UHLC Nota Bene

Oxford University Press has recently published the 13th edition of The English Legal Process . English Law is a subject area that is difficult for most in the legal profession, but like foreign and international law in general, is becoming more important even for attorneys whose practices focus on U.S. domestic law. This ten chapter book authored by Terence Ingram begins with an overview of the English court system, and covers courts with special jurisdiction and tribunals with administrative powers. An entire chapter is devoted to the legislative process, including interpretation of statutes by judges. Judicial precedent (including a discussion of the House of Lords and the new British Supreme Court ), jury trials, appeals and miscarriage of justice, contempt of court, and remedies for public and private proceedings are among other topics that are covered in detail. This item is currently in the law library's stacks ( KD7111.I53 2011 ).

I seldom recommend radio programs in this blog but have to make an exception for this morning's Diane Rehm Show on NPR. The topic--whether Justices Kagan and Thomas should recuse themselves from hearing case(s) on the federal health care reform laws--definitely merits attention from legal scholar and law students. But the discussion/debating skill demonstrated by the guests (Prof. Sherrilyn Ifill of U. of Maryland Law School, Prof. Jeffrey Rosen of George Washington Law School, and Jeffrey Toobin of New Yorker) are remarkable. It is an intellectual treat to listen to this program .

Throughout the millenia, philosophers and jurists have pondered the question: From whence cometh Law? I'm not talking about "where did this statute/case/regulation come from?"; I'm talking about the metaphysical concept of "law". Does it emanate from a Supreme Diety (or a pantheon of dieties)? Does it flow from Nature? Does it derive from the caprice of the sovereign or the consent of the governed or the will of the majority? Does it issue from Man's desire for Order, or from his lust for Control? Does it proceed from Reason or Power or Fear or Mercy? My favorite account comes from the great American wit Ambrose Bierce : Being instated as an archangel, Satan made himself multifariously objectionable and was finally expelled from Heaven. Halfway in his descent he paused, bent his head in thought a moment and at last went back. "There is one favor that I should like to ask," said he. "Name it." "Man, I understand, is abo...

Each semester the O'Quinn Law Library provides five sessions of research skill refresher. Presented by our lawyer-librarians, sessions include advance databases search skill, legislative history, administrative law, and several subject specialties. Each session is about forty-five minutes long. Most of them come with handouts. Please click here for information of this semester's offering. Hope to see you there!

Tomorrow (Aug. 24), the University of Houston Law Center will be celebrating the publication of a new book entitled American Justice in the Age of Innocence: Understanding the Causes of Wrongful Convictions and How to Prevent Them . This book, co-edited by one of our faculty, Professor Sandra Guerra Thompson (a leading criminal justice scholar), with two of her top students, Jennifer L. Hopgood and Hillary K. Valderrama, "explores the circumstances surrounding wrongful convictions" and "examines the most common causes behind breakdowns in the legal system." Interestingly (at least to me), today (Aug. 23) happens to be the 84th anniversary of the executions of Sacco and Vanzetti . Whether one believes they were innocent or guilty, it hardly can be denied that the controversy surrounding the Sacco and Vanzetti case provided the foundation for the modern innocence projects movement . Then Harvard professor, and future Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, Felix Frankf...

Today is the 91st anniversary of the ratification of the 19th amendment, granting the right to vote to all U.S. citizens, regardless of sex. The movement for women's suffrage largely originated in 1848 at the Seneca Falls Convention, where the right to vote was described as an "inalienable right." Suffragists employed several different methods to meet their objectives on the federal, state, and local levels, including demonstrating, lobbying elected officials to pass state legislation granting suffrage, giving speeches, and going on hunger strikes. They also tried to get laws that limited voting to male citizens overturned in court, but that strategy was unsuccessful. In 1878, the Supreme Court unanimously ruled in Minor v. Happersett (21 Wallace 162) that the 14th amendment did not include the right for women to vote as one of its privileges and immunities to citizens. It was also the first year in which an amendment was proposed in Congress that would extend the ...

Currently in beta mode, this website , created by Don Cruse (who also created DocketDB , which is focused on tracking Texas Supreme Court cases), covers current U.S. Supreme Court activities. It tracks the Court's docket, organizing cases by: the circuit or state in which they originated, cases with Calls for the View of the Solicitor General (CVSG), amicus filers at cert level or overall, and direct appeals from three judge courts. There is also a Quick Link option, which takes you directly to cases that originated in your state, with a link to the corresponding federal circuit. Within each category, cases are listed at their current stage, including: if there has been a petition filed, if certiorari has been granted, or if a case has been argued or decided. When you click on a particular case name, The Cert Pool provides the docket entries for that case, along with the names of the parties and counsel. If you click on the counsel's name, it will tell you how many times...

Law school is not a barber college (although it may be trending in that direction). A legal education is a graduate education which entails reading and writing about important issues in a scholarly manner. Reading and writing is required, but true mastery comes with reading something, analyzing it, thinking about it, and then putting those thoughts into writing. This process is called the trivium (grammar, logic, and rhetoric) and is the basis of a classical education. Students have several opportunities not only to write, but to engage in the scholarly writing process; to explore an issue at its deepest level and demonstrate their knowledge. This process enables students to sharpen their analytical and writing skills, add a great line on their resume, and learn what it’s like to be a law professor for a short time. Writing anything for publication is not an easy or simple process. A lot of time and effort goes into the research and writing process, not to mention the thinking abo...

As followers of dame Law we tend to get locked into a narrow universe of legal research sources -- Lexis, Westlaw, Hein, and perhaps a specialty source that applies to our specific area of expertise or study (e.g., Kluwer Arbitration). You would think that given how encompassing law as a subject has become that our research tools would be equally broad. They aren’t and we rarely think beyond those services we are comfortable with. One of the greatest enjoyments of being a law librarian is introducing an unfamiliar database to a student or faculty member and seeing them light up (like the veritable kid on Christmas morning) when they realize how much easier their lives will be once they begin using this new database. Invariably these databases are those that the library subscribes to through the University’s main library – the M.D. Anderson Library. The often overlooked, but always helpful, complimentary databases Reader’s Guide and Reader’s Guide Retrospective from H.W. Wilson ar...

If you are looking for a free way to stay on top of recent federal court opinions, then you should take a look at CourtListener . This website, created in 2010 by a graduate student at the University of California, Berkeley School of Information, is an alert tool for opinions issued by the 13 federal circuit courts and the U.S. Supreme Court. The website is updated daily, which means that all of the opinions of the day from these courts will be posted to the site by 5:10pm PST. You can browse by jurisdiction or conduct an advanced search for opinions, and you can download a copy of the original document as provided by the court. If you choose to register with the website, you can also create custom alerts that will notify you daily, weekly, or monthly when new cases are added that match your search.

The federal government has been developing more and more apps and mobile websites that allow you to access useful government information on mobile devices. For instance, the Internal Revenue Service , the Small Business Administration , and the White House all have apps now. Other government apps provide access to information on a wide range of topics such as travel , consumer safety , and federal jobs . Mobile websites are also available from agencies such as the Environmental Protection Agency , the State Department , and the National Institutes of Health . All of the apps and mobile websites are free and have been developed for platforms such as iPhone, Android, and Blackberry, although not all apps are available for every platform. The USA.gov Mobile Apps page has a list of the currently available apps and mobile sites. If you have an idea for a useful app, you can send suggestions to the USA.gov staff.