Author Archives: Sue Silverman

Welcome 1Ls!

The BLS Library is excited to welcome a new class of students and begin the 2019-2020 academic year! As you settle in and begin your classes, keep in mind the following library resources:

Course Books on Reserve: The BLS library keeps 1 copy of every 1L course textbook on reserve. You can check out textbooks for 2 hours and use the book scanner to make copies of the sections you need. The reserve collection is located on the ground floor behind the circulation desk.

Scanning:  The library has two scanners, one of which is also a photocopier, located on the first floor. The copier/scanner allows you to email scanned documents, while the large book scanner allows you to email or save your documents to a USB drive. Both allow for color or black & white scanning. There is no charge for scanning.

Printing:  The library has printers on the cellar, first, second, and third floors of the library. There is also a networked a printer on the fourth floor in the cafeteria. The IT department is responsible for student and faculty printing accounts. Instructions on how to install the printing software, known as Pharos, and instructions on how to print using the networked printers can be found at the IT Printing & Pharos User Guides page on BLSConnect.

Searching the Library’s Collection:  You can search the library’s collection using SARA, OneSearch, or Find a Source. The SARA Catalog is used for searching books, journals, and databases. You may use OneSearch for searching articles and books. To find out whether we have a specific e-journal or database, use our Find a Source page.

Research Databases:We subscribe to a large number of subscription databases and journals to support research and scholarship at Brooklyn Law School. You can browse our A to Z Guide to Databases, which lists our major databases organized by subject area or alphabetically.

Off-Campus Access:  

You can access Westlaw, Lexis, and Bloomberg using the username and  password that you received when you set up these accounts (you will receive instructions for setting up these accounts during orientation). To access other subscription databases when you’re not on campus, you will have to set up the proxy server. To set up a proxy server, select your browser and follow the instructions below:

Microsoft Edge Proxy Instructions
Safari (Mac) Proxy Instructions
Firefox (PC) Proxy Instructions
Firefox (Mac) Proxy Instructions 

Note that Google Chrome is not recommended for accessing e-resources because many of these databases do not function optimally with this browser.

Research Guides: BLS’s Research Guides are written by Brooklyn Law School’s reference librarians to help you conduct legal research in different subject areas. Be sure to check out the 1L Resources, Tips & Tools Research Guide and the A-Z Databases Research Guide.

Reference Services: Reference services are available 9 am – 8 pm, M – Th, 9 am – 5 pm on Friday, and 12 pm – 4 pm on Saturday. You can email askthelibrary@brooklaw.edu, call the reference desk at 718-780-7973, use the chat feature on the library’s website, or visit us at the reference desk, located on the ground floor.

Good luck and we look forward to meeting all of you!!!

50th Anniversary of the Stonewall Riots

This past weekend marked the 50th Anniversary of the Stonewall Riots, a pivotal point in LGBTQ history.  The New York Public Library is commemorating this event with an exhibition featuring photographs by two photojournalists, Kay Tobin Lahusen and Diana Davies, that captured major events in the gay rights movement in the 60s and 70s, alongside ephemera, periodicals, and other items from the library’s archival holdings.  The exhibition is free and open until July 13th at the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building in Manhattan.   Be sure to check it out before it closes!  The NYPL has also provided book recommendations, podcasts, and other resources to learn more about the LGBTQ civil rights movement.  (https://www.nypl.org/stonewall50)

The BLS Library also has several LGBTQ resources. Check out our research guide for books, journals, major federal cases, legislation and a list of organizations advocating for LGBTQ rights. 

Keeping Up with the Issues: Immigration

Presidential candidate, Julian Castro, just released a comprehensive immigration reform plan which would repeal the provision of US law that makes “illegal entry” into the US a federal crime. Under Castro’s plan, an immigrant who crossed the border would be detained briefly by Border Patrol and, if no red flags are raised, released pending an immigration hearing. Instead of a crime, being in the US without legal status would be considered a civil offense for which the penalty is deportation. Thus, if an immigrant does not qualify for asylum or another form of legal status, they would still be deported. See Dara Lind, Julián Castro wants to radically restrict immigration enforcement, Vox (Apr 2, 2019) https://www.vox.com/2019/4/2/18291584/2020-immigration-democrats-policy-castro-abolish-ice

“Illegal entry” into the US has been a crime since 1929 under Chapter 8, Section 1325 of the US Code, but only in the last 20 or so years has this provision been routinely enforced.   To learn more about US law and policy regarding immigration and border control, take a look at these resources:

U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Laws and Issues: A Documentary History (Michael C LeMay & Elliott Robert Barkan, eds., 1999)

This book compiles 100s of primary documents including court cases and opinion pieces that illuminate the controversies surrounding immigration and nationalization policies throughout US history. The book includes explanatory introductions to assist the reader in understanding the significance of each document.

