UHLC Nota Bene

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) posts the full text of relevant statutes, regulations, releases, litigation including briefs by the SEC , and EDGAR , a database that provides public access to certain mandated forms submitted to the commission by public companies. Statutes The SEC provides information regarding major securities acts Securities Act of 1933 Securities Exchange Act of 1934 Trust Indenture Act of 1939 Investment Company Act of 1940 Investment Advisers Act of 1940 Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act Regulations Proposed , Final , and Temporary Regulations are posted along with various notices and releases as well as public petitions for rule making . Staff interpretations and similar internal documents designed to provide guidance but are not considered authoritative are also available on the Commission's website. Documents Related to Litigation The SEC makes its enforcement actions , briefs, commissi...

The coming week, the Mid-America Association of Law Libraries (MAALL) and the Southwestern Association of Law Libraries (SWALL) will be having a joint meeting in Lawrence, KS . Several staff members of the O'Quinn Law Library will be attending this event and/or helped put it together: • Mon Yin Lung, our Associate Director, is also the current President of SWALL and, as such, co-chaired the Programs Committee. • Chris Dykes, one of our Reference/Research Librarians, was a co-coordinator for a two-part program entitled Navigating your Way through Legislative Research-A Six State Survey . • Emily Lawson, another of our Reference/Research Librarians, also served on the Programs Committee and will also be participating as a moderator and speaker in the two-part, six-state-survey program she co-coordinated with Chris. Finally, I will be presenting my program, The Bluebook , 19th ed.: Changes Every Legal Researcher Should Know , during which I will be discussing what I believe are the mo...

1. Dress up as an element from your favorite case; try the carbolic smoke ball from Carlill v. Carbolic Smoke Ball Company or the scales from Palsgraf v. Long Island R. Co . The scales are the only participant in the case that acted rationally. 2. Be Blackacre. This costume is freely adaptable depending upon your taste in color. 3. INS v. Chada . Since this case stands for so many propositions it can literally be anything. When in doubt, cite to Chada . 4. Be the Bluebook. No one will like you but it’s a great costume. 5. Dress as Chief Justice Melville Fuller’s mustache. First lady Ida McKinley did so at the 1899 White House Halloween party and she was a big hit. 6. When trick-or-treaters come to your door remember that they are not interested in the rules regarding the liability of owners/occupiers of land. 7. Instead of handing out candy hand out “fruit of the poisonous tree.” The kids’ parents will love this. 8. Dicta does not make a good treat. 9. Dress up as a judge and tel...

On the Tex Parte Blog , Angela Morris recently wrote about an impending hearing by the Texas Supreme Court to discuss the benefits and drawbacks of a PACER-like system for Texas courts . From an access-to-information standpoint, this would be a great development! Not only would it make accessing court documents much easier state-wide, but it would require the creation of "a centralized service". As anyone who has been following the debate over the creation of uniform (or neutral) citation standards should recognize, one of the largest obstacles to uniform citation is the lack in many states of a centralized body responsible for assigning sequential numbers to the opinions of that particular state's many courts. Thus, for example, in Texas, there is currently no body charged with assigning unique sequential opinion numbers to all of the opinions from the various Texas Courts of Appeals. (Of course, Texas could take a leap forward and utilize a neutral format similar to Lo...

During the first half of the 20th century Dr. Hawley Harvey Crippen was one of the most notorious murderers on both sides of the Atlantic, and it was on October 22, 1910 that he was convicted of murdering his wife. Dr. H.H. Crippen was an American homeopathic physician living in London. He was married to Corrine “Cora” Turner, a frustrated music-hall singer who performed under the stage name “Bella Elmore.” By all accounts theirs was not a happy marriage, and one that gives lie to the expression “opposites attract.” Crippen was quiet and hard working; the very picture of an Edwardian-era nerd. Cora was loud, brash, hard-drinking, and bragged about her many affairs. Put off by his wife, Crippen himself began an affair with his secretary, Ethel Neave. On January 31, 1910 after a dinner party at the Crippen home, Cora disappeared. Friends began to call for her and Crippen told them that she had moved back to the United States. Cora’s friends continued to ask about her and Crippen then as...

