Articles Posted in General Legal Research Resources

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The Jenkins Law Library, Philidelphia, Blog shared the recent launch of a series of short videos that explain partes of the court and legal system by the National Center for State Courts (NCSC).

Kristen Matteucci writes the goal is to help “Self-Represented Litigants better prepare for court hearings and more confidently engage with the courts, these illustrated videos address topics like legal advice vs. legal information, what it means to file a motion, and what to do after being served.”

The full blog post has a list of the current videos, and the videos can be found at the NCSC A2J Videos (Access to Justice). Please note these videos are not specific to any one state.

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Orientation to Legal Research Webinar: Tracing Federal Regulations

Date: Thursday, April 4, 2024, 10:00 a.m. PDT – 11:00 a.m. PDT

This entry in the series provides an overview of U.S. federal regulations, including information about the notice and comment rulemaking process, the publication and citation of regulations, and the tracing of regulations from the Code of Federal Regulations, to the proposed rule in the Federal Register, to the regulation’s docket.

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From the HeinOnline Blog: Hawk’s Nest: The Deadliest Industrial Disaster You’ve Never Heard Of

“Between 1930 and 1931, near the town of Gauley Bridge, West Virginia, 3,000 men worked in ten-hour shifts drilling a three-mile tunnel through the side of a mountain. Within five years, more than 750 of those men would die of a deadly and preventable disease. Keep reading as we use HeinOnline’s Law Journal Library and U.S. Congressional Documents collection to learn more about the Hawk’s Nest Tunnel Disaster, the single deadliest industrial incident in American history, and its influence on the struggles for worker’s rights and safety regulations in the United States. …”

HeinOnline may be available through your local law library.

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The purpose of this blog is to explore Oregon law. However, the navigable waters off the Oregon coast are governed by federal maritime law, or outside the U.S. borders, international law. Federal law incorporates the international laws of piracy and has provisions for U.S. citizens who engage, or assist, in piracy on the “high seas.”

The blog post “Modern Piracy and the United States Code” from the Law Library of Congress, by Aaron Lombard, explores this topic. It is a fun introduction to federal laws and legal resources.

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Cite checking goes by many names, including Shepardizing, KeyCite, and authority checking, among others. At a basic level it is checking a case one plans to use to make sure it’s still okay. Rulings from cases can become invalid over time if a more recent case from the same or a higher court changes the rule, or if the legislature passed a statute that impacted the case. In order to find such events, legal publishers have created tools (called citators) to track such changes.

One of the original tools was Shepard’s (now a LexisNexis product). The online LexisNexis version allows a user to find documents that cite the case they are looking at. It also allows a user to see if any of those have overturned the case of interest, or otherwise challenged part of its ruling. In Shepard’s there are visual indicators to suggest a case is still good (green), called into question (yellow), or part of it has been overturned (red). Westlaw has a similar tool called KeyCite, and Fastcase uses Authority Check.

It is important to note that any of these tools can only indicate that there might be something. The user will have to read the newer case that may affect the original case to see what that impact actually is, and how it relates to the user’s situation.

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How did it get to be December so quickly? In the spirit of the holiday season, here are some of the most bizarre holiday laws!

Misdemeanor for throwing snowballs

In Provo, Utah, there is a city ordinance that restricts residents from using a snowball or any object that could be labeled as a “missile,” to inflict damage to other’s property. The ordinance states “Every person who shall willfully or carelessly within the limits of this city throw any stone, stick, snowball or other missiles whereby any person shall hit, or any window broken or other property injured or destroyed or in such a manner as to render travel upon the public streets and places of the city dangerous, or in such a manner as to frighten or annoy any traveler, is guilty of a misdemeanor.”

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So your loved one can no longer care for themselves. Now What?!

In October the Washington County Law Library hosted a webinar on the divorce process with Sara Kearsley from McKean and Knaupp Attorneys. The video of the presentation is now available on the county’s YouTube!

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A patron recently asked what something meant. They were pointing at a series of numbers and abbreviations at the end of a statute. It looked like this “[1957 c.448 §1; 1981 c.88 §2; 1983 c.330 §1; 1993 c.741 §110; 1993 c.796 §1; 2001 c.403 §1]” (ORS 776.015). I told them that is the history of the law.

When the legislature passes a law, it starts as a bill. That bill has a number, like HB 2001 or SB 101. That tells us if it’s a House Bill (HB) or Senate Bill (SB). Those bills that are approved by both houses and signed by the Governor become a session law. Those session laws are compiled after each legislative session. Those compilations are titled Oregon Laws.

The Oregon Revised Statutes are a compilation of all the session laws passed by the legislature that are currently in effect. To make it easier to find a law, they are organized by subject. But each statute has a list of the session laws that have impacted it, in brackets. That is the text our patron was asking about.

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How did we answer that? Can I have a lawyer in Small Claims Court

I had someone come in a few days ago asking about suing someone in Small Claims Court and wanted to know if they could have a lawyer with them. They also wanted to know what was special about Small Claims Court.

Small Claims is a part of civil trial court where the amount claimed is $10,000 or less. Additionally, lawyers are not allowed, on either side, to participate in small claims hearings without the judge’s permission. People can talk to a lawyer at any time to help with the claim and to prepare for the hearing.

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