Category Archives: SARA Catalog

Voting Rights Resources

With the fractured Fifth Circuit ruling today that Texas’ voter ID law violates the Voting Rights Act and the Presidential election quickly approaching, you may be interested in learning more about the law on voting rights.  To research the issue, you can search the SARA catalog or WorldCat for the subject, Voting—United States or Suffrage—United States.  The Brooklyn Law School Library has over 100 different titles on the topic.  Some of the more recent acquisitions are listed below. vote-1278871_960_720

Sedition Act of 1798: Political Speech as Crime

July 14 is famous as Bastille Day in English-speaking countries. In France, the day is called La Fête Nationale (the National Holiday) and was originally called Fête de la Fédération (“federation feast”) to celebrate the first anniversary of the storming of the Bastille and the end of the French Revolution. The French celebrate the day each year, referring to it as Le Quatorze Juillet (the fourteenth of July). Like Independence Day in the United States, it is a national holiday in France. The day celebrates the fall of the Bastille when just under a thousand Parisians attacked the prison releasing its seven inmates. Like the 4th of July, it marks the beginning of republican democracy and the end of tyrannical rule. The French national anthem, La Marseillaise, which originates from the revolution, does not commemorate the storming of the Bastille. Rather it celebrates the three tenets of the republican national motto: “liberty, equality and fraternity”.

In United States history, July 14 is the date when one of the most egregious breaches of the U.S. Constitution was enacted by Congress, the Sedition Act of 1798. In direct violation of the Constitution’s guarantee of freedom of speech, the Sedition Act permitted the prosecution of individuals who voiced or printed what the government deemed to be malicious remarks about the president or government of the United States. The infamous Alien and Sedition Acts were four laws passed by the Federalist controlled Congress stemming from fears of the French revolution, specifically the Reign of Terror, and an undeclared naval war with France. The Federalists were fearful of revolutionary support growing in the United States among Irish and French immigrants and from Democratic-Republicans, sympathetic to the French cause, who wished to oust the Federalists from office. Fourteen Republicans, mainly journalists, were prosecuted, and some imprisoned, under the act. Among the prosecutions were the following:

  • James Thomson Callender, in his book “The Prospect Before Us” called the Adams administration a “continual tempest of malignant passions” and the President a “repulsive pedant, a gross hypocrite and an unprincipled oppressor”. He was indicted and convicted in 1800, fined $200 and sentenced to nine months in jail.
  • Matthew Lyon wrote an essay in the Vermont Journal accusing the administration of “ridiculous pomp, foolish adulation, and selfish avarice”. He was fined $1,000 and sentenced to four months in jail.
  • Benjamin Franklin Bache accused George Washington of incompetence and financial irregularities, and charged the “the blind, bald, crippled, toothless, querulous Adams” with nepotism and monarchical ambition in his newspaper “The Aurora”. He was arrested in 1798 but he died of yellow fever before trial.
  • David Brown set up a liberty pole in Dedham, Massachusetts with the words, “No Stamp Act, No Sedition Act, No Alien Bills, No Land Tax, downfall to the Tyrants of America; peace and retirement to the President; Long Live the Vice President”. He was arrested and tried, fined $480, and sentenced to eighteen months in prison.
  • Luther Baldwin of Newark, New Jersey, who, following the adjournment of Congress in July 1798, when President Adams and his wife were traveling through Newark past a local tavern, heard one of the patrons say, “There goes the President and they are firing at his ass.” Baldwin said “he did not care if they fired thro’ his ass.” He was arrested and later convicted of speaking seditious words tending to defame the President and Government of the United States. He was fined $150, assessed court costs and expenses, and sent to jail until he paid the fine and fees.

seditionReaders interested in this dark time in American history can Halperinlearn more by reviewing two titles recently added to the Brooklyn Law School Library collection. The first is Press and Speech Under Assault: The Early Supreme Court Justices, the Sedition Act of 1798, and the Campaign against Dissent by Wendell Bird (Call No. KF9397.A3281798 B57 2016). The other is The Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798: Testing the Constitution by Terri Diane Halperin (Call No. KF9397.A3281798 H35 2016). Interestingly, the U.S. Supreme Court never heard a case to decide whether the Alien and Sedition Acts were constitutional. The Sedition Act expired on March 3, 1801, the last day of the first and only presidential term of John Adams.