Margaret S. Orchowski, The Law that Changed the Face of America : the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 (2015)

Margaret Orchowski, a journalist and immigration expert, examines how immigration laws have changed over the course of US history into the 21st century in light of globalization, changes in technology, terrorism, the recession and changing attitudes and expectations among younger generations. She also explores the roles that different branches of government and competing interests play in influencing immigration policy.

Ira J. Kurzban et al., Kurzban’s Immigration Law Sourcebook: A Comprehensive Outline and Reference Tool (16th ed. 2018)

Kurzban’s Immigration Law Sourcebook is intended to be a quick reference tool for practitioners and students that includes federal and administrative cases, regulations, statutes, and agency rulings.

Lucy E. Salyer, Laws Harsh as Tigers: Chinese Immigrants and the Shaping of Modern Immigration Law (1995)

This book examines the debates surrounding judicial enforcement of the Chinese exclusion laws as well as administrative power and reform of the Bureau of Immigration during a period of heightened nativism in the early 20th century.

Kevin R Johnson & Bernard Trujillo, Immigration Law and the US-Mexico Border: Sí Se Puede (2011)

Johnson and Trujillo review the history of Mexico – US migration patterns, the discrimination against US citizens of Mexican ancestry and policy debates over “illegal” aliens. Their discussion encompasses US immigration law and policy, the migration of labor, state and local regulation, and the contributions of Mexican immigrants to the US economy.

David Brotherton & Philip Kretsedemas, Immigration Policy in the Age of Punishment: Detention, Deportation, and Border Control (2017)

Immigration Policy in the Age of Punishment is an interdisciplinary exploration of immigration policies in America, Canada, and Europe during the Obama and Trump eras, within the context of what the authors refer to as a decades-long “age of punishment.” This book looks at deportations and border enforcement, national policy and jurisprudence, and the prison-to-deportation pipeline in its discussions of immigration laws and their enforcement.

Constructing Immigrant “Illegality”: Critiques, Experiences, and Responses (Cecilia Menjívar & Daniel Kanstroom, eds. 2014)

Constructing Immigrant “Illegality” is a collection of essays from the fields of anthropology, law, political science, religious studies, and sociology that explore the concept of immigrant “illegality,” how immigration law shapes immigrant illegality and how “illegality” takes effect in the lives of immigrants. The essays also examine power structures associated with the concept of illegality.

Immigration Stories (David A. Martin & Peter H. Schuck, eds. 2005)

This book tells the stories of 13 canonical immigration cases to illustrate how immigration law is made.

Climate Change in the Courts

A recent ruling by a court in Australia is garnering international attention for considering the impact on climate change as a factor in its dismissal of an appeal by a coal mining company against a decision denying its application to establish an open-cut coal mine.

The decision, Gloucester Resources Limited v Minister for Planning [2019] NSWLEC 7, referred specifically to the impact that increased greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) would have on climate change, noting that “the GHG emissions of the coal mine and its coal product will increase global total concentrations of GHGs at a time when what is now urgently needed, in order to meet generally agreed climate targets, is a rapid and deep decrease in GHG emissions. These dire consequences should be avoided.” Gloucester Resources Limited v Minister for Planning [2019] NSWLEC 7, para. 699.

While the impact of GHG emissions on climate change was not the sole factor relied upon by the court in issuing its decision, the inclusion of GHGs’ impact is noteworthy. In an article on Bloomberg, Martijn Wilder, an environmental lawyer at Baker McKenzie, noted that this was “one of the first times a mine has been rejected on climate grounds.” James Thornhill, Coal Developers Take Note: Climate Change Killed This Coal Mine, Bloomberg (Feb. 8, 2019), https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-02-08/coal-developers-take-note-climate-change-killed-this-coal-mine.

David Morris, the chief executive of the Environmental Defenders Office which had joined the case noted that while this is a “case-specific” judgment that will not be binding on future decisions, “it will weigh heavily on the minds of decision makers [who assess fossil fuel projects]”. Michael McGowan and Lisa Cox, Court rules out Hunter Valley coalmine on climate change grounds, The Guardian (Feb. 7, 2019), https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/feb/08/court-rules-out-hunter-valley-coalmine-climate-change-rocky-hill.

