Oregon Legal Research Blog

I blogged a little while ago about a new website for the Oregon Revised Statutes. In the old days (pre-Web old days) you needed serious money, organization, and infrastructure to set up a publishing business so even if you had a better mousetrap, or a statute compilation, you probably cooled your jets and went off to practice law instead of building your own database.

Welcome to the Zeros (i.e. 2000’s)! If you have an idea, you can run with it, or code with it (yes, “to code” is a verb), web it, blog it, or otherwise unleash your inner online publisher.

The ORS site mentioned above is courtesy of smart, creative, and public-service minded law students (universities and law school networks are behind many a nascent entrepreneurial enterprise).

Justice Bedsworth is no Edward Albee (and we’re glad of that), but both can have you scratching your head(s) for reasons that become clear this month with the Justice’s column:

Poof, The Magic Goat Man: “This is what we get when the governor appoints an English major.” by Justice William W. Bedsworth

You can visit California Court of Appeal Associate Justice William Bedsworth monthly at his A Criminal Waste of Space column.

Forget Eat, Pray, Love or Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. My mantra is fast becoming:

Think, Research, Listen, Speak.

The arguments, legal, profound, profane, insane, in Portland, Oregon over naming a street after Cesar Chavez reminds me how quickly many of us are to speak (or comment on blogs) before doing the research. Most important issues in life, whether personal, professional, legal or culinary, are not simple (see, e.g., Jonah Leher’s, How We Decide).

In California (and at least 7 other states), Cesar Chavez Day is a state holiday today. To get to holiday status, one must argue the point, seemingly endlessly, but eventually the Legislature and the Governor have to decide. And sometimes one then pushes on to National Holiday status.