UHLC Nota Bene

There is a new player in the electronic legal research world; its name is Ravel and it wants to do for legal research what television did for radio: make it visual. Ravel is the brain-child of a group of recent Stanford Law graduates who wanted to come up with a new way of doing legal research that would be “radically easier, faster, and more intuitive.”   While the platform is more visually striking than the text heavy appearances of the more traditional platforms Ravel may not yet be a complete game-changer.   Let’s take a look.    The site has the familiar Google minimalist aesthetic look and right away lets you know that the cool kids who use Google Chrome are preferred, although it seemed to work fine with my stodgy old Firefox browser worked fine. Coverage is limited to only U.S. Supreme Court and all Federal Circuit court cases included. There are no Federal District court or any state court cases.   The developers state that “we are aggress...

On this date in legal history in 2001 the U.S. Supreme Court decided the case of PGA Tour, Inc. v. Martin . While not a landmark case, it is interesting because few sports-related cases reach the U.S. Supreme Court. Martin was Casey Martin a professional golfer who suffers from Klippel Trenaunay Syndrome. This genetic defect causes abnormal growth of blood cells or the lymphatic system and causes pain and makes it difficult to walk, especially the distances involved in 18 holes of golf. Martin had played college golf at Stanford, where he had been a teammate of Tiger Woods, and wished to play professionally on the PGA tour and wanted to be allowed to ride in a golf cart between holes due to his medical condition.  The PGA denied Martin’s request and asserted that walking between holes was an integral part of the game and riding in a cart would provide Martin with an unfair advantage. Martin sued under the Americans with Disabilities Act.  The court ruled 7-2 i...

The National Association of State Chief Information Officers recently put together a State Mobile Apps Catalog with information about government apps provided by all 50 states. Currently, it contains over 160 apps in a number of categories such as business and corporate filings, legislatures, professional license search, and tax and payment services. You can choose to view the government apps in each state or view apps by category. Right now, the available Texas apps are the Texas Driver Handbook , Texas.gov , and TX Senate Business & Commerce . Once you find an app of interest, the catalog provides a short description and a link to the app store where the app can be downloaded.

The Touch Tax Mobile (Tax Deskbook App) , by Com-Lab Mobile, provides tax students and attorneys convenient offline access to the entire Internal Revenue Code  as well as all of the Treasury Regulations. The Internal Revenue Bulletins (which have Revenue  Rulings and Procedures, Announcements, and Notices) are available from July 7, 2003, with the option of linking to the PDF copy of each issue from the IRS's website . This app is currently available for Apple and Android devices as well as the Blackberry Playbook tablet with the costs ranging from $0.99 to $5.99, depending on your device. The statutes and regulations are current through April 2012, which is consistent with the selected tax statutes and regs. that are in the supplements required for tax law courses. Users can browse the primary tax sources and use the basic keyword search feature as well as obtain a list of regulations related to particular code sections.

Tax almanacs save tax attorneys an enormous amount of time by providing quick practical tax related information in one paperback source. Specifically, they contain tax tables such as those related to 2012 tax rates and earned income tax credit as well as convenient steps for preparing returns, changes in tax statutes and regulations, and an overview and analysis of virtually every tax issue ranging from partnership issues and business expenses to charitable donations. There are annotations to primary sources of tax law such as the code, treasury regulations, case law, and pronouncements as well as references to practice guides such as the Standard Federal Tax Reporter (CCH) and the United State Tax Reporter (RIA) . The library has the following tax almanacs in it's collection, which are updated annually: 2013 U.S. Master Tax Guide (CCH) ( KF6365.C53 ) Federal Tax Handbook 2013 (RIA/Thomson Reuters, also available on WestlawNext and the Thomson Reuters Checkpoint databa...

Tomorrow, May 11, is International Migratory Bird Day .   In honor of this holiday, Nota Bene is proud to present this collection of resources as a reference when dealing with issues relating to migratory birds, and as a source of legal information to delight and amaze your friends.* The United States first addressed the state of migratory birds with the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918 , followed by the Migratory Bird Conservation Act of 1929 .   Since then, a number of statutes have been passed to further enhance protections for migratory birds.   Updates to statutes and regulations, along with general information about migratory birds, are available from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.   Local birdwatchers already know that Texas is a prime destination for birding.   For those interested in becoming birdwatchers, the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department has published guides on migratory birds and how to watch them .     Birdw...

Superman, the Man of Steel, was born in 1938, and has been involved in copyright litigation almost as long.   Mr. Mxyzptlk himself could not have created as convoluted a history of a copyright dispute as the one that involved the rights to the Superman property.  The Superman character was the brain-child of Jerome Siegel and Joe Shuster. Their idea, an alien comes to Earth and has super-powers was a new one at the time.   These two Brainiacs sold the exclusive world-wide rights to Superman to Detective Comics (“DC”) for $130.00 and took employment with DC. Superman debuted in the comic-book format in Action Comics #1. He was an instant hit. Siegel and Shuster filed their first lawsuit against DC in 1947 alleging that DC was not paying them their fair share of the profits that DC was reaping from the superhero. After trial the “official referee” found that DC had paid valuable consideration for the rights to Superman and the agreement was valid. Soon after th...