – A Political Autobiography, is available electronically as part of the Cleveland Memory Project.

Above Photo: Louis and Carl Stokes with Hubert Humphrey, courtesy of the Cleveland Memory Project.

A group of judges, clerks, and staff members in the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts rewrote 56 civil and criminal forms in plain, modern English. The forms can even be filled out online. Thanks to the NovaLawCity blog.

For more forms resources, see our Forms and Practice Materials research guide.

This upbeat fifteen minute screencast presentation from the recent AALS conference discusses:

• ELangdell - Obtain cases, edit them and share with students and/or other faculty. Includes "Legal Education Commons" - which contains law-related images (for powerpoints, etc.) and 700,000 full text federal cases. CALI is looking for contributions of presentations, edited cases or any other teaching materials. See CALI Announcement. Also see Berkman Announcement, Our Prior Post.
• InstaPoll - Poll your class without using clickers!
  
• MediaNotes - take notes on videos, for example, moot court videos
• Podcasting

Thanks to CALIopolis blog. The above illustration is an example of a Legal Education Commons Image, CarlaTom_land.JPG, http://w.cali.org/lec/image/4278, illustration by Eric Molinski

Yes, it is important that you know how to research, and yes, it is a critical skill for practitioners. How critical? The ABA Journal reports that U.S. District Judge Norma Shapiro doubled the jury verdict and granted an additional $80,000 to a plaintiff upon finding that an in-house attorney failed to do adequate research on the issue of the plaintiff’s eligibility for Family and Medical Leave Act benefits. Brown v. Nutrition Management Services, (No. 06-2304, E.D. Pa., 2009). The defendant’s failure to present evidence that it had researched the Act’s requirements demonstrated the lack of good faith required to overrule an award of liquidated damages. Legal research is serious stuff.

Faculty members interested in learning more about empirical legal research may want to consider attending the May 20-22 workshop on the topic at Northwestern Law. The workshop will cover topics such as research design, collecting data, sampling, database management, multiple regressions, hypothesis testing, and more. No previous background or knowledge of statistics is required for workshop participation.

For more information, see Conducting Empirical Legal Scholarship Workshop. Registration should be completed by May 8.

Our Legal Writing Faculty works hard to help students develop the unique skills of written advocacy, and it’s not because they love good literature. The point of written communication in law is to win, as Gerald Lebovits reminds us in a recent article Persuading the Judge Through Writing: 15 Ways to Win. His tips, expounded upon in the article, include: know the judge, articulate your position, be credible, reasonable, specific, short and sweet, know your boundaries, cite accurately, give a roadmap, organize and limit issues, analogize, have a theme, don’t rush, and proofread. So, just master all that and you’ll be on your way to success!

Lebovits, Gerald,Persuading the Judge Through Writing: 15 Ways to Win(Fall 2008). Gerald Lebovits, PERSUADING THE JUDGE THROUGH WRITING: 15 WAYS TO WIN, The Advocate (Bronx County Bar Journal) , Vol. 5, Fall 2008. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1303008

Shai Littlejohn advises law students to cultivate their personal brand in a recent National Law Journal article Self-Marketing is Key to Being a Top Lawyer. Defining personal brand as “the total sum and breadth of your work history, reputation, involvement, initiative and personal values,” Littlejohn contends that the best jobs go to lawyers with strong brands consistently demonstrating values such as “reputation for responsiveness, accuracy, discretion, political savvy, family and participation in lofty priorities beyond day-to-day work.” Your brand, image, or reputation as one who is reliable, knowledgeable, and involved in and sharing values with the community at large may be the key to a successful career. Building that brand starts now.

HeinOnline reports interesting finds with its new citation analysis tool, ScholarCheck, which tracks citations to the over one million articles in the Law Journal Library. In the fifty most-cited list, Richard A. Posner wins the title of top cited author, cited 12,586 times in 251 articles. Using the tool to look at scholarly treatment of Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973) , revealed that the case had been cited by 15991 articles in the Law Journal Library, and that the most cited article is Charles R. Lawrence III, Id, the Ego, and Equal Protection: Reckoning with Unconscious Racism, 39 Stan. L. Rev. 317 (1986-1987), cited 1488 times. Another search run against the words Roe v. Wade in the article title uncovered 1105 cites for John Hart Ely’s Wages of Crying Wolf: A Comment on Roe v. Wade, 82 Yale L.J. 920 (1972-1973). This is a nifty way to target the most influential scholarship on a case or issue, and should be added to your legal research repertoire. See our prior post on ScholarCheck

Students as well as faculty members may want to take a look at the Scholarship Technology page the library put together for a recent faculty lunch presentation.

