UHLC Nota Bene

The ABA's State and Local Government Law Section has recently published the fourth edition of America Votes!: Challenges to Modern  Election Law and Voting Rights , which is now in the library's collection on the new title's shelf ( KF4886.A86 ). The twenty-one chapter book is edited by Benjamin E. Griffith and John Hardin Young , and is separated into five parts. Each chapter is authored by attorneys or legal scholars who are experts in the field. The first part, "Voter Qualification and Participation," begins with a discussion of immigration, citizenship, and the 2020 census, the connection between Florida felon re-enfranchisement law and poverty, strict construction of voter registration laws (Georgia's 2018 election experience), Native American voting rights, millennials and electoral access in 2018-2020, and a holistic approach to assisting minority language voters. The second part covers the voting process and explores topics such as voter ID laws, ...

Now in its fourth edition, Researching Texas Law has become an essential in the arsenal of the legal researcher in Texas. Authored by Baylor law professors Brandon D. Quarles and Matthew C. Cordon, Researching Texas Law covers both research strategy and topics and information specific to the Texas researcher. Researching Texas Law is not geared solely to law students, but practitioners as well. The legal research process and case law research receive their own complete, yet brief explanations. The case law chapter also includes a concise explanation of finding writ and petition history for civil and criminal cases, a practice unique to Texas and it’s multi-level appeals process.   From there the book goes straight to some of an attorney’s most important tools: court rules, jury instructions, briefs and records, and jury verdicts and settlements. The jury instructions section is especially useful, with lots of resources for jury charges specific to certain areas of law. O...

Black’s Law Dictionary defines arbitration as “a dispute-resolution process in which the disputing parties choose one or more neutral third parties to make a final and binding decision resolving the dispute.” Since the passage of the Federal Arbitration Act (FAA) in 1925, arbitration has been an increasingly important part of the American legal landscape, providing a less costly and less time-consuming alternative to litigation. For those interested in the practice of arbitration, the O’Quinn Law Library has recently acquired The Law and Practice of United States Arbitration , by Thomas E. Carbonneau. Now in its sixth edition, this book contains a comprehensive treatment of U.S. arbitration practice. Topics covered include the history of the FAA, objections to the federal policy on arbitration, contract freedom, federalism, statutory arbitrability, adhesive arbitration, and award enforcement. The book also includes a table of cases and an index for easy navigation.   The L...

Texas Torts and Remedies by Matthew Bender is an excellent practice guide for those researching a specific type of tort as well as the remedies available and the procedures involved in Texas tort actions. Typical of most practice guides, this source provides a detailed background of the law and references to primary sources of law as well as secondary sources. This six volume set has ten parts including the principles of liability, different types of torts such as negligence, nuisance and trespass, landlord tenant issues, products liability, intentional torts, and issues related to motor vehicles and other modes of transportation. Those who need to learn about the procedures involved with prosecuting tort actions in Texas will be introduced to the different types of compensation available as well as matters related to expert testimony. Products liability and insurance claims are among the other topics that are discussed. This is currently available in the Law Library's reference c...

Attention, Texas trial lawyers: the O’Quinn Law Library recently acquired the 2018 edition of Texas Trial Procedure and Evidence , by Jim Wren and Jeremy Counseller. The authors are both Baylor law professors, with a considerable amount of trial experience between them. The aim of their book, as stated in the introduction, is “to be the single indispensable resource for any trial lawyer in a Texas state court civil trial.” It’s a bold claim (and I, as a law librarian, tend to be wary of the idea of a “one-stop shop” for any area of legal research), but the book certainly does provide a wealth of useful information.  The book is arranged in the order of the phases of trial, from pretrial hearings, jury selection, and opening statements all the way through to jury charges, judgment, and post-judgment motions. It includes extensive discussion of the rules of procedure and evidence, as well as a number of forms for various motions and requests. In addition to the main text and for...

The O'Quinn Law Library is open to the public; legal practitioners and pro se litigants alike are welcome to visit the library to conduct legal research.  Are you interested in legal research, but feel unsure where to start?  Do you want to know if the O'Quinn Law Library collection includes something you need?  Then maybe learning about resources frequently used by other researchers can provide you with inspiration for your own research. One of this month's most requested resources is O'Connor's Texas Causes of Action by Michol O'Connor.  Part of a series of litigation handbooks, this particular volume deals with the legal claims and defenses that may be raised in Texas courts.  This book is divided into four main parts: causes of action, liability, compensation, and defenses.  Researchers interested in learning about the law can review issues by subject, while legal professionals may ...

