Articles Posted in General Legal Research Resources

Published on:

By

If you are not a licensed Oregon attorney and you need to perform thorough legal research (vs “googling a legal problem,” yikes), you have free access to some of the same legal research databases that Oregon attorneys use: Fastcase is one of them and you have remote access to it through your State of Oregon Law Library (SOLL). (Check out their Blog while you’re at the SOLL website.)

You also have free access to NOLO (formerly Nolo Press) databases through the SOLL.

Remember, Google isn’t enough when you have to appear without an attorney before a judge. I recommend consulting an attorney* or a professional law librarian**, but not everyone (or even most) has access to either, let alone both.

Continue reading →
Published on:

By

You can find PDFs of the official U.S. Reports at the Library of Congress (LOC) website (here’s a capture of today’s view of that LOC link at the Internet Archive).

More about U.S. Supreme Court Slip and Official Opinions:

You can read U.S. Supreme Court “slip” opinions online at the U.S. Supreme Court website, but these are neither final nor official opinions. Substantive and typographical edits are made before the opinions are published in the official U.S. Reports. Read the court’s disclaimer on their website regarding these “slip” opinions. (You can read their disclaimer below, i.e. as it appeared today.)

Continue reading →
Published on:

By

From SLAW: Valuing Legal Information,” by Sarah Sutherland:

Excerpt: “The problem with trying to value legal information is that we mostly just talk about its price instead of its value. The value of anything is subjective, and correct legal information at the perfect time is worth a great deal, general legal information that isn’t needed at a particular moment is worth much less. This is important because the people who make decisions about how to fund legal information are often not the people who use it regularly and are generally not faced with urgent legal matters at the moment of making decisions about how much to pay for it….” [Link to Slaw blog post.]

Hat tip to the KnowItAALL service (you can subscribe to it, free)

Published on:

By

Nation book review: “Why Does Our Justice System Fight So Hard to Keep Innocent People Behind Bars? Mark Godsey was a “prosecutor’s prosecutor” who didn’t think there were any innocent people in prison. Then he began supervising his law school’s Innocence Project, and realized his assumptions were all wrong” by Joshua Holland, in The Nation, January 24, 2018:

Excerpt:

“In the criminal-justice system romanticized by Hollywood films, those convicted of crimes are generally guilty. And a protagonist need only prove that someone’s been wrongly imprisoned to get them freed by a judiciary that values truth and justice….

Continue reading →
Published on:

By

It’s not an insult, although it could be.

I ran across the word in a recent Christopher Fowler Bryant and May novel (this one was Wild Chamber, but they are all excellent! – each one different, each one fall over funny, dark, wise, and each will make you say, “you too!” when you read/hear Fowler gently poke a stick at the ridiculous, the incomprehensible, the rubbish-talkers) and looked up the word “quango.” Good word, isn’t it, you quango, you.

Anyway, it’s an acronym (which can be distinguished from an abbreviation, in case you thought the two were synonyms – they are not (and for extra credit, the words amuse and bemuse are not synonyms either to the “strictly speaking” among us, although you can render someone bemused by using the two words interchangeably)).

Continue reading →
Published on:

By

“Net Neutrality” is not an issue of first impression: there are several decades’ worth of federal statutes, legislative history,  and administrative and regulatory laws, federal court opinions, federal-state preemption issues, and Congressional, political, and campaign finance issues to comprehend – and a rich and long scholarly (and non-scholarly) bibliography to peruse. (You can search: net neutrality bibliography research guides – or variations on that search string – and look for documents on net neutrality from authoritative sources that have been updated regularly.)

This podcast (from Radio Survivor) tackles all of the above in ordinary language, assuming you are a little geeky, a little wonky, and a lot interested in learning how FCC regulations are made – and unmade.

The interviewer is no lawyer and asks common sense questions (that sometimes make no sense – and that’s OK!) and the law professor does a masterful job interpreting and responding to the questions and speaking plain language. They are a terrific team.

Continue reading →
Published on:

By

The MULTNOMAH COUNTY HOME RULE CHARTER [Amendments Approved November 8, 2016], states:

“12.40. Appointment of Committee Members.

The charter review committee shall be composed as follows:

Continue reading →
Published on:

By

Your State of Oregon Law Library give you FREE access to NOLO publications and the FASTCASE legal research database:

NOLO (aka Nolo Press): “NOLO provides access to full-text legal reference publications written for consumers that allow individuals to learn about specific topics of law.”

FASTCASE: “Fastcase collection includes the United States Code, United States Supreme Court and Court of Appeals Cases; and cases, statutes, regulations, court rules, constitutions, attorney general opinions, and session laws for Oregon, Alaska, Arizona, California, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, and Washington.”

Continue reading →
Published on:

By

If you think the U.S. Supreme Court posts official versions of their opinions on their website … hahaha … I have a virtual bridge and an inside WH or Congressional source to sell you for $1B dollars. (Tip: Beware of any source who charges too much or too little and read those disclaimers, e.g. click on “Latest Slip Opinions.“)

If you think that is the only problem with online Supreme Court opinions, guess again: what about their link rot? See e.g.:

NYT article, “In Supreme Court Opinions, Web Links to Nowhere,” by Adam Liptak, Sept. 23, 2013.

Continue reading →
Contact Information
The information provided on the Oregon Legal Research website and blog is for research purposes only. We do not provide legal advice, nor do we endorse any person, product, or company

Please do not include any confidential or sensitive information in a contact form, text message, or voicemail. The contact form sends information by non-encrypted email, which is not secure. Submitting a contact form, sending a text message, making a phone call, or leaving a voicemail does not create an attorney-client relationship.

Copyright © 2015 – 2023, Oregon Legal Research
JUSTIA Law Firm Blog Design