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As COVID restrictions ease across Oregon, the state’s circuit courts are resuming in-person trials. We have been getting questions about serving on a jury. Each county circuit court has their own procedures and rules, so it is always a good idea to contact the circuit court directly to get answers to your questions. Here are some sources that I found online that answered some of those questions.

The Oregon State Bar has a Juror handbook which answers in plain language many questions a prospective juror may have.

On the Oregon courts webpage they have posted a Juror Orientation video. It has comments from judges, attorneys, and former jurors about jury duty and re-enactments of parts of jury selection and a trial. There is also a FAQ section on the site about jury duty in general (not county-specific information) and a section on court etiquette.

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The number one question on the Oregon Legal Research website has for many years been “When Can I Leave My Kids Home Alone?” The last time this was updated was in 2011, so I thought I’d update that page.

Oregon does not have a law specifically stating the exact age when children can be left home alone. However, the child neglect statutes do offer some guidance, along with cases that interpret those statutes. It is also helpful to look at the information provided by government agencies. If you read the updated Q&A you will find the text of the statutes and links to helpful resources.

 

 

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How did we answer that? #StatuteOfLimitations

We had a woman come into the law library and ask us about how to sue a doctor for a medical injury (sometimes called malpractice). Through follow-up questions, we were able to determine that she was not looking for resources about the legal process or how to file suit. Instead, she was wanting to know how long since the injury occurred did she have to initiate a lawsuit, also known as a statute of limitations.

Conveniently, the Oregon State Bar has a book called “Oregon Statutory Time Limitations.” Like their other publications, there is a convenient index in the back. We showed this book to the patron and she was able to find the entry about medical injury. In the book, it referenced a specific ORS (Oregon Revised Statute, the legal code for the state of Oregon).

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“Cite Wikipedia in an argument to a judge, and you are likely to get a disapproving glare in response. ‘Give me solid precedent,’ the judge is likely to say, ‘cases and statutes and respected authorities.’

But a team of scientists from MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) and Maynooth University, Ireland, has concluded that, in fact, Wikipedia has a measurable impact on judicial decision making. …”

Read the rest of Bob Ambrogi’s article on LawSites.

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Tagged: Judges
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Our friends at HeinOnline offer 5 Simple Tips to Improve Your Research. Written by Lauren Mattiuzzo, this offers five quick tips to help use HeinOnline more effectively and efficiently. HeinOnline is legal research database with a rich collection of law review articles, historic and current federal legal resources, and special topics such as gun laws or LGBTQ+ information. HeinOnline may be accessible via your local Oregon county law library, or the State of Oregon Law Library.

The tips are 1. Use PathFinder; 2. Use One-Box and Search Syntax; 3. Use Citations; 4. Use the Serial Set Lookup Tools, and 5. Use MyHein (may not be available for public patron accounts). Each tool has a short instructional video.

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Anyone who reads tweets on Twitter knows the perils of what I’ll loosely call tweet lifting (aka tweet appropriation), i.e. taking without attribution (or linking).

Yes, failing to provide citations for graphs, charts, statistics, fact assertions, etc. is also a Twitter problem, and other twitterers (tweeters?) will call you to account on those – at least smart, if not also bitter and twisted, twitterers will. New twitterers won’t know the rules right away, but will (or should) catch on quickly. Maybe we need a Twitter Bluebook. (hahahaha, no, please!)

For more about tweet appropriation, so to speak, visit Plagiarism Today and enter the word twitter (among others) into the search box. You will find Mr. Bailey’s comments about twitter ethics (and egos) and related subjects. You might want to start here, this excerpt from: “Twitter, Plagiarism and Retweeting,” by Jonathan Bailey, July 17, 2014:

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For those still dealing with recovering from the Oregon wildfires, here are a couple legal resources.

Wildfire Resources – Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industry

Oregon Disaster Legal Resources – Legal Aid Services of Oregon (LASO), Oregon Law Center (OLC), and the Center for Nonprofit Legal Services (CNPLS).

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According to The Oregonian the federal government is using a rarely enforced civil disorder statute to prosecute at least two protesters in Portland (“Feds start leveling rare civil disorder charges against demonstrators for alleged violence at Portland protests,” Sept. 3, 2020). The article notes the law is also being applied in other cities in the United States, and that the law was adopted in 1968 during a period of “civil rights turmoil.” On September 3 two more people were charged under the civil disorder statute: Pointing lasers at officers during Portland protests now leads to federal civil disorder felony allegations, The Oregonian (Sept. 4, 2020).

The law in question is 18 U.S. Code § 231. Civil disorders. Generally the states have broad power to enact criminal statutes, while the federal government is limited to enforcing criminal laws on federal land or property, that involve actions crossing state lines, or in areas explicitly allowed by the U.S. Constitution. So how does the federal government get the ability to enact a broad civil disorder statute?

The answer, is found in a part of the statute itself; subsection (a)(3) reads:

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If you want to vote for a Presidential candidate in the Oregon Primary election on May 19, 2020, you must be registered by the April 28, 2020, deadline as a member of the same political party as your candidate of choice.

Visit your county Election Office, fill out an official Election Office voter registration form, or register online at the Oregon Secretary of State’s Election Office website.

NAVs (non-affiliated voters) cannot vote for a Party’s candidate. You must register with a Political arty in order to vote for that Party’s candidate in the Primary election.

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In an effort to make law library services more widely available, a law librarian is now on duty to provide assistance on a walk-in basis at both the Beaverton City Main Library and Tigard Public Library, once each month. The law librarian can help find legal resources and documents, as well as assist in using online legal research tools unique to the Law Library. Although they cannot offer legal advice, law librarians can refer people to agencies or organizations that might be able to provide some assistance.

Regularly scheduled hours are as follows:

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