Oregon Legal Research BlogSansone v. Gordon and releated cases:
“Who better than the nation’s highest court to decide if medical marijuana users have a right to concealed handgun licenses?
Articles Posted in United States Federal Resources
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Codification of the U.S. Code (and Supreme Court Bobbleheads)
In the continuing saga of codification of laws of the land, I bring you this article:
“Title 51 of the U.S. Code and Why it Matters,” by Robert C. Berring, 14 Green Bag 2d 251 (2011)
The The Green Bag is a lively law journal, if you can imagine, and home of the infamous (in some circles) Supreme Court Justice Bobbleheads
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U.S. Supreme Court Library a Thriving Entity
Whenever someone tells you that they “don’t need no stinkin’ law library,” beware – why doesn’t that person want you to have access to the nation’s laws and to the collected wisdom of legal scholars through the centuries?
U.S. Supreme Court Justices are some of the smartest legal scholars in the country and not only do they have the smartest law clerks from the best law schools, but they have a stellar law library. You don’t hear any of them saying, “why don’t we save some taxpayer money by closing the law library” – do you?
I saw this quote in a recent article about the retirement of the current U.S. Supreme Court Law Librarian – they have a staff of 28!
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Justice Bedsworth and the Value of a Dollar
California appellate court’s Justice Bedsworth lets loose on people who don’t know the value of a dollar.
Given that the U.S. Congress is once again rehashing what the bipartisan National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform did last year (and their Commission’s Final Report is on their website), I don’t blame the Justice for his testiness.
See his monthly column, “Criminal Waste of Space,” in the Orange County Bar Association’s monthly magazine, July 2011 OC Lawyer:
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Civil Liberties Debate: John Yoo – Steve Wax, Alaska Debate Transcript on DVD
My law library now has a copy of the DVD (2 disks):
Alaska Bar Association: “Excerpt from 2011 Convention, Fairbanks, AK: The Balance Between Security & Civil Liberties in War Times,”
featuring UC-Berkely Law Professor John Yoo (former White House attorney under George W. Bush) and Steve Wax (Oregon Federal Public Defender)
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Database of Oregon Nonprofits that Lost their Tax Exempt Status
More than 3,700 Oregon nonprofits have lost their tax-exempt status due to a Failure to File.
The Nonprofit Association of Oregon (formerly known as TACS) has posted the news.
DATABASE: You can search the IRS database, titled: Automatic Revocation of Exemption List (use those keywords in your search engine if this link stops working) or link to it from the main IRS website for Charities and Nonprofits.
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Authority of Federal Statutes in U.S.C. Section Notes
Not all statutes are codified, that is, not all laws passed (by Congress and signed by the President) appear in the numbered sections of the U.S. Code. Sometimes they appear in the code section’s note.
This blog post may not mean anything to you right now, but one day you’ll say “so that’s what Laura was talking about!”
I used to teach this to law students, using the Privacy Act of 1974 as an example, but a federal agency law librarian has written a useful and short memo on the subject so you don’t need me anymore (at least not to explain this!):
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Online and/or Remote Access to Oregon Court Documents
All Oregon county circuit courts (and most if not all county, justice, and municipal courts) allow free on-site (in the courthouse) access to OJIN.Few if any public libraries will subscribe to OJIN. It is not an easy database to use, due primarily to the fact that it was designed many decades ago for court staff and lawyers. Keep in mind also that few full-text documents are in OJIN. If you need copies of actual documents filed in a particular case, rather than just reading the docket entry, you would have to go to the courthouse file room or clerk’s office anyway, so remote access will not save you a trip to the courthouse.Some county law libraries have OJIN subscriptions, but not many, for the same reason – the actual documents are only at the courthouse so lawyers, litigants, or researchers may as well be right in the court’s file room when they do their searches – and where they can get expert search assistance.Note, OJIN is not like PACER, the federal electronic case filing database, which does have full text. But it too requires you to register – and there are charges, with some exceptions.
None of these public databases is free. It is very expensive to create and maintain good databases and people who use them are asked to help pay for them, even if all taxpayers contribute most of the money to support these databases.
Online databases, of any kind, are not free or even cheaper than paper files – they just allow greater access, at a cost. The price of remote access is high since you need skilled and experienced programmers and designers and network specialists who can build databases that everyone can use – not to mention the skills, hardware, and software that are needed to keep a database secure and properly backed up – and have 24/7 user support. These skilled workers cost a whole lot more than people who sort and file paper documents.
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Online Privacy Protection, CRS Report
beSpacific alerts us to this Congressional Research Service (CRS) report on federal privacy protection laws:
Excerpt: “”There is no comprehensive federal privacy statute that protects personal information. Instead, a patchwork of federal laws and regulations govern the collection and disclosure of personal information and has been addressed by Congress on a sector-by-sector basis….” (Link to full beSpacific blog post.)
Link to beSpacific homepage.
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A One-Stop Website for Federal Court Opinions? Soon, Maybe, Eventually?
Free public access to federal court opinions through GPO’s FDsys may be coming soon. A lot of people (e.g. those “it’s all online” types who haven’t a clue) think this is easy now – ha ha ha.
But soon it may be soon. See the 3 Geeks and a Law Blog post: