WisLaw blog reports on BillFinder, a free service from StateScape. Whether you’re reading, drafting, tracking, or merely surfing new legislation, it’s a powerful little tool, for no cost. Amazing.
Try it out: BillFinder
Are there free, online, downloadable, official forms you can use to write a legally enforceable Oregon will?
Sorry, but the answer is no, at least not if you want your will to do what you intend and be legally enforceable. Oregon wills, and other estate planning documents, are not Wash & Wear, Click & Go, One-Size-Fits-All, or Eat and Run.
Will-drafting cannot be done on the fly, on Twitter (though I’m sure it has been tried – and may one day soon be tried in court), or with anything other than serious thought, study, and drafting skill. This is not to say one can’t draft a will oneself, or write one quickly in an emergency.
This is not a rhetorical or even a political question. It is a school assignment! Hurrah for teachers, especially those who try out their own assignments before handing them over to their students (and their students’ parents).
Librarians get to help answer students’ reference and research questions, public librarians more than law librarians, but we (Oregon law librarians, that is) also often have the opportunity and honor to pitch in to help students answer their law-related questions, especially when the question comes through L-net, the Oregon statewide online reference service. (Many states have one of these online reference services, in addition to email/IM reference services offered through individual libraries or library systems.)
So, how about that Abuse of Power and Constitutions assignment? It had a follow-up exercise too: “Give an example of a nation that is not a constitutional government.”
The Oregon Judicial Department’s (OJD) 2002 Style Manual specifies the Webster’s Third International New International Dictionary (unabridged ed. 2002) as the court’s “official” (non-legal) dictionary. (Many, possibly all, state appellate courts specify an official dictionary.)
If you do a little research, however, you will find that the 2002 print edition of this dictionary is the same as the 1993 edition, page for page, with the addition of an updated addendum.
You will also find that this dictionary is online, but at a cost – and part of a whole family of the publisher’s dictionaries. If you work for the State of Oregon, you may have access to the online version as part of the state’s subscription plan, which many State employees can use. Your public library may also subscribe to it.
We have haiku and we have six-word stories – and we have Baseball in under 150 Words (and don’t forget Rafe Esquith’s beautiful 132-word description), so why should we all be wailing about 140 character Tweets? (And, here (from Future Lawyer) is one reason to know how to Twitter. No one is forcing you, but it might be a very good thing to know, not unlike knowing how to drive a car with a manual transmission.)
I’m wondering, though … can I respond to a legal research question in fewer than 141 characters – and have the question answered satisfactorily, if incompletely?
It does depend on the question and on the glibness of the response too, I suppose. The classic example is the response to the Question: How Does One Get to Carnegie Hall? Answer: Practice, practice, practice. (Elephant jokes also have wonderfully pithy responses.)
This is the time of year when we start getting questions from people wanting the 2009 Oregon statutes or laws.
This is also the time of year when we explain:
1) The 2009 Oregon Legislature is still in session and unless there is a serious emergency requiring immediate legislative action, no 2009 Oregon legislation will have an effective date (click on Other Information) before July 1, 2009 and likely not before January 1, 2010:
“Social director” used to be viewed as a job for the boss’s wife or a job for paid “social butterfly.” but the 21st century “social media” director has education, imagination, writing skills, and respect. The life of a PIO will never be the same again.
Multnomah County has opened up a job for a “Chair’s Office Communication Director/Multnomah County Social Media Coordinator.” It closes on 5/20/09, so don’t dawdle.
“Do you tweet and use Facebook? Are you experienced with building social communities? Can you crank out news releases, editorials, and web content on tight deadlines? Have you been a one-person video crew? Are you a stickler for grammar and punctuation? Do you know your way around web tools, web development and search engine optimization?
KCLL Klues posted this Positive Law and other U.S. Code Mysteries a little while ago and it reminded me that some of my own readers are new to legal research and also curious about such things. What IS positive law anyway?
No, positive law isn’t law in your favor, but that’s not a bad guess. Nor is it law that says, “yup, it’s yours, all yours, and you can do what you want as long as you don’t scare the horses,” rather than those pesky “thou shalt NOT” laws. It’s also not the opposite of negative law!
(Just as “legal” isn’t really the opposite of “illegal” though we’ve come to accept it that way. It’s all legal on this legal research blog, and it’s all lawful too, but not all legal blogs behave lawfully.)
I like looking at new law book catalogs, especially those with the scholarly books I don’t get to see or read much anymore. Some people dream of bigger houses, faster cars, expensive jewelry, extensive travel. I am one of that other group who dream of more time to walk, read, sleep, perchance to eat — in a nutshell, I dream of a little more leisure time (who doesn’t!). (For those of you still laboring under such a delusion, no, librarians do not get to read much on the job.)
I saw these titles in the Hart Publishing catalogue; they will serve a reminder that titles are as important as the literature they cover (as in, you can tell a book (and a comic book) by its cover).
My favorite: “I Have to Move My Car: Tales of Unpersuasive Advocates and Injudicious Judges” by David Pannick, QC. From the publisher’s blurb:
For a lesson on how Oregon has heretofore interpreted legislative history (and intent) – and how they will do so henceforth:
Oregon v. Gaines (SC S055031), April 30, 2009
“…The question presented — i.e., whether defendant’s conduct, as described, constituted a “means of * * * physical * * * interference or obstacle” within the meaning of ORS 162.235(1) — poses an issue of statutory interpretation. The methodology that Oregon courts follow in interpreting statutes is a distillation of settled interpretative principles, some of which have been codified in Oregon statutes since early statehood and others of which have been articulated in this court’s case law for many years. Mastriano v. Board of Parole, 342 Or 684, 691, 159 P3d 1151 (2007). The methodology, as outlined in PGE v. Bureau of Labor and Industries, 317 Or 606, 610-12, 859 P2d 1143 (1993), entails three sequential levels of analysis to determine the legislature’s intent. First, the court examines the text and context of the statute. Id. at 610-11. If the legislature’s intent is obvious from that first level of analysis, “further inquiry is unnecessary.” Id. at 611. “If, but only if,” the legislature’s intent is not obvious from the text and context inquiry, “the court will then move to the second level, which is to consider legislative history[.]” Id. at 611.(2) If the legislature’s intent remains unclear after examining legislative history, “the court may resort to general maxims of statutory construction to aid in resolving the remaining uncertainty.” Id. at 612.
Oregon Legal Research Blog