Author Archives: Rosemary Campagna

Student Writing Competition – First Prize $10,000

manwritesletterHave a particular legal issue you are keen on?  Interested in writing about it?  If so, then submit your paper to be considered for the annual Brown Award given by the Judge John R. Brown Scholarship Foundation.

The Award is in recognition of Excellence in Legal Writing in American Law Schools.  There is no  limitation as to topic; only that the writing must be on a legal subject.

Any student wishing to submit a paper must have a letter of recommendation from a faculty member.  Specific details regarding the competition may be found here.

Some topics from last year’s winners.

First Place: Information Traps

Second Place: Beneath the Surface of the Clean Water Act: Exploring the Depth of the Act’s Jurisdictional Scope of Groundwater Pollution

Third Place: Lien on Me: The Survival of Security Interests in Revenues from the Sale of an FCC License

Internet Turns 25 Today

happy_birthday_with_staresThe Pew Research Center, the nonpartisan fact tank that informs the public about the issues, attitudes and trends shaping America and the world,  recently released the report, The Web at 25 in the U.S. 

What were the report’s findings?   “The internet has been a plus for society and an especially good thing for individual usersproclaims its subtitle. But we all knew that.

Here are some highlights from the report:

  • 87% of American adults use the internet
  • 90% of internet users say the internet has been a good thing for them personally
  • 6% say it has been a bad thing, while 3% volunteer that it has been some of both
  • 76% say the internet has been a good thing for society
  • 15% say it has been a bad thing and 8% say it has been equally good and bad
  • 53%  say the internet would be, at minimum, “very hard” to give up
  • 49% of cell phone owners say the same thing about their cell phone
  • 35% of all adults say their television would be very hard to give up (44% in 2006)
  • 28% of landline telephone owners say their phone would be very hard to give up (48% in 2006)
  • 70% report positive treatment by others online
  • 24% report negative treatment

Social media did not command as great an appreciation.   Only 10% reported that they would find it very hard to give up social media.

 

Congress.gov Replaces Thomas.gov

For almost 20 years, Thomas has been the official source for federal legislative information.  Now, users trying to access Thomas will be directed to Congress.gov.

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As of now, Congress.gov is a beta site and will remain a beta site until the shifting of all data sets from Thomas is complete.  The full transition is expected at the end of 2014, and at this time Thomas will be permanently retired.

Congress.gov replaces Thomas with a system that includes platform mobility, comprehensive information retrieval and user-friendly presentation. It currently includes all data sets available on Thomas except nominations, treaties and communications.  As mentioned above, all data sets will be included by the end of this year.

If you are interested in learning how to navigate the new platform, online training is available.  Sign up here.

Black History Month

blackhistoryTo commemorate and celebrate the contributions to our nation made by people of African descent, American historian Carter G. Woodson established Black History Week. The first celebration occurred on Feb. 12, 1926. For many years, the second week of February was set aside for this celebration to coincide with the birthdays of abolitionist/editor Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln.

In 1976, as part of the nation’s bicentennial, the week was expanded into Black History Month.  Every year, U.S. presidents issue annual proclamations proclaiming February as National African-American History Month.  President Obama issued his proclamation on Friday February 1st, and in it said “During National African American History Month, we honor the men and women at the heart of this journey – from engineers of the Underground Railroad to educators who answered a free people’s call for a free mind, from patriots who proved that valor knows no color to demonstrators who gathered on the battlefields of justice and marched our Nation toward a brighter day.”

The Library has many biographies of renowned African Americans in its collection.  Below is a selected list.

Black revolutionary : William Patterson and the globalization of the African American freedom struggle

Thurgood Marshall : race, rights, and the struggle for a more perfect union

Becoming King : Martin Luther King, Jr. and the making of a national leader

Stepping up : the story of Curt Flood and his fight for baseball players’ rights

Rebels in law : voices in history of Black women lawyers

Clarence Thomas : a biography

Journey to justice

Black Americans in Congress, 1870-2007

 

 

 

 

 

 

New Article on Legislative History

Nicholas Parrillo is an Associate Professor of Law at Yale Law School who teaches administrative law, legislation, and American legal history. He recently published an article in the Yale Law Journal on legislative history, which according to the Legal History Blog, “relates the rise of the use of legislative history to the expansion of the federal bureaucracy and the emergence of a specialized regulatory bar.”

