Articles Posted in State Government & Legal Resources

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A List of Reports to the Oregon State Legislature can be found at the Committee Services Legislative Library blog and you can subscribe to their email notification service, which sends us this message:

“To sign up for Legislative Library News, go to http://www.leg.state.or.us/ and click on http://www.leg.state.or.us/learnmore/ in the center of the page, and then follow the prompts. Legislative Library News is under the “General Legislative” heading.

Agencies: for instructions on submitting required reports to the legislature, see http://www.leg.state.or.us/comm/commsrvs/legReports.html

The Legislative Library is located in the Capitol Building, Room 446, and is open M-F, from 8:00-5:00 during session. Our telephone number is 503.986.1668; email is help.leg@state.or.us”

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We not infrequently get questions from people worried about some new animal law they heard about or who just have an “animal law” question. You can start with one or more of these resources to find an answer to your question:

1) Oregon Legislature: searching for bills and laws by session

2) Lewis & Clark Animal Law Clinic

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We have a new legal research guide, Disability Law, available on the law library’s website. The new legal research guide provides resources on a variety of disability law-related issues including ABA, ADA, disability rights, and employment rights. In related news, a proposed bill impacting the rights of disabled children in public schools, HB 2939, has been introduced to the Oregon State Legislature. The following is a brief synopsis of House Bill 2939 from the bill’s summary:

“Prohibits use of mechanical restraint, chemical restraint or prone restraint on student in public education program. Allows use of physical restraint or seclusion on student in public education program under specific circumstances. Describes procedures to be followed if physical restraint or seclusion is used. Requires preparation of annual report related to use of physical restraint or seclusion. Directs Department of Human Services to approve training programs in physical restraint and seclusion.”

You can read more about House Bill 2939 in this recent article from The Oregonian.

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It all started with a simple citation. One of our patrons had a case from the Oregon Court of Appeals and was looking for previous history information. The first thing that should have set off my radar that this would not be a simple request was the patron’s mention that the case was affirmed without opinion. Not knowing the twisting path before me, I happily set off on my journey.

Day 1:

  • I started with a LexisNexis search using the provided citation. Sadly, Lexis offered a paucity of prior history information. However, I did learn the case was an appeal from the Oregon Employment Appeals Board (EAB). Locating the original EAB decision (from 1985) was now my goal.
  • I next checked our library’s collection, where I found Employment Relations Board decisions, but nothing from the EAB.
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Question: Do Oregon Senate or House Joint Resolutions have to be signed by the Governor?

Answer: (with many thanks to Legislative Counsel staff):

A Senate or House Join Resolution does not have to be signed by the Governor. Only “bills” must be presented to the Governor. The Legislative Assembly uses Joint Resolutions to refer constitutional amendments directly to the people under section 1, Article XVII of the Oregon Constitution. Since Joint Resolutions and constitutional amendments are not “bills” they do not have to go to the Governor.

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The Oregon Legislature’s website has some very nice features (although it does seem as though I always write about its flaws!):

1) Their Legislator and Committee email notification sign-up is easy to use, easy to sign up, and, more to the point, easy to sign off when you want to turn off and tune out, which we hope won’t happen until the Legislative Session is over (though we understand the sentiment). Legislators do not, in my experience at least, deluge their constituents with lots of email messages. The ones that are sent out include useful contact and public appearance information.

2) The Legislature now has a site for easy mobile access. Just click on the Mobile Website from your device.

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Ha ha ha. I spent time this morning doing the following (fellow public and private law librarians around the state do the same, just about every day):

1) Showing a lawyer and others how to compile a legislative history – this can take an hour or more, depending on how far back and how complex the question is. Ask your Legislator to show you how to do this. Ha ha ha. (They are probably glad we don’t send all our patrons and their questions to their offices!) You cannot do this online for any legislative history before 1995 or if you want any of the Exhibits from 1995 forward. Ha ha ha.

2) Explaining to lawyers that the ORS is not online, EXCEPT for the current year. Superseded ORSs DO exist digitally back to (maybe?) 1997 or thereabouts. But the Oregon Legislature DOES NOT keep previous ORS editions online, even though they could – easily. Ha ha ha. Maybe they don’t know that lawyers and pro se litigants really need to see those old ORSs! Ha ha ha. (You can find some of them here, thanks to our favorite law student, Robb Shecter, and his Oregonlaws dot org website.)

So, the next time someone says, “It’s all online,” do this: ha ha ha (or type the word laughing into Google Images and have a giggle :-).

Here’s my latest list of what legal information is NOT online and/or NOT FREE online (from this Legal Information website).

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While searching for recent 2011 Oregon bills, I found a glitch in their search engine. The bill I knew existed wasn’t showing up, no matter what word or number I used to search for it. I double-checked (against the actual bill) and triple-checked by asking colleagues to see if the problem was me rather than the database. It wasn’t me.

The lesson here is: Be careful about relying solely on the Oregon Legislative bill searching utility, Ultraseek. (You can also reach this search engine from the Legislature’s website. Then, click on Bills/Law, and then click on the year you want to search – and then “Search the bills and laws.”)

Keep in mind also that Ultraseek is not an exception to any search engine reliability rule – and it’s actually not too bad as these sorts of free search engines go. The problem exists for all search engines (and databases); they are all flawed (e.g. Google isn’t perfect either –aren’t you shocked, shocked?!)

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