Delaware Campus Library Blogs

HeinOnline has just added two more collections to its digital resources.  The  History of International Law Collection and the Hague Academy of Collected Courses are two new collections of international law materials. The History of International Law in includes classic books from famous authors such as Hans Kelsen, Samuel Pufendorf and James Brown Scott. It also includes significant serials such as the International Law Studies Series [U.S. Naval War College], International Conciliation, Studies in Transnational Legal Policy, and many others.

The Hague Academy of Collected Courses includes the official publications of the Hague Academy dating back to 1923. For more information on the new collections see Hein’s blog.

To access the new libraries go to HeinOnline from the Widener Law Library’s webpage and look for the new libraries in the list under “Subscribed Libraries.”

A new book by Widener’s own Prof. Jules Epstein and Prof. Carol Henderson of Stetson University College of Law is now available in the library. The Future of Evidence: How Science and Technology will Change the Practice of Law has just been published by the American Bar Association.

CALI is back up and working normally.

CALI has been experiencing a website outage caused by problems with Amazon’s hosting service.

They have set up a temporary site for access here: http://www2.cali.org/lessons/

The Pulitzer Prize winners for 2011 have been announced. A number of the winners covered law related subjects.

Investigative Reporting – Paige St. John of the Sarasota Herald-Tribune for an investigation of the Florida property insurance system.

Local Reporting – Frank Main, Mark Konkol and John J. Kim of the Chicago Sun-Times for a story on crime and justice in Chicago

National Reporting – Jesse Eisinger and Jake Bernstein of ProPublica for an investigation of Wall Street practices that led to the financial meltdown.

International Reporting – Clifford J. Levy and Ellen Barry of The New York Times for a series on the corrupt justice system in Russia.

Editorial Writing – Joseph Rago of The Wall Street Journal for a series of articles critical of the new federal health care law.

Feature Photography – Barbara Davidson of the Los Angeles Times for a series of photos depicting the innocent victims of gang violence in Los Angeles.

History – Eric Foner. The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery (W.W. Norton & Company). We have this book available at the Widener Law Library.

All of this year’s winners are listed on the Pulitzer Prize website.

We had a great turnout for Prepare to Practice: Free Online Legal Resources and Research Tips for New Associates, Summer Associates, Interns, Clerks, Law and Paralegal Students. Did you miss it? Don’t worry the handout for this informative program is now available:  Free Legal Resources Handout [pdf]

What did law exams look like in the 1870s? We can all find out thanks to Harvard University. Their archives has recently posted all of their old exams back to 1871 online.  Here we have 1871. And 1900.

For your modern exam needs Widener Law Library  has a collection of Widener exams available on our webpage.

Widener Law Library joins libraries of all types throughout the country this week to celebrate the services that we provide to our users. We encourage you to stop by the Circulation Desk or the Reference Desk to enjoy some candy and to say hello to the Library staff members and student workers who keep the Library open and help you with your research needs.

John Grisham, attorney and author of legal thrillers is this year’s honorary National Library Week Chair. We do have some of his books available in the Law Library.

One of my favorite sources for congressional and legislative history research LexisNexis Congressional, has been been sold to ProQuest and will now be know as ProQuest Congressional. So far there have been no changes to the product except for the name but a press release from ProQuest implies that major change to the platform will be coming.

CRS Reports

The Congressional Research Service is a group of researchers who produce research reports for Congress. The research reports they produce can be very useful and informative. Some of the topics they cover can be helpful for law school research. They do not easily make their reports available to the public however, which has caused some controversy. One early WikiLeaks release was of 6,780 CRS reports.

Open CRS

Fortunately for researchers many CRS reports are freely available and easy to search at Open CRS. Some sample law related CRS reports are: Closing the Guantanamo Detention Center: Legal Issues, Compulsory DNA Collection: A Fourth Amendment Analysis, and Supreme Court Nominations, 1789 – 2010: Actions by the Senate, the Judiciary Committee, and the President.

Information Today reports that the latest Census Bureau budget calls for the elimination of several publications including the popular Statistical Abstract.  The Census Bureau apparently feels that the Statistical Abstract only contains data that is found elsewhere on the internet so it should be canceled.

“Save the Statistical Abstract” awareness programs have sprung up, including one from the American Library Association

I often use the Statistical Abstract as a starting place when I’m not sure which federal agency would have the statistics I need. It’s a convenient one stop shop for statistics of all sorts.

So check out the Statistical Abstract online while it still exists. We even have the paper version in the library.

PACER provides online access to federal appellate, district and bankruptcy court dockets and documents.  Widener Law Library does have a subscription to PACER in case you need a copy of a federal complaint or brief. Because PACER charges by the page we do not make the password publicly available. If you need something from PACER please ask at the reference desk and we can do the search for you.

Other sources for dockets

Both Lexis and Westlaw have some docket info although not everything is available on an academic subscription. Usually you can look at the docket but you can’t download documents.

A good free starting point for federal dockets is Justia. Justia lets you search for cases on the federal dockets and sometimes has full text documents available. If they don’t have the documents they include a handy link to PACER.

Here is a quick run down of some of the legal apps available for your smart phone. Most are iPhone/iPad apps but there are some apps for Android phones. Just a disclaimer, I haven’t had a chance to try all of these out. If you have any other suggestions let me know in the comments.

Free (or partly free) apps

LexisNexis Get Cases & Shepardize – Look up cases and Shepardize on your iPhone. The app is free but you need a LexisNexis password to get a case and shepardize.

Real Time Congress – Get updates from the US House and Senate.

PocketJustice – Recordings and transcripts of Supreme Court oral argument plus summaries of cases. The top 100 cases are free, the full version (600+ constitutional law cases) is $4.99. Also available for Android.

Nolo’s Plain English Law Dictionary – A free legal dictionary. It’s aimed at non-lawyers but could also be useful for law students.

ABA Journal – Get legal news from the ABA Journal on your iPhone or iPad.

Apps for a Fee

Black’s Law Dictionary – The standard legal dictionary now has an iPhone/iPad app version.

Law in a Flash and Sum and Substance – Two popular study guides  have an iPhone app version.

Prepare to Practice: Free Online Legal Resources and Research Tips for New Associates, Summer Associates, Interns, Clerks, Law and Paralegal Students

Thursday, April 14^th at 12:15pm and again at 5:15pm in the Library’s Special Collections Room

The cost of subscription based legal information continues to rise as courts, firms and non-profits are looking for ways to cut costs. All legal professionals should be aware of the resources that are available for free online.

As part of the Legal Information Center’s National Library Week Celebration (April 10^th – 16^th), come learn about all of the free primary legal materials available online. We’ll cover Federal, State and Local legal resources available for free on the Internet as well as advanced searching techniques that will help you in “the real world.”

Note: This is an abridged version of the library’s popular CLE , Free and Low-Cost Online Legal Research. Presenters will be librarians Maggie Stewart Adams and Mary Alice Peeling. For more information contact Maggie Stewart Adams – mmstewart@widener.edu

Don’t forget that all Widener Law students have access to CALI. CALI’s interactive lessons, created by law professors, review many areas of law. CALI also has a convenient list of lessons for first year classes and lessons for upper level classes.

You’ll need to create an account with CALI if you don’t already have one. Please email Janet Lindenmuth at jslindenmuth@widener.edu or call the reference desk at 302-477-2114 for Widener’s CALI authorization code.