Skip to main content

Congress Publishes Collection of CRS Reports

By

Back in March, “Nota Bene” featured a post about finding Congressional Research Service (CRS) reports online. Last month, a new collection of CRS reports was published as a committee print by Congress. This new publication is noteworthy because, as we pointed out in our earlier post, CRS reports are typically made available only to members of Congress and their staffs, who rely on them for background information when considering new bills. While a handful of libraries and other institutions have made a limited number of CRS reports available online, the government has yet to provide free public access to the reports, even though they are not classified or protected by copyright.

The new collection of reports is called “The Evolving Congress,” and it was produced to coincide with the 100th anniversary of the CRS. As the title implies, the collection focuses on the ways in which Congress has evolved over time. Part I provides an overview of the history of Congress in the modern era. Part II, “The Members of Congress,” looks at various aspects of the members’ lives, including their use of social media, their election campaigns, and changing demographics among the members themselves. Part III examines changes in the legislative process, and Part IV is devoted to a number of case studies in policymaking, including the creation of the Department of Homeland Security and Congressional responses to financial crises.    

For more information about the CRS, see the Library of Congress website or revisit our earlier post.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Amazing, but True, Deportation Story of Carlos Marcello

By
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...
1 comment
Read more

Texas Subsequent History Table Ceases Publication

By
This week, Thomson Reuters notified subscribers that publication of the Texas Subsequent History Table will be discontinued and no further updates will be produced, due to “insufficient market interest.” Practitioners have been extracting writ (and since 1997, petition) history from the tables since their initial publication in 1917 as The Complete Texas Writs of Error Table . The tables, later published by West, have been used for nearly a century to determine how the Texas Supreme Court or Court of Criminal Appeals disposed of an appeal from an intermediate appellate court. The purpose of adding this notation to citations is to indicate the effect of the Texas Supreme Court’s action on the weight of authority of the Court of Appeals’ opinion.  For example, practitioners may prefer to use as authority a case that the Texas Supreme Court has determined is correct both in result and legal principles applied (petition refused), rather than one that simply presents no error that requ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Lessons for Today from the Genocide Against the Tutsi in Rwanda

By Anonymous
“Man’s inhumanity to man is not only perpetrated by the vitriolic actions of those who are bad. It is also perpetrated by the vitiating inaction of those who are good.” –Martin Luther King Jr.   Last week, I had the pleasure of attending  Professor Zachary D. Kaufman ’s presentation on  Lessons for Today from the Genocide Against the Tutsi in Rwanda  hosted by the  Johannesburg Holocaust & Geno cide Ce ntre . Among the many takeaways highlighted by Professor Kaufman and drawn from  Lessons from Rwanda: Post-Genocide Law and Policy   were ten simple yet profound lessons:   Lesson #1: Hate speech is dangerous.   To illustrate the role that hate speech played in the Rwandan genocide, Professor Kaufman discussed multiple forms of  propaganda , such as Kangura, Radio Rwanda, and RTLM “hate radio.”   He concludes that we must have limits, including with respect to social media, and further asserts that social media must do a better jo...
Post a Comment
Read more