Judicial Review and Alexander Hamilton

Independence Day 2016 marks the 240th anniversary of the Second Continental Congress’ adoption of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. This milestone in US history is observed by Americans, young and old, as a national holiday on the same calendar date each year. If July 4 is a Saturday, it is observed on Friday, July 3. If July 4 is a Sunday, it is observed on Monday, July 5. This year government offices and schools are closed on Monday, July 4. See 5 U.S. Code § 6103. The library at Brooklyn Law School has reduced hours on Monday and will be open from 9am to 5pm so law students can study for the bar exam scheduled at the end of July.

RutgersIn Constitutional Law courses law students at BLS and throughout the country learn that the decision by Chief Justice John Marshall in Marbury v. Madison, 5 U.S. 137 (1803) is arguably the most important case in American law. It was the first U.S. Supreme Court case to apply the principle of “judicial review”, the power of federal courts to void acts of Congress in conflict with the Constitution. However, a newly acquired title in the BLS Library collection, Rutgers v. Waddington: Alexander Hamilton, the End of the War for Independence, and the Origins of Judicial Review by historian Peter Charles Hoffer (Call No. KF228.R877 H64 2016) makes clear that Marbury was not the first court in the new American Republic that considered the argument that a legislative enactment in conflict with a state or federal constitutional provision is void. One of the first decisions to address the question was Rutgers v. Waddington, decided in the Mayor’s Court in the City of New York on August 7, 1786. The case is important to American constitutional law because defendants’ primary attorney who argued for an expansive notion of judicial power was Alexander Hamilton, who advocated for the principal of judicial review in Federalist Paper No. 78.

The case was presented on June 29, 1784 with Chief Justice James Duane presiding. The facts showed that Plaintiff Elizabeth Rutgers owned a large brewery and alehouse on the northern side of Maiden Lane near where Gold Street now enters it. The brewery extended from Smith (now William) Street on the west, to Queen (now Pearl) Street, on the east; and from Maiden Lane, on the south, to John Street on the north. It was one of the most notable features in what is now the Financial District.  Plaintiff was forced to abandon the brewery during the British occupation of New York City. Under the Trespass Act of 1783, which permitted patriots to sue loyalists for damages to property in occupied areas of the state, Rutgers demanded rent from Joshua Waddington who had been running the brewery since it was abandoned. Alexander Hamilton, attorney for the defense, argued that the Trespass Act violated the 1783 peace treaty ratified earlier by Congress. Chief Justice Duane delivered a split verdict awarding Rutgers rent only from the time before the British occupation. The case was ultimately settled by the two parties. Importantly the case set a precedent for Congress’s legal authority over the states. In his ruling, Chief Justice James Duane wrote that “no state in this union can alter or abridge, in a single point, the federal articles or the treaty.”

World Refugee Day 2016

UNHCRThis week, Brooklyn Law School Library Associate Librarian Linda Holmes created a display of library material marking World Refugee Day. In December 2000, the United Nations General Assembly passed a resolution, A/RES/55/76, designating June 20 as World Refugee Day to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees. Among the titles in the display case located on the first floor of the BLS Library opposite the elevator is The UNHCR and the Supervision of International Refugee Law edited by James C. Simeon (Call No. K3230.R45 U54 2013). The 384 page book is an in-depth analysis of the UNHCR’s supervisory role in the international refugee protection regime. It examines the part played by key institutions, organizations and actors in the supervision of international refugee law and provides suggestions and recommendations on Green Card Storieshow the UNHCR’s supervisory role can be strengthened to ensure greater State Parties’ compliance to their obligations under these international refugee rights treaties. Another title in the display is Green Card Stories by Saundra Amrhein and Ariana Lindquist (Call No. JV6455 .A826 2011), a coffee table style book that depicts 50 recent U.S. immigrants—each with permanent residence or citizenship—in powerfully written short narratives and compelling portraits.

