Monthly Archives: July 2013

BLS LL.M Grad Authors Bilingual Antitrust Blog

Thibault Schrepel, a 2013 LL.M Graduate of Brooklyn Law School, has published the first Antitrust Letter, a new monthly series of articles written in both French and English.

According to Mr. Schrepel, each month’s article will analyze major changes within United States antitrust law and legal precedents, whilst contrasting and occasionally drawing parallels to European antitrust legal issues.

Antitrust Letter #1 discusses the DOJ v. Apple trial, calling it “one of the year’s biggest antitrust trials”

Other topics in this issue include –

Framing the class action: American Express v. Italian Colors Restaurant

Tesla and direct sell networks

Questioning “Pay-for-delay deals”: FTC v. Actavis

Patent-trolls hunting is open

Hein and Fastcase Partnership

fastcase heinWilliam S. Hein & Co. and Fastcase, two independent legal publishers, announced they would be combining their resources  and forming a unique partnership to the benefit of their customers.

“Under the agreement, Hein will provide federal and state case law to HeinOnline subscribers via inline hyperlinks powered by Fastcase. In addition, Fastcase will completely integrate HeinOnline’s extensive law review and historical state statute collection in search results, with full access available to Fastcase subscribers who additionally subscribe to Hein’s law review database.”

This means that Hein’s federal case coverage will include the judicial opinions of the Supreme Court (1754-present), Federal Circuits (1924-present), Board of Tax Appeals (vols. 1-47), Tax Court Memorandum Decisions (vols. 1-59), U.S. Customs Court (vols. 1-70), Board of Immigration Appeals (1996-present), Federal District Courts (1924-present), and Federal Bankruptcy Courts (1 B.R. 1-present). The state case law will cover all fifty states with nearly half of the states dating back to the 1800’s. Coverage for the remaining states dates back to approximately 1950. When Hein users link to case law through Fastcase, they will be able to utilize Authority Check, an integrated citation analysis tool developed by Fastcase to help identify negative citation history at no additional cost.

Conversely, Fastcase users will be able to search all content available in the Law Journal Library, Session Laws Library, State Attorney General Reports and Opinions, and State Statutes: A Historical Archive and see Hein results and abstracts for free, with subscription options for the full articles.
The integrated libraries will be available to members of the BLS Community at the end of the summer.

Writing Competiton Winner on SSRN

Dominic A. Saglibene, Brooklyn Law School Class of 2014, has posted his note “The U.K. Bribery Act: A Benchmark for Anticorruption Reform in the U.S.” on SSRN.  The note is scheduled for publication next year in Volume 24 of the Transnational Law & Contemporary Problems, a journal of the University of Iowa College Of Law. Saglibene won the Trandafir Writing Competition for the note. For more, see the news item at the Brooklyn Law School website. The abstract reads:
 
This Note will argue that the U.S. should look to the U.K. Bribery Act in amending the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (“FCPA”) to criminalize foreign bribery across the board. Part I will introduce the thesis. Part II will explain the relationship between public and private bribery, and outline how some nations have come to recognize that overlooking private bribery undermines anticorruption laws and policies in general. Part III will describe the FCPA and other anti-bribery laws in the U.S., and present the U.K. Act as an improvement on the FCPA. Part IV will then discuss U.S. prosecutions – especially U.S. v. Carson – demonstrating the inadequacy of American law against bribery in the foreign private sector. Part V will conclude.

New Pathway To Access Lexis.com & Other Changes

I want to highlight the new procedure for the BLS community to access Lexis.com. At the top of your Lexis Advance screen, there is a pull-down arrow in the red tab: Research.  One of the options in the pull-down menu is: lexis.com.
At this point, a message might pop up–in the message, you might need to click: “Continue” to reach the Lexis.com main screen. In Lexis.com, tab: Legal still contains the menu of legal sources.

Also, according to Lexis, if you are a BLS subscriber using Lexis.com (as opposed to Lexis Advance):

  • Your history is not saved
  • Your tabs might not be there the next time you log on to Lexis.com because you are sharing a “party line password” with others
  • BLS students cannot print documents from Lexis.com through the dedicated Lexis printers in the library.  (BLS students CAN print documents from Lexis Advance through the dedicated Lexis printers.)

Note: Lexis could not tell me when the foreign law sources that are only available in Lexis.com will migrate to Lexis Advance.

Happy Independence Day

Brooklyn Law Library’s copy of the book For Liberty and Equality: The Life and Times of the Declaration of Independence (Call # E221 .T74 2012) by Loyola University Chicago School of Law Professor Alexander Tsesis offers a well-researched narrative of the many surprising ways in which the Declaration of Independence has influenced American politics, law, and society. The drafting of the Bill of Rights, the Reconstruction Amendments, the New Deal, and the Civil Rights movement are all heavily indebted to the Declaration’s principles of representative government. The author demonstrates that from the founding on, the Declaration has played a central role in American political and social advocacy, congressional debates, and presidential decisions. He focuses on how successive generations internalized, adapted, and interpreted its meaning, but he also shines a light on the many American failures to live up to the ideals enshrined in the document. Based on extensive research from primary sources such as newspapers, diaries, letters, transcripts of speeches, and congressional records, For Liberty and Equality shows how our founding document shaped America through successive eras and why its influence has always been crucial to the nation and our way of life.

Chapters include: Becoming independent — The nation’s infancy — Youthful republic — Compromising for the sake of expansion — Jacksonian era democracy — Subordination — The unraveling bonds of union — Sectional cataclysm — Reconstruction — Racial tensions — Advancing women’s causes — The changing face of labor — International impact & domestic advance — The declaration in a New Deal state — Independence principles in the civil rights era.

Library Adds Charging Station for Mobile Devices

The Library has added a charging station for mobile devices on the first floor.  The station has connections for eight devices that use micro USB, Apple 30-pin and Apple Lightning connectors.  The station will charge any device that uses those connectors.  This station is for phone and tablets only, not for laptops.

Students should sit nearby to watch their phones and tablets while they are charging; the Library is not responsible for any device left unattended.