Skip to main content

A Little Admin. Law Exercise

Last week USA Today reported that, to acknowledge the increasing size of an average American, the Federal Transit Authority proposes to raise the assumed average weight per bus passenger from 150 pounds to 175 pounds. We all know that news reports are secondary sources. To find the primary source for this news, how about using the Federal Register on the Government Printing Office's FDsys site? It is official and it is FREE. FDsys has its own search engine right at the center of its homepage. Searching for the proposed rule gives us the opportunity to test its Advanced Search feature with the following earch keys:

Date is after March 1, 2011

Avaliable Collections is Federal Register

Search in Full Text of Publications and Metadata for Average Passenger Weight

And the first of the 5 items retrieved is the one. Not bad at all. The search engine has additional features. But that will be another test for another day.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

The Amazing, but True, Deportation Story of Carlos Marcello

Earlier this week, the University of Houston Law Center was fortunate to have as its guest Professor Daniel Kanstroom of Boston College of Law. An expert in immigration law, he is the Director of the International Human Rights Program, and he both founded and directs the Boston College Immigration and Asylum Clinic. Speaking as the guest of the Houston Journal of International Law’s annual Fall Lecture Series, Professor Kanstroom discussed issues raised in his new book, Aftermath: Deportation Law and the New American Diaspora . Professor Michael Olivas introduced Professor Kanstroom to the audience, and mentioned the fascinating tale of Carlos Marcello, which Professor Kanstroom wrote about in his chapter “The Long, Complex, and Futile Deportation Saga of Carlos Marcello,” in Immigration Stories , a collection of narratives about leading immigration law cases. My interest piqued, I read and was amazed by Kanstroom’s description of one of the most interesting figures in American le...

This Day in Legal History -- Roy Cohn

Big lawyers have big personalities, and few had as big a personality as Roy Cohn who was born on this day in New York City in 1927. Cohn’s career was spent in the Washington DC—New York axis, famous in the press for his legal and social exploits, his list of famous and infamous clients, and as the poster-boy for every stereotype of the dishonest grasping lawyer. The legal career of Roy Cohn is an object lesson on the use, and abuse, of the lawyer’s power. Roy Cohn was born on February 20, 1927 in New York City. His father was a justice in the Appellate Division of the State Supreme Court and was well connected politically. These connections, along with a precocious intelligence which allowed him to graduate from Columbia law school at age 20, paved the way for a bright legal career. Cohn’s first job (after waiting until he turned 21 to be admitted to the bar) was as an assistant U.S. Attorney in New York. He first came to prominence in his role as a prosecutor in the Rosenberg espi...

Resources for New Law Students

This Monday, August 24, is the first day of classes for the Fall 2015 semester at the University of Houston Law Center.  Many of the arriving students will be 1L or foreign LLM students, each of whom will receive their first introductions to an academic system that in some ways is notably different from anything in their educational background.  For anyone interested, the O'Quinn Law Library collection contains a number of resources designed specifically to help these new law students find their footing.  The following books are held on reserve: Nygren,  Starting off Right in Law School Miller, Law School Confidential Edwards, LL.M. Roadmap Noyes & Noyes, Acing Your First Year of Law School And the following books are in the library stacks available to be checked out: Gallacher, Coming to Law School Stropus & Taylor, Bridging the Gap Between College and Law School Gader-Shafran, The International Student...