According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), in 2016, 65.3 million people are considered refugees, the largest count since WWII. Due to rising conflict in the Middle East and ISIS’ intent to destroy Christians and non-Muslims, the world now has a record number of people who have been displaced from their homes and have nowhere to go. Unfortunately, many countries have no desire to help them, especially displaced Christians from the Middle East. One reason is because many fear that ISIS members are disguising themselves. The UNHCR estimates that 24 persons are displaced from their home every minute due to conflict and persecution with 16 million qualifying as refugees due to persecution. It released its latest analysis of global displacement trends in a 68-page report. To help understand its key findings, see this 90-second video:

Artificial Intelligence in Law and Education

robot lawAn intriguing new title in the Brooklyn Law School Library collection is Robot Law by Law Professors Ryan Calo, A. Michael Froomkin, and Ian Kerr (K564.C6 R63 2016). The 402 page book brings together research on robotics law and policy written by scholars from law, engineering, computer science and philosophy on topics such as liability, warfare, domestic law enforcement, personhood, and other cutting-edge issues in robotics and artificial intelligence. The book is an in-depth look at an area of law that is growing in importance. Like the Internet before it, robotics is a technology that will transform the social and economic landscape of legal research and practice. Robot Law looks at the increasing sophistication of robots and their widespread use in hospitals, public spaces, and battlefields requiring rethinking philosophical and public policy issues, including how AI interacts with existing legal regimes and changes in policy and in law.

Whether artificial intelligence will one day displace human lawyers has become so important that, this past April, Vanderbilt Law School hosted the first legal conference on the topic, “Watson, Esq.: Will Your Next Lawyer Be a Machine”. Speakers included Richard Susskind, author of “Tomorrow’s Lawyers” and “The Future of the Professions,” and Andrew Arruda, whose firm ROSS Intelligence helped build ROSS (which does not stand for anything), the world’s first artificially intelligent attorney, on top of IBM Watson.  Designed by students at the  University of Toronto, ROSS is meant for use by lawyers. Asking it a legal question will yeild an “instant answer with citations and suggested readings from a variety of content sources.” ROSS reads and understands language, postulates hypotheses when asked questions, researches, and then generates responses (along with references and citations) to back up its conclusions. It learns from experience, gaining speed and knowledge the more users interact with it.

A recent Washington Post news piece reports that the law firm Baker & Hostetler announced that it is employing ROSS to handle its bankruptcy practice of nearly 50 lawyers. CEO and co-founder Andrew Arruda, says that other firms have also signed licenses with ROSS and expects more announcements soon. Although still in the prototype stage, ROSS shows great promise as an innovative legal research tool. Tasks that ROSS can do include:

  1. Giving relevant answers – not a list of results – to natural language questions;
  2. Learning from user’s questions – it learns and improves the more it is used;
  3. Providing a consistent, easy-to-use experience on any devices used to access it.

At this week’s CALIcon 16 being held at the Georgia State University College of Law, BLS Reference Librarian Harold O’Grady and Technology Educator Lloyd Carew-Reid will present a session, The Future of Artificial Intelligence in Legal Education, Research and Practice. Also participating will be:

  • Professor Heidi Brown (Director of Legal Writing at Brooklyn Law School);
  • Mikhail Jacob (a Ph.D. student at the Georgia Institute of Technology); and
  • Dr. Mark Riedl (an Associate Professor in the Georgia Tech School of Interactive Computing and Director of the Entertainment Intelligence Lab).

Copyright and “We Shall Overcome”

Earlier this month, a class-action complaint was filed in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York in the case of We Shall Overcome Foundation v. The Richmond Organization, Inc. (TRO Inc.) et al. addressing ownership of “We Shall Overcome,” the unofficial anthem to the civil rights movement and a song the Library of Congress called “the most powerful song of the 20th Century”.  According to the late folk singer Pete Seeger, the song became associated with the Civil Rights Movement in 1959, when Guy Carawan sang it  at Highlander, which was then focused on nonviolent civil rights activism. Seeger and other famous folksingers in the early 1960s, such as Joan Baez, sang the song at rallies.

