UHLC Nota Bene

The Presidents and the Constitution: A Living History , Ken Gormley, ed. (2016), KF 5053 .P75 2016 Article II of the Constitution, at little over 1000 words, is the provision in which most of the power of the American presidency is housed.  Those words grant the office of the President great power, but its limits and relationship to the judicial and legislative branches is not well defined. In the new book  The Presidents and the Constitution: A Living History , Ken Gormely tells the story of America’s forty-four presidents and how each one interfaced with the Constitution.  With a chapter devoted to each presidency, it is a collection of essays focused on the major constitutional issues each president faced. The collection gives each President a compact biography, followed by a discussion of the major issues that President faced relating to the extent of executive power, influence on the judiciary, and the President’s role in foreign affairs. The tightly edited ...

A question often asked by law students at the beginning of the summer is whether or not they can use their Westlaw, LexisNexis, and Bloomberg Law accounts at their summer jobs, internships, and externships. Recent graduates also may wonder about using their accounts as they study for the bar and beyond. Here are the guidelines for each of the three services: Bloomberg Law You may use your Bloomberg Law account during the summer, without restriction. As with Westlaw and LexisNexis, if you are assigned a Bloomberg Law account by your summer employer, use the employer account instead. If you have questions about using Bloomberg Law during the summer, contact our Bloomberg Law rep, Michael Calder ( mcalder@bna.com ). Bloomberg Law also provides a great collection of resources to help you research efficiently and perform successfully during your summer employment, available here . LexisNexis Your law school log-in will allow you unlimited access to all legal content and news in Lexi...

HeinOnline just announced that they have created a new app for Android devices.   This is in addition to the existing app they have for iOS devices.   The app allows users to download the PDF versions of the resources that HeinOnline has become known for such as law journal articles and federal legislative and administrative materials.   With the app, you can retrieve documents by citation, search the document collections by keyword, or browse collections to get the specific resources you need.   While both apps are free to download, please keep in mind that the HeinOnline content is only available to subscribers.   The law library provides a subscription to HeinOnline for UHLC students, faculty, and staff, and many other libraries provide it for their patrons as well.   For more information or to download the apps, see the Google Play website or the iTunes App Store website.  

Among many other things, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) is tasked with reviewing bills and public laws under the Unfunded Mandates Reform Act to determine if the legislation imposes federal mandates on various government and private-sector entities.  To help Congress, state and local governments, and the public find this information more easily, CBO has now created an online tool containing information about laws with these mandates.  For instance, the Drug Quality and Security Act requires pharmacies to monitor prescription drugs through the drug distribution system and the Preventing Sex Trafficking and Strengthening Families Act requires states to implement electronic withholding of child support payments.   Currently, the database will allow you to search or browse through laws that contain mandates as well bills reviewed by CBO that contained mandates for 2013-2015.  However, the CBO indicates more data will be added going forward.  The new t...

The law library now has Critical Government Documents on the Environment ( KF3775.P45 2015 ) published by BernanPress . This book, authored by Don Philpott, looks at critical environmental issues with the goal of providing arguments for and against major environmental issues being debated today. The resources used for this book are mostly from the public domain and range from scholarly journals to government documents from various federal agencies involved in environmental regulation. Both sides of issues pertaining to global warming, clean air, clean water, and renewable energy are explored by the author. The appendices contain a timeline, glossary, and list of resources.

Following concerns about tax avoidance raised by last month's leaking of the Panama Papers , the United States Department of the Treasury has announced several new regulations aimed at stopping money laundering and tax evasion. The new rules will require financial institutions to identify the owners of companies opening accounts and doing business with them, and to report their identities to the federal government.  Any owner of 25% or more of a company will be considered an owner under these rules.  Financial institutions will have two years to implement this rule by identifying the relevant owners. The Treasury Department is also considering a rule that would require limited liability companies incorporated in the US but owned by foreign entities to identify their foreign owners.

The results of the February 2016 Texas Bar Examination are in , and graduates of the University of Houston Law Center achieved the highest passage rate (at 83%) among the graduates of all accredited law schools in Texas. Congratulations to these graduates and to all of the successful examinees.