Ebook Versions of Federal Rules--FREE from CALI and LLI

CALI, in cooperation with the Cornell Legal Information Institute is offering free, downloadable versions of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, Criminal Procedure and Evidence in Ebook form. They are avaiable from CALI's eLangdell website.

And the books are compatible with the Ipad!

Check it out!!

Sports Law Symposium: Law and the Olympic Movement

The University of Maine School of Law and the Sports Law Group at the law firm of Preti, Flaherty are sponsoring a symposium on September 13, 2011 entitled "Law and the Olympic Movement". The distinguished panel will be discussing many issues affecting Olympic athetes. For more information and to register click: http://www.preti.com/2011SportsLawSymposium.

Reminder: CALI can help students study for exams

The Garbrecht Law Library subscribes to the Center for Computer Assisted Legal Instruction (CALI). CALI provides for 850 lessons students may access to prepare for exams. These lessons are available to the students at the University of Maine School of Law.

http://www.cali.org/sites/default/files/Student-Access-11-03-25.pdf

For more information stop by the Reference Desk.

Professor Rogoff Publishes New Book on French Constitutional Law

French Constitutional Law: Cases and Materials is a new book published by University of Maine School of Law professor, Martin A. Rogoff. In this book, Professor Rogoff analyzes the decisions of the Constitutional Council and Council of State, significant laws, important reports, and a variety of French legal writings (many translated into English for the first time). These materials are accompanied by commentary, notes, and readings from secondary sources, including a generous sampling of extracts from historical and philosophical texts, to permit an understanding of the French constitutional system in context. The aim of the book is to present French constitutional law from a French perspective to understand how the French think about constitutional law and its practice.

Please contact the Circulation Department if you would like to check this book out.

In The Library Stacks

The Following are just some of the new books we have added to our collection. Please contact the Circulation Department if you would like to check any of these out.

Academic Legal Writing: Law Review Articles, Student Notes, Seminar Papers, and Getting On Law Review by Eugene Volokh

In this book the author provides advice to current and aspiring law students that will hone their writing, a lawyer's most important skill. This book offers smart advice on how to write better and avoid common errors such as wordiness, unduly harsh criticism, and overly technical language. A good student article can get you a high grade, a good law review editorial board position, and a publication credit. These credentials can in turn help get you jobs, clerkships, and-if you're so inclined-teaching positions.

The Oxford Handbook of Empirical Legal Research Edited by Peter Cane and Herbert Kritzer

The empirical study of law, legal systems and legal institutions is widely viewed as one of the most exciting and important intellectual developments in the modern history of legal research. Motivated by a conviction that legal phenomena can and should be understood not only in normative terms but also as social practices of political, economic and ethical significance, empirical legal researchers have used quantitative and qualitative methods to illuminate many aspects of law's meaning, operation and impact. In the 43 chapters of The Oxford Handbook of Empirical Legal Research leading scholars provide accessible and original discussions of the history, aims and methods of empirical research about law, as well as its achievements and potential.

Women and the Law Stories Edited by Elizabeth M. Schneider & Stephanie M. Wildman

This book examines landmark cases establishing women’s legal rights. Each chapter discusses a case and examines the litigants, history, parties, strategies, and theoretical implications. Subject areas covered are common to many women and law casebooks, including history, constitutional law, reproductive freedom, the workplace, the family, and women in the legal profession, domestic violence, and rape.

Student Speech on the Internet: The Role of First Amendment Protections by Jesulon S. R. Gibbs

Student speech on the Internet, cyber speech, which occurs while off-campus is a growing concern for K-12 public school officials. Parents and students have claimed that First Amendment violations occur when school officials discipline students for their speech occurring off-campus on the Internet using a personal computer and personal Internet services. However, courts vary on the applicable legal standard for cases of off-campus student Internet speech since no specific U.S. Supreme Court ruling governs the question. Therefore, courts, school administrators, and legal scholars are re-examining the notion of students' rights to freedom of speech as guaranteed by the First Amendment in the modern Internet and bullying era. Gibbs includes a recommended framework for addressing off-campus student cyber speech based upon the database of cases studied.

Library Hours for Spring Break

While the students are on spring break, the Library has shortened its hours. They are:


Monday, March 7th – Saturday, March 12th
8 am – 5 pm

Sunday, March 13th
10 am – 11 pm

Enjoy your break everyone!

