Articles Posted in General Legal Research Resources

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The Association of American Editorial Cartoonists 2010 annual conference is going on now in Portland. Among other events, is one at Powell’s tonight at 7:30.

Comics have a funny place in my “law” world. There are some good lawyer cartoons (and wonderful cartoonists who offer them free to libraries), but one does need a break from all those funny lawyers.

Print newspaper comics readers are as possessive and as fierce about the Funny Pages as sports fans are about the Sports Pages. (The Oregonian knows this well and some of their own staffers are as devoted as their readers are to the comics.)

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There are all kinds of writs: execution, attachment, review, mandamus, and assistance, to name a few.

The one most commonly asked about by pro se litigants is the writ of assistance. Here are some sources of information and forms:

Oregon State Sheriffs’ Association Civil Process Manual (aka “Sheriffs’ Manual”)

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Usually when one wants to “shepardize” an Oregon statute (i.e. look for subsequent cases or legal publications that have cited the statute), the results are fairly uniform whether you check the official ORS Annotations volume (print and online), Lexis-Nexis Shepard’s, or Westlaw Keycite. The results are not usually identical, but there is usually a lot of overlap and maybe a unique hit or two. But for the latest request we got 3 extremely different results for a single ORS statute, which shall not be identified for now in the interest of privacy.

1) The official ORS Annotations had 0 results – yup ZERO.
2) Shepard’s had 4 case citations (and a variety of non-case annotations).
3) Westlaw’s annotated statute (and KeyCite) has a zillion cases. (Well, not quite a zillion, but if you looked at the print ORSA volume, they covered more than 3 pages.)

There is always the “poor-man’s shepard’s,” which simply means you plug your statute citation into a Oregon case law database and run with it.

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Robert Ambrogi notes the passing of a legal publishing legend, Paul J. Ruskin:

The Lawyer Who Took Down West’s Copyright in Court Opinions Has Died

Excerpt: “It now seems almost ludicrous. But until fairly recently, legal publishing giant West claimed that it owned the copyright to federal court decisions. I’m not talking about the headnotes West writes or the key numbering it adds, I’m talking about basic information such as the name of the case, the date of the case, the names of the attorneys who argued it, and the page numbers of the opinions.

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Rarely does a day go past without someone coming into our law libraries frustrated as can be: “I just spent #$% hours online and I can’t find what I need.” In the law librarian version of “breathe deeply,” we talk and walk the attorney through the search, more often than not taking them back to the origins of the West Digest System.*

Say what you will about the business-customer (vs. business-shareholder) side of Thomson-Reuters print and online services (and I surely won’t stop you), the legal research premise (or taxonomy, to be more precise) on which the original West Digest System is based is a thing of beauty. (See also West Digest System, from Wikipedia.)

The West Digest taxonomy (as remarkable as Roget’s Five Classes, the periodic table of the elements, and our 26 letters of the alphabet or even the Ten Commandments) is comprised of only seven topics – amazing:

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Do you need to research Oregon writs of mandamus?

(Related search-words to use when researching writs generally: original jurisdiction, writs, petitions, injunctive relief, mandamus, habeas corpus, quo warranto)

Consult the following primary sources, but take a look also at 1 & 2 for some useful guidance:

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(Not really, but anything is possible in the wild, wacky world of Senate Judicial Committee nominations, so give this post an April First dateline.)

Supreme Court nominees and their (judicial hearing) handlers are mere amateurs when compared to public law librarians who are masters at Answering a Question without Answering the Question.

This is a skill we practice every day, in every way, unlike legislators and judges who are required to give their opinions day in and day out and have a devil of a time not telling people where to go, what to do, and What the Law Is.

Collectively, public law librarians are asked hundreds of thousands of questions about the law every year and each and every time we state some variation on these themes:

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For those who are waiting (breathlessly, perhaps) and wondering whatever happened to Law dot Gov, especially given how fast all those other new dot gov sites have popped up, this is for you:

Google Group for Law dot Gov

The Law dot Gov Google Group is comprised of those on the Law dot Gov frontlines, but updates and commentary on the initiative will also appear on a variety of law librarian and lawyer blogs.

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… in the OC Lawyer Magazine, Criminal Waste of Space column: Carpentry Without Tools, by Justice William W. Bedsworth

Excerpt: “My father was a casketmaker. He taught me not to judge the carpenter if you don’t know his tools. It was just a homey tradesman’s adjuration not to be judgmental, and I remember as a boy being unimpressed by it as a mantra. But I sure appreciate it now. It has helped keep my blood pressure in check for many years.

I think of it often when I encounter an opinion I do not think is the author or panel’s best work. I remind myself that I don’t know how good the briefing was, I don’t know what the record was like, and—perhaps most important—I haven’t sat down and struggled with the cases cited….”(Link to full article.)

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Legislators and judges, among others (e.g. Humpty Dumpty in “Through the Looking Glass”), have the right to define words, assuming there is a need for them to do so.

Court clarifies the definition of “tampers” as it is used in ORS 164.345(1):

State of Oregon v. Terry Dean Schoen, (TC 04494) (CA A129669) (SC S057652)

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