The copyright dispute against the two music-publishing companies, Ludlow Music and the Richmond Organization, seeks a judgment from the court declaring that the defendants’ copyright claim is invalid and ordering the defendants to disgorge previously collected licensing fees. According to the complaint, defendant TRO filed copyrights for “We Shall Overcome” in 1960 and 1963 and has collected millions of dollars in fees over the decades. The law firm for the plaintiff is Wolf Haldenstein, which was involved in the recent successful challenge to Warner/Chappell Music’s claims that it owned the copyright to “Happy Birthday to You.”

The filing argues that TRO-Ludlow’s copyright claims were invalid for several reasons: because it had not been renewed (as required by United States copyright law at the time), the copyright of the 1948 People’s Songs publication containing “We Will Overcome” had expired in 1976. Additionally, it was argued that the registered copyrights only covered specific arrangements of the tune and “obscure alternate verses”, that the registered works “did not contain original works of authorship, except to the extent of the arrangements themselves”, and that the registered copyrights stated that the works were derivatives of a work entitled “I’ll Overcome” which did not exist in the database of the United States Copyright Office.

music businessThe Brooklyn Law School Library has in its collection several items related to copyright and music. See for example All You Need to Know about the Music Business by Donald S. Passman (Call # ML3790 .P35 2015) which is on Course Reserve at the Circulation Desk. For more than twenty years, this book has been universally regarded as the definitive guide to the music industry. Now in its ninth edition, this latest edition leads novices and experts alike through the crucial, up-to-the-minute information on the industry’s major changes in response to today’s rapid technological advances and uncertain economy.

Prince’s Legacy of Music, Copyright Law and More

The artist Prince (born Prince Rogers Nelson) leaves behind, not only a legacy of music and pop culture, but also a legal legacy dealing with contract law, copyright litigation, and the law related to name changes. Prince’s famous name change in the 1990s during a contractual fight with Warner Brothers is legendary. He changed his name to a glyph that merged the symbols for man and woman and was also the title of his most recent album. Rolling Stone magazine ranked it as the fourth-boldest career move in rock history. Frustrated because Warner Bros. refused to accommodate his prolific ways, he took to appearing in public with the word slave written on his face. After the name change, he no longer considered himself a slave, and released the album Emancipation that he said was based on his studies “of the Egyptians, the building of the pyramids and how the pyramids were related to the constellations. They were a message from the Egyptians about how civilization really started.” The name change had Warner Brothers scrambling to send out font software so reporters could incorporate the symbol into stories. Many of those writing about the musician just found it easier to speak about him as “the artist formerly known as Prince.” Years later, Prince reclaimed his name and began a series of dealings with various record labels and in 2014 struck a landmark deal with Warner brothers regaining control over his back catalog. The effort was in large part aided by an aspect of copyright law that allows authors to grab back rights from publishers after 35 years.

Internet searches for classic recordings like Purple Rain, Around the World in a Day and Sign o’ the Times yield few results whether on top streaming venues like Spotify and Rhapsody or other outlets like Tidal that boast an extensive catalog. This scarcity is a testament to the fierce and independent nature of this musician. When Napster appeared on the scene and more recently, Prince was so protective of his music copyrights that he wanted to change the law to stop other artists from covering his songs. When another artist who uploaded to YouTube a 29-second clip of her infant dancing to Prince’s “Let’s Go Crazy,” he directed Universal Music, pursuant to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, to send a takedown notice to YouTube, which led to a lawsuit in 2007. In 2015, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that copyright holders must consider fair use when sending takedowns. See Lenz v. Universal Music Corp., 801 F.3d 1126 (9th Cir. 2015). In 2014, his efforts to protect his music copyrights led to his suing 22 Facebook users for linking to bootlegs of his recordings. The lawsuit was withdrawn as he later explained to the BBC, “Nobody sues their fans … I have some bootlegs of Lianne [La Havas] but I wouldn’t sell them. But fans sharing music with each other, that’s cool.”

