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Massachusetts just became the latest state to drop out of the Electoral College. Oh, wow! The Boston Globe reported yesterday that our legislature had passed the bill, which will go to our governor, who has expressed support for it. All 12 of Massachusetts’ electoral college votes will then be awarded to whichever presidential candidate garners the most popular votes nationwide. Other states which have passed similar laws so far are Illinois, New Jersey, Hawaii, Maryland, and Washington. You can track the efforts at www.NationalPopularVote.com. A number of other states have pending bills. Once enough states have passed similar legislation that their electoral college votes add up to a majority (or 270 of the 538 electoral college votes), it won’t matter what the other states do. Whichever presidential candidate wins the popular vote would win the national election through the electoral college vote.

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The good folks at the Federal Register are relaunching their new website, a much nicer interface than the old GPO website. Take a look at http://www.federalregister.gov, to see the new access. The Washington Post has an article covering the relaunch, noting it is part of the Obama administration efforts to make government information more available. The relaunch is scheduled for July 26. The article notes that the relaunch demystifies the arcane searching of the Register by reorganizing the thousands of rules and regulations issued each week into six categories: Read the rest of this entry »

The Times of London went behind a paywall on June 15. In addition, the owner of The Times, Rupert Murdoch, blocked search engines from including Times stories in their search results. The authors must love this! This was covered at the Law Librarian Blog by Mark Giangrande, who also reported on the “steep decline in online viewers” since the changeover to the paywall. One source reports a decline of 65% in online readers, while another reports 90%–both large numbers, to be sure, and large enough that no one could claim that the paywall has been a success so far.

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The Washington Post has a nice in-depth article and a link to video about Argentina’s Senate voting Thursday morning to legalize same-sex marriage. The House had already passed the same bill, so this vote sent the bill to the President, Cristina Fernndez de Kirchner, who strongly supports it. Argentina becomes the first Latin American country to legalize gay marriage, and only the second nation in the Americas, after Canada to do so. Mexico City has voted to legalize same sex marriage, the only other place in Latin America that supports the institution. In Colombia, the high court recently gave same sex couples most of the same rights as heterosexual couples. And in Uruguay, the Congress recently passed legislation recognizing same sex civil unions.

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The New York Times has an Associated Press story this afternoon, datelined 5 PM, that the federal district judge in Boston ruled the federal Defense of Marriage Act is unconstitutional for infringing the right of Massachusetts to define who may marry. GLAD has more details on their website, including a pdf of the full text of Judge Joseph Tauro’s decision in the case, Gill and Letourneau v. Office of Personnel Management. Read the rest of this entry »

In my Advanced Legal Research course, I have a reputation for being a hard grader (I prefer to think of myself as being fair rather than hard) and for assigning a lot of work. My students are asked to prepare a research guide on a discrete area of the law, and it does take a good bit of time to do this assignment well. I have noticed that students complain more now than they did in the past about the work required for the research guide even though the course now carries three credits; for years, it carried only two. My faculty colleagues have heard the same complaints about their courses. I have often wondered why students are more likely to complain about the workload now than they did in the past. Perhaps it is because they are graduating from college unaccustomed to working hard.

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The Chronicle of Higher Education in an article datelined June 30, 2010, reports on program at the annual conference of the National Association of College and University Attorneys. Speakers discussed the advisability of asking for criminal background checks on students, usually as part of the admissions process. In the absence of formal policies on how to handle the information, or how to interpret it if received, at least one speaker counseled against background checks.

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The Library of Congress released news yesterday of a discovery that new technology made possible on a draft of the Declaration of Independence. Here is a link to the Associated Press article as it appeared in the Boston Globe this morning. Using a high resolution digital camera that can separate layers of images, a researcher at the archives discovered an erasure in the document. Thomas Jefferson originally wrote the word “subjects” and then wiped it out, apparently while the ink was still wet. He then substituted the word “citizens,” which he continued to use throughout the document. The substitution is a window into the mind of Jefferson, as he began to move from the mindset of a royalist to a revolutionary, or to a democrat (in the sense, not of political parties, but of government alternatives).

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Law school clinics have come under criticism lately, so it is heartening to read about a clinic that has helped to do justice in a case that dated back to the civil rights era. An article in today’s Boston Globe highlights the work of Northeastern University Law School’s Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Project. Students working under the direction of Professor Margaret A. Burnham helped bring about a settlement of a “federal lawsuit that had accused Franklin County [Mississippi] law enforcement officials of assisting Klansmen in the kidnapping, torture, and murder” of two African American teenagers who were hitchhiking at the time they were abducted in 1964. Professor “Burnham and about 15 law students spent roughly 2 1/2 years … combing through thousands of pages of old FBI files and police reports, interviewing dozens of witnesses in Mississippi, and researching the history of racial bias by law enforcement in the county.” The suit was settled out of court and the terms are confidential; money was paid to the victims’ surviving family members, although officials continue to deny that the county in any way contributed to the horrific murders. Click here to hear Professor Burnham discuss the case on NPR’s All Things Considered or to read a transcript. Read the rest of this entry »

Well, it’s over - yes, classes have ended at WCL’s Turkish Summer Program.
What a great experience. If you have summer programs and are asked to participate - SAY YES!
It’s been fun, challenging, different, mind-boggling, and the list of adjectives goes on.
The presenters were well prepared, spoke excellent English, and really gave our students a picture of Turkish Law in general and all of the many business law aspects.
Our side trips to Ankara to visit the World Bank & the Mausoleum of Ataturk were amazing. And then there was Cappadocia and Ephesus - life changing for sure.
More importantly, was the real face time with “students”. The faculty in our program resided on campus in the “faculty hotel” near the women’s dormitory facilities - yes, no AC, but of course, we survived.
We attended classes, ate lunch; sometimes dinner and cheered the US and many other adopted countries on in World Cup matches with our students. That’s when you learn about their dedication to legal education; life-long dreams; and they’ve never heard of WorldCat.
We had one presenter who was not able to attend and I shared a very detailed power-point with them entitled - Legal Research on Steroids - it’s just amazing what they know & what they don’t know. 1L legal research & writing courses just can’t cover it all and the limited enrollments for the advanced legal research courses make our work extremely difficult - WE NEED TO RESOLVE THIS!! Not sure I have the answer - but the students were amazed at the resources they didn’t recognized and how helpful the law library could be to their “comment writing”, research for papers, and work they do for faculty.
Of course, my ability to participate was made possible by technology, SKYPE, internt access, and my great staff at the Pence Law Library.
I now have the “hard part” ahead - grading exams (yes, that’s what we get paid for!!
Leaving for Hong Kong to do a ABA site visit for the Pepperdine Law School program and then home - yes, just in time for the 4th of July and AALL.
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