The Handbook of Texas Lawyer and Judicial Ethics is a three-volume set published annually by Thomson Reuters as part of their Texas Practice Series. The Handbook comprises volumes 48, 48A, and 48B of the series. (In the interest of full disclosure, I should also mention that one of the authors, Robert P. Schuwerk, is a professor emeritus here at the Law Center.) This unique resource covers three bodies of Texas law: attorney tort liability, attorney discipline, and judicial discipline. It is designed to help lawyers and judges find answers to their ethical questions, but it may also be useful to law students and non-lawyers. For those interested in doing further research, the book contains frequent references to relevant West’s Key Numbers and C.J.S. sections. Discussions of case law, statutes, and ethics opinions in this edition have been updated through January 2017.     The work is divided into six parts. Part I deals with the standards of attorney tort liability. I...

Yesterday the Justice Department’s Office of Information Policy (OIP) announced the completion of the discovery phase of its development of a National FOIA Portal. The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) was enacted in 1966 and created a presumptive right of public access to government documents. In practice, however, obtaining those documents has not always been easy. The FOIA Improvement Act of 2016 sought to streamline the process by directing the Department of Justice and the Office of Management and Budget to create an online portal that would allow members of the public to submit FOIA requests to any agency from a single website. In other words, a one-stop shop for FOIA.  The OIP has issued a report on its findings and recommendations for the project. The portal will be developed on GitHub with opportunities for feedback from the public.  

During the 2017 Fall Semester, the O'Quinn Law Library reference librarians will offer a series of lunchtime talks on legal research topics. The sessions will be given at 5:00 p.m. Mondays and 12:00 p.m. Tuesdays from September 25 through October 24. FOOD AND BEVERAGES PROVIDED FOR THE FIRST TWENTY ATTENDEES! Please visit the following link for more information: http://www.law.uh.edu/libraries/publications/brownbags.htm . 1. Federal Legislative Research Monday, 9/25, 5:00-5:45 (room 1 BLB) Tuesday, 9/26, 12:00-12:45 (room 1 BLB) Robert Clark, Reference and Research Librarian 2. Resources for Legal Practice Monday, 10/2, 5:00-5:45 ( room 109 BLB ) Tuesday, 10/3, 12:00-12:45 (room 1 BLB) Katy Badeaux, Reference and Research Librarian 3. Legal Technology for Lawyers Monday, 10/9, 5:00-5:45 (room 1 BLB) Tuesday, 10/10, 12:00-12:45 (room 1 BLB) Emily Lawson, Reference and Research Librarian 4. Power Searching on Westlaw, Lexis Advance, and Bloomberg Law Monday...

The United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) recently published the second volume of its EDGAR Filer Manual , which describes the process for submitting a filing with the SEC. EDGAR stands for Electronic Data Gathering, Analysis, and Retrieval. It is a publicly accessible database that provides investors with information on SEC-registered companies. For more information on EDGAR, click here .

The Free Law Project has announced that they have collected every free written order and opinion that is available in PACER, the online hosting source of federal court opinions and case documents. They are now available at  free.law  and are completely searchable.  The  Free Law Project  reports that this collection contains  "approximately 3.4 million orders and opinions from approximately 1.5 million federal district and bankruptcy court cases dating back to 1960." The project required the scanning and implementing OCR for more than  "four hundred thousand of these documents . . .  amounting to nearly two million pages of text extraction." This archive of opinions and orders is available for search  here . In addition to common search categories (judge, nature of suit, etc.) it also has advanced search capabilities including field search, as well as proximity and fuzzy search capabilities.  The Free Law Proje...

In February of last year, the United States Government Publishing Office (GPO) launched the beta version of govinfo.gov , which will eventually replace the Federal Digital System (FDSys) as the GPO’s free, searchable repository of government documents. Last week the GPO announced the addition of several new features to govinfo. Here are some of the highlights: New links allow you to click through from Congressional Records details pages directly to related bills.  Thumbnails are now displayed in the search results for applicable documents (which is very helpful if you are searching for photos).  RSS feeds are now available for bills and statutes, budget and presidential materials, congressional committee materials, judicial publications, and several other types of government publications. To learn more about these and other recently added features, see the latest release notes .

Earlier this week, the Library of Congress announced that it was making over 25 million of its catalog records available for free bulk download. These records will be available at data.gov and on the Library of Congress website at http://www.loc.gov/cds/products/marcDist.php . Previously these records were only available individually or by subscription. This new free service of the LOC will be an invaluable resource for anyone doing bibliographic research. The records are in the MARC (Machine Readable Cataloging Records) format, the international standard for bibliographic data. To learn more about MARC records, see this tutorial on the LOC website.      