DigitalSee the Brooklyn Law Library item Digital Copyright: Protecting Intellectual Property on the Internet by Jessica Litman (Call # KF3030.1 .L58 2001) which tells how copyright lobbyists succeeded in persuading Congress to enact laws greatly expanding copyright owners’ control over individuals’ private uses of their works. The efforts to enforce these new rights have resulted in highly publicized legal battles between established media and new upstarts. The author, a law professor at the University of Michigan Law School, argues that the 1998 copyright law as an incoherent patchwork and that there is a needfor reforms that reflect common sense and the way people actually behave in their daily digital interactions.

Chief Justice Earl Warren Biography

Today marks 125 years since the birth of Earl Warren, the 14th Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court, in Los Angeles, California. Warren’s tenure on the Court was from 1953 when President Dwight D. Eisenhower nominated him until his retirement in 1969. Earl Warren had enormous impact on the political and legal landscape of twentieth century America. In his long public service, Warren pursued a Progressive vision of ethical and effective government that brought moral integrity to the nation’s public policies, especially in the fields of racial relations, criminal justice, and freedom of marital association. Warren’s path-breaking approach to legal writing and his management of the responsibilities of the Office of Chief Justice encouraged public understanding of and support for the work of the Supreme Court.

A graduate of the University of California at Berkeley, he was elected district attorney of Alameda County in 1925 and continued to be reelected through 1938, when he was elected Attorney General of California. In 1942, Warren ran successfully for Governor of California as a Republican and was reelected in 1946 and 1950. He ran for Vice President of the United States in 1948 on the Republican ticket with Thomas Dewey, who lost to Harry Truman, the Democratic incumbent.

The Warren Court issued a host of notable decisions including decisions holding segregation policies in public schools (Brown v. Board of Education) and anti-miscegenation laws unconstitutional (Loving v. Virginia); ruling that the Constitution protects a general right to privacy (Griswold v. Connecticut); that states are bound by the decisions of the Supreme Court and cannot ignore them (Cooper v. Aaron); that public schools cannot have official prayer (Engel v. Vitale) or mandatory Bible readings (Abington School District v. Schempp); the scope of the doctrine of incorporation in state criminal matters (Mapp v. Ohio, Miranda v. Arizona) was dramatically increased; reading an equal protection clause into the Fifth Amendment (Bolling v. Sharpe); holding that the states may not apportion a chamber of their legislatures in the manner in which the United States Senate is apportioned (Reynolds v. Sims); and holding that the Constitution requires the states to provide defense attorneys to criminal defendants charged with serious offenses (Gideon v. Wainwright).

Warren wasWarren Chair of the Warren Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy. Serious lapses in judgment and uncritical deference to authority regarding national security issues in the report have clouded his legacy. The Brooklyn Law School Library has in its collection Earl Warren and the Struggle for Justice by Paul Moke (Call # KF8745.W3 M65 2015), a highly readable biography that offers an updated and balanced appraisal of Warren’s leading social justice decisions and a liberal critique of his failings that provides new insights into Warren, the man, the jurist, and the leader.

Presidential Elections: Resources at the BLS Library

Image result for presidential election

With the New York primary fast approaching on April 12, you might want to learn more about the law and history of presidential elections.  The library has over one hundred resources on the subject.  Highlighted below are a few.  To see the complete list of resources on U.S. presidential elections, search the SARA catalog for the Library of Congress subjects, Presidents—United States—Elections.

Alan D. Hertzke, Echoes of Discontent: Jesse Jackson, Pat Robertson, and the Resurgence of Populism (1993).

Hertzke examines the 1988 presidential campaigns of Jackson and Robertson, showing how the messages of both political-religious figures echo an enduring tension in American life between Christian, communal ideals and a materialistic, fragmented society.

Alexander S. Belenky, Understanding the Fundamentals of the U.S. Presidential Election System (2012).