U.S. Government Printing Office is on Facebook

The Garbrecht Law Library is a designated Federal Depository Library. The United States Printing Office has joined Facebook as a way to enhance transparency and dissemination of government information. Please visit the their new page at:

http://www.facebook.com/pages/US-Government-Printing-Office/162592897126454?v=wall%3E

In the Library Stacks

The Offensive Internet: Privacy, Speech, and Reputation edited by Saul Levmore and Martha C. Nussbaum, focuses on the abuses made possible by anonymity, freedom from liability, and lack of oversight on the Internet. The scholars that contribute to this book connect the absence of legal oversight with harassment and discrimination and argue that misuse is the outgrowth of social, technological, and legal choices. The authors detail some of the vile and hateful speech that the current combination of law and technology has bred and conclude with analysis and policy prescriptions.

The Overdrive Book Project

The Garbrecht Law Library is participating in The MaineInfonet Downloadable Books Project. What a great way to spend your semester break--reading for pleasure! Explore the growing collection of downloadable audiobooks and use your library card barcode to download audiobooks to your personal computer, transfer them to an MP3 player, or burn selected titles onto a CD for listening on the go.

You may have a maximum of 2 titles checked out from the Digital Library.Downloaded titles are checked out for 7 days and are automatically returned to the library after the 7 days.
To get started go to: http://download.maineinfonet.org"

Welcome

The staff at the the Garbrecht Law Library would like to welcome the Class of 2012 to Maine Law. Please come to visit us on the 3rd floor of the law building. Reference staff is available from 8:30am-6:00pm Monday-Thursday and 8:30-4:30 on Fridays. You can also contact us via email at lawref@usm.maine.edu. We look forward to working with you this year and throughout your law school career! Good luck.

Recap the Law: Better Access to Public Records

A new Firefox extention has been created that allows you better access to court records available through PACER. To learn more visit the website RECAP - Turning PACER around online at http://recapthelaw.org .

RECAP is a free extension for Firefox that improves the experience of using PACER, the electronic public access system for the U.S. Federal District and Bankruptcy Courts.
Using RECAP allow you to:
* Helps give back by contributing to a public archive hosted by the Internet Archive
* Save by showing you when free documents are available, and;
* Keeps you organized by providing you better filenames and more useful headers

From the RECAP site:

Transparency is a fundamental principle of our legal system. Since the 1980s, the cutting edge of judicial transparency has been PACER, an electronic system that allows attorneys and the general public to access millions of federal court records. PACER was a big step forward when it was originally created, but lately it has begun to show its age. At a time when the other two branches of government are becoming ever more subject to online scrutiny, the judicial branch still requires citizens to provide a credit card and pay eight cents a page for its documents. For reasons we detail on our "Why It Matters" page, we think this needs to change, and the sooner the better. Today we’re excited to release the public beta of RECAP.

RECAP is an extension to the popular Firefox web browser that gives PACER users a hassle-free way to contribute to a free, open repository of federal court records. When a RECAP user purchases a document from PACER, the RECAP extension helps her automatically send a copy of that document to the RECAP archive. And RECAP saves its users money by notifying them when documents they’re searching for are already available for free from the public archive.

RECAP is a project of the Center for Information Technology Policy at Princeton University. It was developed by Harlan Yu, Steve Schultze, and Timothy B. Lee, under the supervision of Prof. Ed Felten. Some of the key ideas that inspired RECAP are described in this paper, written by Harlan, Ed, and two of their colleagues. The RECAP repository is hosted by the Internet Archive, a world-renowned online library. With the help of RECAP users, we want to build the nation’s most comprehensive public archive of freely-available federal judicial records.

RECAP is looking for partners to help them build the archive more quickly and find new, innovative uses for the information. They are already working with Justia and public.resource.org to integrate the public records they already have into RECAP's archive. A video on RECAP's website provides a quick demonstration of RECAP in action.

If you’d like to be a RECAP beta tester, please check out our privacy policy and then go to their installation page to get started.

Associated Press to Use Twitter and Blog To Cover Confirmation Hearings

Web 2.0 meets the United States Supreme Court with the confirmation of Judge Sotomayer. The Associated Press plans to use Twitter and it's blog to inform us about what is happening at the Sotomayer confirmation hearings, which start Monday. Connie Crosby, writes about the AP's plans on slaw.ca.

Filling Justice Souter's Seat

Filling Justice Souter's seat will be one of President Obama's biggest tasks, early in his Presidency. The following resources will enable you to follow the developments as they happen.