The U.S. Government Publishing Office (GPO) recently announced the launch of its beta.gpo.gov website, which will eventually replace the old GPO website launched in 2009. Among other things, the new site features a mobile-friendly design, access to GPO social media platforms, and a directory of Federal Depository Libraries. This follows closely on the February launch of the beta website govinfo.gov , which will eventually replace the Federal Digital System (FDSys) as the GPO’s free, searchable repository of government documents, including regulations, statutes, legislative documents, and court opinions. For more information about govinfo.gov and what is available there, see this Q&A.

The Center for Responsive Politics recently launched a new research tool called Foreign Lobby Watch . It provides a searchable database of organizations and individuals registered under the Foreign Agent Registration Act (FARA), a federal law enacted in 1938 in response to German propaganda efforts in the United States. You may have read about this law in the news recently: President Trump’s former national security advisor, Michael Flynn, was required to register as a foreign agent for his consulting firm’s work on behalf of a company with ties to the Turkish government. The database is made up of FARA forms filed with the Department of Justice. The registration forms include information on the organization serving as a foreign agent, details of the business arrangement, and political donations made by the organization. The database also contains short forms (filed by individuals), and supplemental forms, filed every six months, that provide detailed information on work performe...

On January 27 President Donald Trump signed an Executive Order, Protecting the Nation from Foreign Terrorist Entry Into the United States . Four days earlier, on January 24, the Congressional Research Service released its own report:   Executive Authority to Exclude Aliens: In Brief. To those unfamiliar, the Congressional Research Service (CRS) is a federal legislative branch agency, housed inside the Library of Congress, charged with providing the United States Congress non-partisan advice on issues that may come before Congress, including immigration. Included in the report are in-depth discussions on the operation of sections of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) in the context of the executive power . Discussions of sections 212(f),  214(a)(1) and 215(a)(1) report on how the sections have been used by Presidents, along with relevant case law and precedents. Most interesting is the list of executive orders excluding some groups of aliens during past presid...

Each semester the law library presents a series of presentations covering legal research topics . These presentations are held at 12 noon (see schedule below for the dates of the presentations). All presentations will take place in Room 4 BLB. We will be offering the following sessions for the Spring 2017 semester : 1. International and Foreign Law Research Tuesday, 1/31, Wednesday, 2/1 Dan Donahue, International and Foreign Law Librarian 2. Researching Texas Agency Regulations Tuesday, 2/7, Wednesday, 2/8 Emily Lawson, Reference and Research Librarian 3. Texas Legislative History Research Wednesday, 2/15, Thursday, 2/16 Robert Clark, Reference and Research Librarian 4. Researching Oil & Gas Law Tuesday, 2/21, Wednesday, 2/22 Chris Dykes, Reference and Research Librarian 5. Resources for Legal Practice Tuesday, 2/28, Wednesday, 3/1 Katy Badeaux, Reference and Research Librarian

A few weeks ago, the U.S. Government Publishing Office (GPO) and the Library of Congress released for the first time public access to electronic versions of digitized historical content. The GPO has partnered with the Library of Congress to release the digital version of the  bound Congressional Record from 1981-1990  on GPO's   GovInfo website ( https://www.govinfo.gov/ ). This release covers debates and proceedings of the 98th thru the 101st Congresses, exactly as it appears in the permanent bound editions. Prior to this release, there were no official digital releases of the Congressional Record during the 1980s that the public could access freely online. The GPO and the Library of Congress  released the digital version of the historical Congressional Record for the 1990s in September and will continue to collaborate on this important project and release digital versions of the bound Congressional Record back to the first one published by GPO on March 5, 1873. ...

Back in February, President Obama issued an executive order establishing the Federal Privacy Council (FPC), defined as “the principal interagency forum to improve the Government privacy practices of agencies and entities acting on their behalf.” Given the amount of private information handled by the federal government—everything from medical records to income tax returns—it makes sense for agencies to coordinate their efforts to keep that information secure.  From a legal researcher's perspective, one of the more interesting developments to come out of the FPC is the creation of its Law Library , a compilation of laws, regulations, and supplemental materials pertaining to “the creation, collection, use, processing, storage, maintenance, dissemination, disclosure, and disposal of personally identifiable information (PII) by departments and agencies within the Federal Government.” The Law Library's resources are not new—the site consists mostly of links to other government w...