Judge Preston, who authored the decision, also notably rejected the “market substitution” assumption, an argument that was rejected by the 10th Circuit as irrational in WildEarth Guardians v. US Bureau of Land Management, 870 F.3d 1222 (10th Cir., 2017). The market substitution assumption is an assumption that approving the proponent’s coal leases “would not result in higher national GHG emissions than… declining to issue the leases because the same amount of coal would be sourced from elsewhere even if the leases were not issued.” Gloucester Resources Limited at para. 542. Judge Preston noted that

“[There is a] logical flaw in the market substitution assumption. If a development will cause an environmental impact that is found to be unacceptable, the environmental impact does not become acceptable because a hypothetical and uncertain alternative development might also cause the same unacceptable environmental impact.” Id. at para. 545.

For more on climate change litigation, see Alice Venn, Courts can play a pivotal role in combating climate change, The Conversation, (Oct. 12, 2018), https://theconversation.com/courts-can-play-a-pivotal-role-in-combating-climate-change-104727 and check out the following:

Sophie Marjanac, Lindene Patton, Extreme Weather Event Attribution Science and Climate Change Litigation: An Essential Step in the Causal Chain?, 36 J. Energy & Nat. Resources L. 265 (2018).

Marc Zemel, The Rise of Rights-Based Climate Litigation and Germany’s Susceptibility to Suit, 29 Fordham Envtl. L. Rev. 484 (2018).

Daniel Bodansky, Jutta Brunnée and Lavanya Rajamani, International Climate Change Law (Oxford Univ. Press, 2017).

Welcome Back! A Few Resources to Help You This Spring

As you begin your Spring 2019 classes, keep in mind all of the resources available to you while you are a student at BLS:

Developing and Researching a Paper Topic:

Research Guides: If you are researching a particular subject area and don’t know where to start, or if you are trying to come up with a paper topic, check out the BLS Research Guides at http://guides.brooklaw.edu/. These guides cover a wide variety of topics such as EU Legal Research, Federal Securities Law, NY Civil Practice, and many others.

Finding Journal Articles and Cite Checking:

HeinOnline: Westlaw and Lexis have an excellent collection of journal articles. But especially if you are cite checking for a journal, you should also check out HeinOnline (https://www.heinonline.org/HOL/Welcome) which posts PDF versions of journal articles so you can view them exactly as they appear in the print copies.

Foreign and International Legal Resources:

HeinOnline: If you are researching foreign and international law, once again HeinOnline may be a great resource for you. HeinOnline has several databases devoted to foreign and international law including the Foreign and International Law Resources Database, United Nations Law Collection, and World Treaty Library.

Justis:  If you need to find caselaw or legislation from the UK, Ireland or EU, check out Justis, an online library of UK, Irish, EU, and international caselaw and legislation.

For more foreign and international legal resources check out the International and Foreign Law Databases in the A-Z database guide.

Corporate, Securities, Bankruptcy, Tax:

Bloomberg Law Practice Centers: Bloomberg Law is an excellent source for news and updates in specific practice areas such as corporate law, securities, tax, and bankruptcy. To access these resources, log into Bloomberg Law and click on the “Browse” icon on the upper left corner. Then click on “Practice Centers” on the left and choose the area of law you want to research.

If you don’t have a Bloomberg Law account, you can set one up by going to https://www.bloomberglaw.com/activate.

Westlaw and Lexis also have a wealth of information including cases, statutes, regulations, and secondary materials organized by practice area. On Westlaw, click on the “Practice Areas” tab on the homepage, and on Lexis, click on the “Practice Area or Industry” tab on the homepage. There you will find several areas of law such as Tax, Copyright, or Immigration which if you click on will bring you to primary and secondary source materials including statutes, regulations, caselaw, practice guides, and treatises for that topic.

And for your other research needs….

Check out the library’s A-Z Research Guide for a list of all of the databases available at BLS organized by subject area. And don’t forget about OneSearch (for searching articles and materials across all databases), SARA (for searching books & e-books), and Find A Source (for finding out whether BLS has access to specific journal titles).

Lastly, whenever you’re stuck, contact a librarian! Come find us at the reference desk or email askthelibrary@brooklaw.edu or use the “chat” feature on the library homepage.

Good luck!!!