UHLC Nota Bene

In the era of fake news, information overload, and pseudoscience, critical thinking is more important than ever. While critical thinking it is becoming increasingly necessary, it can be a difficult skill to develop. Critical Thinking: Tools for Evaluating Research by Peter Nardi, Professor Emeritus of Sociology at Pitzer College, is here to help. The book focuses on teaching people about common errors in thinking, methods to evaluate and interpret information, and how to apply them in everyday life. In seven chapters it covers numeracy (understanding and using numbers); sampling and generalizability; probability and coincidence; visual thinking (interpreting graphs and charts); correlation and causation; scientific thinking; and fact, opinion, and logical reasoning.   Clear and concise, this book uses a variety of examples from academia, the government, the media, and others, to illustrate commons errors in thinking and methods to overcome them. While intended for stude...

The O'Quinn Law Library has acquired sources that contain the full text of and analysis of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act that was signed into law last December.  Keep in mind that Thomson Reuters Checkpoint and Tax Analysts will also have analysis on this act. Complete Analysis of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, Thomson Reuter s ( KF6276.62017.C66 2017 ) A Personal Guide to the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act: What is Means for You by Susan Flax Posner, Wolters Kluwer ( KF6276.6 2017.T57 2018 ) Tax Cuts and Jobs Act: Law, Explanation & Analysis, Wolters Kluwer ( KF6276.6 2017.T55 2018 ) Tax Cuts and Jobs Act: Text of H.R. 1, Joint Explanatory Statement of the Committee of Conference, as Released on December 15, 2017 ( KF6276. 2017.T56 2017 )  There are also a number of free resources where the full text of the law itself as well information Legislative documents available from Congress.gov (this will include access to the full text of the act, committee reports, history, links...

The Free Law Project has announced that they have collected every free written order and opinion that is available in PACER, the online hosting source of federal court opinions and case documents. They are now available at  free.law  and are completely searchable.  The  Free Law Project  reports that this collection contains  "approximately 3.4 million orders and opinions from approximately 1.5 million federal district and bankruptcy court cases dating back to 1960." The project required the scanning and implementing OCR for more than  "four hundred thousand of these documents . . .  amounting to nearly two million pages of text extraction." This archive of opinions and orders is available for search  here . In addition to common search categories (judge, nature of suit, etc.) it also has advanced search capabilities including field search, as well as proximity and fuzzy search capabilities.  The Free Law Proje...

Perma.cc solves the problem of link rot for law schools, courts, and universities.  Link rot occurs when the hyperlinks cited in scholarly papers and court opinions no longer lead to the webpages they’re meant to reference. Perma.cc creates a permanent, archived version of a website and assigns a permanent URL to that version. The archived version of the cited content will then be permanently available—even if the website modifies, moves, or deletes the page’s originally cited content. Perma.cc was developed by the Harvard Library Innovation Lab, and its founding supporters included more than sixty law-school libraries, along with the Harvard Berkman Center for Internet and Society, the Internet Archive, the Legal Information Preservation Alliance, and the Digital Public Library of America.   Here at the University of Houston Law Center, our law review and journals have been creating Perma links since the summer of 2016, and all are very satisfied with the user experienc...

The Law Library of Congress now provides free, online access to Treaties and Other International Agreements of The United States of America , a publication compiled by Charles Bevans.   The 13 volumes in this set include bilateral and multilateral treaties signed by the United States from 1776 to 1949. The set also includes a general index to help in locating relevant treaties.    The Law Library of Congress is also currently working to digitize treaties from 1950 to 1984, while newer treaties can be found on the US Department of State website . To access the treaties, visit the Law Library of Congress website .  

The ABA's Solo, Small Firm, and Practice division has recently published, Technology Tips for Lawyers and Other Business Professionals by Jeffrey Allen and UHLC alumna, Ashley Hallene . The authors provide concise practical advice on a variety of technology topics useful to attorneys. The book covers matters related to hardware and equipment such as using a tablet in court and portable hard drives. Software topics as well as advice related to travel are also covered. Security and ethics issues such as password protection and encryption are discussed.  The Miscellaneous tips section focuses on topics such as blogging, Google search tips, storing data in the cloud, creating an inexpensive electronic signature, and electronic business cards. The library has just acquired this book and it can be found on the new titles shelf under the call number, KF320.A9A 429 2016 .

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...

I am mighty glad to announce that a brand new version of the annual O'Quinn Law Library free CLE workshop is forthcoming.  The inaugural presentation of Specialized Legal Research for the Generalist: Tax, Health, and International Law will be held on Saturday, April 23, 2016.  Each session carries one Texas CLE credit.  First created in 2012 to help recently graduated alumni to meet the needs of a demanding legal environment, this year's workshop marks the 5th round with all new contents.  For detailed information and registration please click here .  Librarians and non-UH folks are equally welcome.   