The following resources are covered:

• Reference Management Software to organize the resources used in writing your paper, including books, case law and web pages. This software also creates bibliographies, footnotes and endnotes in Bluebook form. Try Zotero , which is free.
• Social bookmarking (such as Delicious) for organizing web resources (see our prior post re. Brainify)
• RSS Feeds for gathering information, keeping current and getting paper ideas
• Mindmapping to organize the research process or paper structure. See our prior post on mindmapping.

The research librarians can help you with any of the above.

If you did not have the opportunity to sign up for free Ohio State Bar Membership when the OSBA visited our campus, you can do so via their online application.

Membership benefits include:

• Access to Casemaker, the OSBA's free online legal research tool.
• Career services through the OSBA Web site's legal-only career center and OSBA classified ads.
• Insurance programs through the OSBA Insurance Agency.
• Networking opportunities at OSBA events.
• Subscriptions to Ohio Lawyer magazine, Law Student News and the OSBA Report Online, keeping you current on recent case law and the legal profession.
• Access to all of the resources on the OSBA Web site at www.ohiobar.org, including power of attorney forms and Officekeeper ( a nuts and bolts resource guide to opening and maintaining a law practice, including forms)

For more information, email Cheryl Minnick of the Ohio State Bar Association or OSBA student liaison Luisa Taddeo.

The OSBA is also offering free Casemaker webinars. Another on-campus Casemaker training session may be scheduled for later this semester as well.

(Thanks to Cheryl Minnick for her help with this post.)

• Main
• Archives
• Folders
• Dashboard
• Links

«	February 2009					»
Su	Mo	Tu	We	Th	Fr	Sa
1	2	3	4	5	6	7
8	9	10	11	12	13	14
15	16	17	18	19	20	21
22	23	24	25	26	27	28

Search This Blog:

• RSS 2.0

Enter your email address:

Delivered by FeedBurner

Comments to blog posts are moderated by the library staff. We reserve the right to disallow comments that are inappropriate or are completely unrelated to the post's topic. There may be a delay of up to 24 hours before your comment appears.

• Final Post - Moving to New URL
• Considering Study Abroad This Summer? Here Are Two ABA-Approved Programs to Investigate
• Spring Break Hours
• New eJournal: Reproductive Justice, Law & Policy
• Understand the Mortgage Crisis in 7 Minutes
• New Minn. J. Int'l L. Online Seeks Submissions
• Earn Research Certificate Seminar Points at Home
• Prof. Frank Partnoy- March 10th- Lessons from the Match King: Financial Crises & Parallels to the 1920s
• TWEN Improvements
• South Carolina Statute Requires Subversives to Register

• Career Information [61]
• Community Events [21]
• Faculty Teaching and Scholarship [151]
• From The Director [7]
• Government Information and News [50]
• International [75]
• Law Library News and Events [115]
• Law Student News [54]
• Law-Zarro [30]
• Legal Research & Writing [220]
• Library Resources and Databases [148]
• National [128]
• Ohio and Local [112]
• Speakers and Visiting Scholars [28]
• Study and Exam Tips [42]

• Blog Directories
  • Law Professor Blogs
  • Law X.0: A Taxonomy of Legal Blogs
  • Justia Blog Search
  • Blawg Republic
  • U.S. Law Blog Directory
  • ABA Blawg Directory
• Blogs by C-M Professors
  • Comparative Racism and the Law - Canada/U.S.
  • Before the Law
  • Ain't I a Feminist Legal Scholar Too?
• Blogs for Law Faculty
  • Legal Scholarship Blog
  • The Faculty Lounge
  • Clinical Law Prof Blog
• Blogs for Law Students
  • The Frugal Law Student
  • JD2B
  • WishIWouldHaveKnown
• Blogs of General Legal Interest
  • SCOTUS Blog
  • Ohio Supreme Court Opinion Summaries
  • Ohio State Supreme Court News
  • Wall Street Journal.com Law Blog
  • Above the Law
  • Law School Innovation
  • Supreme Dicta
  • The Volokh Conspiracy
  • Findlaw RSS Feeds