Here is the abstract of his article posted on SSRN:

A generation ago, it was common and uncontroversial for federal judges to rely upon legislative history when interpreting a statute. But since the 1980s, the textualist movement, led by Justice Scalia, has urged the banishment of legislative history from the judicial system. The resulting debate between textualists and their opponents — a debate that has dominated statutory interpretation for a generation — cannot be truly understood unless we know how legislative history came to be such a common tool of interpretation to begin with. This question is not answered by the scholarly literature, which focuses on how reliance on legislative history became permissible as a matter of doctrine (in the Holy Trinity Church case in 1892), not on how it became normal, routine, and expected as a matter of judicial and lawyerly practice. The question of normalization is key, for legislative history has long been considered more difficult and costly to research than other interpretive sources. What kind of judge or lawyer would routinize the use of a source often considered intractable?
Drawing upon new citation data and archival research, this Article reveals that judicial use of legislative history became routine quite suddenly, in about 1940. The key player in pushing legislative history on the judiciary was the newly expanded New Deal administrative state. By reason of its unprecedented manpower and its intimacy with Congress (which often meant congressmen depended on agency personnel to help draft bills and write legislative history), the administrative state was the first institution in American history capable of systematically researching and briefing legislative discourse and rendering it tractable and legible to judges on a wholesale basis. By embracing legislative history circa 1940, judges were taking up a source of which the bureaucracy was a privileged producer and user — a development integral to judges’ larger acceptance of agency-centered governance. Legislative history was, at least in its origin, a statist tool of interpretation.

Study Rooms Reservations & Library Hours During Reading/Exam Period

During the reading and exam period, you must make a reservation to use a library study room.  Mandatory study room reservations will begin Thursday, Dec. 5, at 8:00 am; at that time all study rooms will be locked and you must go to the first floor circulation desk when your reservation time begins to charge out the key to the room.  The link to the study room reservations is on the library homepage,  under “Related Links” on the right side of the page.

Study Room Policies:desk

  • Study rooms are for the use of groups of two or more students
  • Study rooms may be reserved only for the current day and two days ahead
  • Study rooms may be reserved for periods from 30 minutes up to four hours
  • Students are permitted to reserve a room for no more than four hours per day
  • Reservations violating these policies will be deleted
  • Instructions for making reservations and a list of rooms available are on the study room reservations page

Library hours for the reading and exam period:

  • Thursday, Dec. 5 – Thursday, Dec. 19: 8:00 am – 2:00 am
  • Friday, Dec. 20: 8:00 am – 5:00 pm
  • From Dec. 5 – Dec. 19, the Circulation Desk will close at Midnight; no books can be checked out after Midnight

·        Reminders:

  • Please limit all conversations in the library – remember that your colleagues are studying too
  • no eating in the library; please go to the student lounge or dining hall for all snacks and meals
  • Do not leave valuables unattended. If you step away from your study table or carrel, take anything of value to you with you
  • And Finally, goodluckforexam2

Congress.Gov Replacing Thomas

 

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The free legislative information website, Congress.gov, is transitioning into its permanent role as the official site for federal legislative information from the U.S. Congress and related agencies. The site, which launched in beta form last fall and features platform mobility, comprehensive information retrieval and user-friendly presentation, is replacing the nearly 20-year-old THOMAS.gov.

Beginning Nov. 19, typing Thomas.gov into a web browser will automatically redirect to Congress.gov. Thomas Twitter followers will be transferred to the Congress.gov Twitter account. THOMAS.gov will remain accessible from the Congress.gov homepage through late 2014 before it is retired.

To help ease the transition for users from THOMAS.gov to the new site, the Library of Congress is offering online training webinars over the next few months. Complete this form if you wish to register for a training webinar.

You still have time….

lunch_and_learn_with_knife_and_forkto register for the Library’s upcoming Lunch and Learn programs.

There is still room for the following sessions –

October 16:   Statutory Research

October 23:   Apps for Legal Research: Westlaw, Lexis, HeinOnline, Fastcase

October 30:   Using Law Reviews for Research

Unfortunately, the October 9 Case Law Research session is sold out.

Please join us for the remaining sessions.  Lunch will be provided.

See you then.