“There is always someone tougher than you are.” –Anonymous “… in this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.” –Benjamin Franklin There should be no doubt that Al Capone was a tough man. He ordered the death of Bugs Moran and his gang from the comfort of his Florida vacation home, an order that resulted in the infamous “St. Valentine’s Day Massacre” that left 7 men dead. “Scarface” Al was tough, but the Internal Revenue Service was tougher, and on this day in 1931 Al Capone was sentenced to 10 years imprisonment for tax evasion. The story of Al Capone’s reign of terror ending in charges more likely to be brought against a shady small businessman is interesting as tax stories go, and available, with primary documentation, on the IRS web site. As one can imagine getting a conviction for anything against Al Capone, Public Enemy No. 1, would not be an easy thing. The fact that “Al Capone never had a bank account and only on one occasion could it be found where he e...

Sometimes legal researchers are called upon to do state-by-state comparisons of the law in particular areas. These 50 state surveys can be daunting and very time consuming, but there are some helpful resources you can look to in order to determine if someone has already compiled the information you need. A great place to start is with the Subject Compilations of State Laws bibliographies, available in print in the library. The most recent volume is located in the Reference collection at KF240.S795, with the older volumes in the stacks at the same call number. This resource lists citations to where you can find 50 state surveys on hundreds of subjects. Another good print source is the National Survey of State Laws (6th ed.) located in the Reference collection at KF386.N38, which is updated through June 1, 2007. It contains summaries of the laws in each state, with citations, on a variety of topics. Westlaw and Lexis both contain a large number of 50 states surveys. In Westlaw, c...

The Cornell Legal Information Institute (LII) and the Center for Computer-Assisted Legal Education (CALI) have partnered to provide access to free ebook copies of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, and the Federal Rules of Evidence. The ebooks can be downloaded in the .epub format making them compatible with devices such as the iPad and the Nook as well as the .mobi format for Kindle users. The ebooks have Tables of Contents and Advisory Committee notes after each rule. They also contain internal links to other rules referenced within a particular rule as well as external links to the United States Code available on the LII website. Visit the ebook help page to learn more about how to download these ebooks.

Professor Danshera Cords of Albany Law Schoo l has authored the forthcoming article: Lien of Me: Virtual Debtors Prisons, the Practical Effects of Tax Liens and Proposals for Reform (forthcoming University of Louisville Law Review , Vol. 49, 2011) that discusses the devastating damage done to a person's credit rating and employment prospects by having unpaid tax liens levied by the IRS. According to Professor Cords, such liens do unnecessary damage because they do not improve the chances that the tax amount in question will ever be collected. The author proposes a number of reforms including: 1). Amend the Internal Revenue Code to require a tax lien to be removed from an individual's credit report and treated as if it had never been filed once payment is satisfied. 2) Amend the Fair Credit Reporting Act to require the removal of a tax lien from a taxpayer's credit report after the same period of time that debts from other creditors would have been removed. 3) The decis...

The ABA Section of State and Local Government Law has published Eminent Domain: a Handbook of Condemnation Law ( KF5599.E468 2011 ), which is now on the law library's new titles shelf. All eight chapters are authored by different contributors who focus on a specific area of eminent domain including, among other topics, the principles of "public use" and "public purpose" as well as "just compensation," which is owed to the property owner for the seizure of property. The chapter covering "public use" and public purpose" summarizes the Michigan Supreme Court case, County of Wayne v. Hathcock , and the U.S. Supreme Court case, Kelo v. City of New London , which had opposite results on these matters. Measures available to those who choose to fight the attempted seizure of property and the litigation process involved are covered in Chapters 6 and 7, and this book also discusses actions taken by the government that result in damage such a...