The book discusses how the use of some election rules embedded in the U.S. Constitution and in the Presidential Succession Act may cause skewed or weird election outcomes and election stalemates. The book argues that the act may not cover some rare though possible situations which the Twentieth Amendment authorizes Congress to address. Also, the book questions the constitutionality of the National Popular Vote Plan to introduce a direct popular presidential election de facto, without amending the Constitution, and addresses the plan’s “Achilles’ Heel.”  In particular, the book shows that the plan may violate the Equal Protection Clause from the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution. Numerical examples are provided to show that the counterintuitive claims of the NPV originators and proponents that the plan will encourage presidential candidates to “chase” every vote in every state do not have any grounds. Finally, the book proposes a plan for improving the election system by combining at the national level the “one state, one vote” principle – embedded in the Constitution – and the “one person, one vote” principle. Under this plan no state loses its current Electoral College benefits while all the states gain more attention of presidential candidates.

Charles L. Zelden, Bush v. Gore: Exposing the Hidden Crisis in American Democracy (2010).

The book distills the events, issues, and voluminous commentary relating to Bush v. Gore into a sharply insightful and nonpartisan account of a remarkable election, the crisis it produced, and the litigation that followed. Ultimately, it shows that both the election controversy of 2000 and Bush v. Gore signaled major flaws in our electoral system that remain with us today.

Edmund F. Kallina, Kennedy v. Nixon: The Presidential Election of 1960 (2010).

Based upon research conducted at four presidential libraries – those of Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon – Kallina is able to make observations and share insights unavailable in the immediate aftermath of one of the closest races in American presidential history.

George C. Edwards, Why the Electoral College is bad for America (2004).

Drawing on systematic data, Edwards finds that the electoral college does not protect the interests of small states or racial minorities, does not provide presidents with effective coalitions for governing, and does little to protect the American polity from the alleged harms of direct election of the president. In fact, the electoral college distorts the presidential campaign so that candidates ignore most small states and some large ones and pay little attention to minorities, and it encourages third parties to run presidential candidates and discourages party competition in many states. Edwards demonstrates effectively that direct election of the president without a runoff maximizes political equality and eliminates the distortions in the political system caused by the electoral college.

First Woman Attorney before US Supreme Court

A Presidential Proclamation for Women’s History Month, 2016 states that “we remember the trailblazers of the past, including the women who are not recorded in our history books, and we honor their legacies by carrying forward the valuable lessons learned from the powerful.”

Rebels at the BarTo commemorate Women’s History Month, Brooklyn Law School Associate Librarian Linda Holmes has added some interesting titles in the display case on the first of the library opposite the elevator, including Rebels at the Bar: The Fascinating, Forgotten Stories of America’s First Women Lawyers by Jill Norgren (Call # KF367 .N67 2013). The book recounts the life stories of a small group of nineteenth century women who were among the first female attorneys in the United States. Beginning in the late 1860s, these pioneers, motivated by a love of learning, pursued the radical ambition of entering the then all-male profession of law. They desired recognition as professionals and the ability to earn a good living. One prominent early woman attorney was Belva Lockwood, born in New York State in the Niagara County town of Royalton on October 24, 1830. In 1879, a bill was passed in both houses of Congress and signed by President Rutherford B. Hayes allowing Lockwood to become the first woman to practice before the Supreme Court of the United States. On March 3, 1879, she became the first woman admitted to practice before the United States Supreme Court. One of her first actions was to nominate a black Southern colleague for admissions to the court.

In 1884, Lockwood was nominated for president of the United States by the National Equal Rights Party along with Harriet Stow as the vice presidential candidate. Running against James G. Blaine (Republican) and Grover Cleveland (Democrat) at a time when women were not allowed to vote, she received 4,194 votes. She ran for president again in 1888. Lockwood’s professional life focused on women’s rights and she helped women gain equal property rights and equal guardianship of children. She served as president of the Women’s National Press Association, commissioner of the International Peace Bureau in Berne, president of the White House chapter of the American Woman’s League, a senator for the District of Columbia Federal Women’s Republic, chairman of the committee on industrial police for the National Council for Women, and president of the National Arbitration Society of the District of Columbia. She died on May 19, 1917. In 1983 she was inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame and on June 18, 1986, the United States Postal Service issued a memorial stamp. For more on Lockwood, see the entry at the New York State Library at this link.