If you need to find information regarding corporate misconduct regarding the environment, health, or safety, try the Violation Tracker database from the Corporate Research Project of Good Jobs First .   Released in 2015, this resource contains information regarding enforcement data covering 2010 to 2015 from a number of different federal agencies charged with enforcing various environmental, health, and safety laws.   Penalty amounts were found using agency enforcement records and settlement announcements.   The data can be accessed in a couple of ways.   Users can choose from a variety of summary pages providing overviews of violations by parent company (e.g. American Airlines or Exxon Mobil), industry (e.g. healthcare services or telecommunications), agency (e.g. Food and Drug Administration or Justice Department), or by state/country where the company is headquartered.   Users can also run searches to find all of the violations involving a specific co...

One of the hottest topics in legal information today is the use of data analytics, or harnessing large amounts of data to create assessments and make predictions. Legal research vendors are now offering their own, specialized tools that subscribers can use to take advantage of the copious amounts of data already present within the system’s databases. One of these vendors, Bloomberg Law, has introduced a feature they call  Law Firm Representation Analytics . This tool uses Bloomberg Law’s popular and expansive database of court dockets to show users the top law firms representing a particular company in federal litigation.  To use the tool, simply search for the company’s name using the “Go” bar at the upper-right hand side of any Bloomberg Law page.  Once the company’s name appears on the list of Suggested Companies, select it. The federal litigation analytics will display on the company’s page, along with other information about the company and its performance ...

This week t he Federal Law Librarians Special Interest Section of the Law Librarians Society of Washington, D.C., announced a new online resource available on their site,  entitled Quick Links and Sources to U.S. Court Opinions . The new website presents quick links to all major sources for U.S. Court opinions including sites for recent years, sites for recent and historical years, and subscription sites. It also presents direct links to court opinion sites of specific U.S. courts such as the U.S. courts of appeals as well links to opinion sites to those courts before the 1990’s.  Each specific’s court’s abbreviation and city location can also be found and there is an example of how new slip opinions can be cited. Though this list is of most use for finding opinions from the federal courts, it links to Cornell's Legal Information Institute for Texas opinions. Provided this list is updated consistently, it will be a useful bookmark for any practitioner seeking quick access to c...

Here’s a website that will be of interest to librarians and history buffs alike. Elephind.com allows you to search across thousands of digitized historical newspapers from one search box. So far, the site includes over 2.6 million issues from 2,705 titles, and claims to be adding more newspapers every day. In addition to a search engine that allows you to search headlines or full text and to limit your search by country, the site also provides links to the source of each paper, which will often provide more advanced search or browsing features. To learn more, check out Elephind’s “ About ” page.  

According to a recent press release , the U.S. Census Bureau has added a number of new features to its World Population Clock web tool. These include national profiles with trade, population, and demographic data, as well as national population projections. You can access this information by clicking on a country in the interactive map. And for those of you keeping score at home, the world’s population is now 7.27 billion and counting.  

The Sunlight Foundation has undertaken a project to create a free inventory of federal and state criminal justice data.   The inventory provides information regarding where researchers can find the data on the internet (if available) as well as the time period the data covers, whether it has been updated recently, and how often is it updated.   The inventory also includes information regarding whether the data is from a government, private, or non-profit entity and the name of the entity.   Currently, the inventory contains information about criminal justice topics for 36 states (including Texas), the District of Columbia and the federal government, but they plan to expand the information to all 50 states soon.   The data is available for a number of topics including Law Enforcement, Crime, Courts, Corrections, Victims, Financial, and Juvenile Justice.   To access the data or to submit a dataset, visit the Criminal Justice Data Project website.   To...

The 84 th Regular Session of the Texas Legislature ends on June 1 st .   As the session wraps up, there is a great deal of activity taking place.   If you want to follow all the action and see which bills have passed or failed, there are a couple of great resources you can try: Texas Tribune’s Texas Legislative Guide – This resource provides news stories regarding legislative action on a number of issues such as budget and taxes, energy, health and human services, higher education, and immigration and border security.   You can also use the website to browse bills by category as well as by sponsor or committee.    Texas Legislature Online – The legislature’s website also provides a wealth of information regarding Texas bills.   You can search for bills on various topics or you can look up a bill by number .   Once you find the bill you want, you can read the text, view its status to see if it has been passed, or see an up-to-date list of ...

LawAtlas: The Policy Surveillance Portal is a website created by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Public Health Law Research program and Temple University providing information about state laws that impact public health.   This free tool covers a wide variety of health policy topics such as alcohol, tobacco, and other drugs; environmental health; infectious disease prevention and control; health services; and occupational safety and health.    Once you find a topic of interest, you find out which states have laws on that issue.   The website provides information about particular state law provisions as well as links to the entire text of the state code sections.   For each topic, it also provides links to related information such as journal articles, websites, and government reports.   For more information, see the website’s FAQ page.