The Ninth Justice Blog: Provides news and analysis on the search to fill the Supreme Court Seat. You can also follow on Twitter at http://twitter.com/9thjustice.

Blogrunner's Supreme Court Topic Page: This site collects the most recent and influential stories and blog posts on the topic.

The New York Times Supreme Court Page, is another excellent resourse for information on the happenings at the United States Supreme Court.

For an excellent research guide on Supreme Court Nominations and the nomination process, I recommend the one created by the staff at the Georgetown University Law Library.

As always, SCOTUS Blog, will provide continuing coverage of the nomination process and all other Supreme Court related happenings.

A new Database to Search Journals Online

Check out Jurn if you are looking for scholarly journals on the internet. Jurn searches 2,374 scholarly / intellectual ejournals in the arts & humanities. JURN indexes ejournals that are either free, or offer some substantial free content. You can use it just like Google. JURN is running on a Google Custom Search so it is speedy, and you can use all the usual Google search modifers, such as intitle:”your phrase” and filetype:pdf. There is also a Firefox plug-in and an RSS feed.

The entire list of available resources is available on the site or in PDF format here.

Source: The Centered Librarian

LexisNexis ASPIRE Program

If you are a new associate and your firm has deferred your employment you may be interested in the LexisNexis ASPIRE program.

You may qualify for this program if you have accepted Associate positions at law firms, but 1) are experiencing a deferred fall 2009 start date, and 2) are taking on public interest work during their deferral period.

The LexisNexis’ ASPIRE Program offers:

Free access to a LexisNexis menu consisting of federal and state case-law, codes, regulations and law reviews. The Martindale-Hubbell Career Center which provides access to non-profit interest and pro-bono job opportunities. Online training and materials to be better equipped for public interest work. Non-profit companies can post job opportunities for free on the site.

ASPIRE Program details. Qualifying students can register here.

Source: Law Librarian Blog

Article of Interest To New Clerks

For those of you who will be clerking either this summer or in the Fall, the following article may be of interest!! I hope it helps.

Sheppard, Jennifer. The "write" way: a judicial clerk's guide to writing for the court. 38 U. Balt. L. Rev. 73-163 (2008).

Christine

The American Association of Law Libraries announces the first annual Morris L. Cohen Student Essay Contest

Currently enrolled students attending graduate programs in library science, law, history, or related subjects are eligible to enter the competition. Papers may be on any topic related to legal history, rare law books, or legal archives. Papers must be submitted by April 15, 2009.  

   

More information is available at: http://www.aallnet.org/sis/lhrb/Cohenessayprocapp.pdf

Associate Dean Maine Steps Down, Associate Professor Knott Named Interim

In anticipation of sabbatical semester in Spring 2009, Professor Jeff Maine will step down as Associate Dean for Academic Affairs at the end of this calendar year. As he focuses more substantially on his teaching and scholarship in the coming years, Jeff will continue to share his institutional memory and expertise in administration of academic affairs. We extend many thanks to Jeff for his extensive and valuable work as Associate Dean.

I am pleased to report that Professor Chris Knott will serve as interim Associate Dean for Academic Affairs as of January 2009. He already is working with Jeff in transition and meeting regularly with Assistant Dean Sherry Abbott and with me to plan for next semester and beyond. Thanks, too, to Chris for assuming this responsibility.

--Peter

Student Lounge in Law Library

The library has responded to numerous requests for student community space. In collaboration with the Student Bar Association, we have re-purposed our under utilized large student lab into a lounge space for students. The furniture in the space has been "borrowed" from the Berman Lounge. The library staff and the SBA would love to hear furniture suggestions that would best suit the purpose of this new space. There are still 3 computers in the student lounge intended for email viewing, printing and web surfing.

The small computer lab is still available for student work space. It is equipped with 2 MACs and 2 PCs. In addition, the computer located on the 2nd floor of the library is now a student use only machine to provide another quite place to work in the library. Please also note that all 10 computers located in the library can print to the circulation desk.

We hope you enjoy your new student space and would love to hear comments from you. Email http://mailto:lawlib@usm.maine.edu/ or just stop by the Reference Desk and share your thoughts.

Most Cited Journals on HeinOnline

The HeinOnline Weblog has posted a list of the most cited journal titles and most cited journal articles in HeinOnline. Check it out at http://heinonline.blogspot.com/2008/06/most-cited-journal-articles-titles-in.html.

Source: HeinOnlie